Truckers beware: DPS has new tool -Troopers hope 'radar detector detectors' help slow speeding big rigs

01/16/2002

The Texas Department of Public Safety has armed troopers with a new weapon in the battle to slow down the stream of 18-wheelers riding Texas roads.

They call it a radar detector detector. The name fits.

"We want the drivers to know we have them," DPS spokesman Tom Vinger said. "This gives our troopers a way to tell if commercial drivers are carrying radar detectors, even if they aren't speeding. They shouldn't even have them in the truck."

Federal law forbids commercial vehicles from using radar detectors, devices that enable drivers to pick up signals emitted by the radar guns DPS troopers use to find speeders.

With a supplemental grant from the federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, DPS bought 101 of the detector detectors, at a cost of $1,500 each, for use by its License and Weight troopers throughout the state. DPS plans to get 43 more in June.

"We want people to know we're concerned about 18-wheelers violating speed limits. And we're doing something about it," Mr. Vinger said. "Unlike regular highway troopers, License and Weight troopers don't need probable cause to stop a commercial vehicle. If they find a driver with a radar detector, it's a violation."

License and Weight troopers are a specially trained unit within DPS that enforces speed and weight laws pertaining to commercial vehicles.

An increase in truck traffic through Texas in recent years gives special impetus to slow the 18-wheelers, Mr. Vinger said.

"Texas already leads in the nation in commercial vehicle miles traveled," he said. "The combination of size and speed can make large trucks harder to maneuver and stop quickly. That means drivers of commercial vehicles have a special responsibility to drive safely."

The new measures didn't impress at least one trucker.

"It's a game, that's what it is," truck driver Joe Fiorello, 32, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said at a truck stop in Mesquite. "They get radar, we get a radar detector. They upgrade theirs, we upgrade ours."

He said he would keep using his detector. "I know I'll get caught, but let's say every 10th load, I get caught. That's still nine trips I got through. I know it's going to cost me a hundred dollars every nine or 10 trips. It's just another cost of business," Mr. Fiorello said.

In 1999, about 2.3 million trucks entered Texas through the nine ports of entry along the border – a 250 percent increase since the start of the North American Free Trade Agreement five years earlier.

Nearly 80 percent of the U.S.-Mexico truck traffic alone moves through Texas, with more than 40 percent of that passing through the Dallas-Fort Worth area, according to the Texas Department of Transportation. Truck traffic statewide is expected to increase 50 percent to 70 percent over the next decade.

By DAVID McLEMORE / The Dallas Morning News