Apr 11, 2016 3 min read

Lawmakers in Harrisburg are now considering legislation to allow municipal police departments to use radar to control speeding. Pennsylvania is the only state in the union that does not allow local police to use radar.

Officers from many area communities joined others from across the state to rally in the state capital April 5 in support of House Bill 71 and Senate Bill 535.

This is not the first time municipal police have pushed for radar, which state troopers have been using for 50 years. But the Legislature has not cooperated.

“This is probably our best chance to get it,” Chartiers Township Chief James Horvath told our parent paper, the Observer-Reporter.

That may be true, but the odds of passage are still pretty long. Too many legislators are already wringing their hands, worrying about municipalities making fortunes from speed traps, or losing the votes of people who believe how fast they drive is nobody’s business but their own.

There’s no denying that the tools local police now have to control speeding are cumbersome, impractical and ineffective. Painting two lines on a road and timing a vehicle as it passes them with a stopwatch may have been a clever way to catch speeders 100 years ago, but technology has advanced a little bit since then.

The police promoting their use of radar claim it will save lives, and statistics compiled by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration back them up.

In 2013, the latest year for which complete NHTSA numbers are available, Pennsylvania ranked third in the nation for speed-related fatalities. Of the 1,208 deaths in crashes, 550 were because of speeding. Only California and Texas, the two most populous states, had more traffic deaths as a result of speed.

California, with a population of 38,332,521 – more than three times that of Pennsylvania’s – had 916 traffic deaths from speeding in 2012, compared to 614 in Pennsylvania.

And no state beats Pennsylvania in the percentage of traffic deaths resulting from speeding – 46 percent.

State Rep. Brandon Neuman, D-North Strabane Township, and state Sen. Camera Bartolotta, R-Carroll Township, voiced support for the bills now before the Legislature to the Observer-Reporter.

“One of the biggest complaints I get in my office is about speeding drivers,” Neuman said. “Radar is the only way to make sure our roads are safe.”

On a positive note, the number of traffic deaths in the commonwealth and across the nation is continually declining, due in part to higher vehicle safety standards, but also to increased enforcement of laws regarding seat belts, distracted driving and driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

In our state, local police have the authority to use all the available tools, for instance, to take a drunken driver off the road. But they don’t have the same ability to prevent dangerous speeding.

They should, and the state House and Senate should realize it.