The Lincoln Times

Remember "Whammie"?

Scientific Equipment Aids Patrol In Nabbing Speeders

RALEIGH- In North Carolina the State Highway Patrol bears down on wilful speeders aided by scientific speed devices known colloquially as "whammies."

Extensive use of the sensitive instruments along North Carolina's 70,000 mile road system give occasional rise to accusations of "speed trap" and the like from irate motorists who run afoul of the speed law.

Some tourists and some natives complain that it isn't cricket for patrolmen to hide their electric tattle tales. In North Carolina state law permits troopers to conceal the devices from public view.

But their furtiveness is easily explained. Patrol officials say knowingly that if whammy stations are pinpointed, 70 mph speeders would have only to lift their foot a mile away and glide smugly across at legal speed. The law abiding motorist, they say, gives not a hoot where the whammies are, or may be.

The hidden ball tactics occasionally bring on speed trap complaints too, mostly from out of state motor club patrons. Speed trap, a phrase abhorred by enforcement officials, seems a matter of definition to Tar Heel Motor Vehicles Commissioner Ed Scheidt.

"It is not a speed trap," says ex-FBI agent Scheidt, "unless an officer intentionally lures a motorist into a violation and then arrests him."

CAUTION SIGNS

In the Tar Heel state no road - even lightly traveled ones - could be considered lures. All are conspicuously posted with caution signs reading "Speed Electrically Timed." And few Tar Heel troopers have the time or the inclination to goad travelers into a violation. Charges of "arrest quotas" are complete fiction says patrol headquarters.

Most North Carolina newspapers share the opinion of enforcement officials that speed trap accusations originate largely from arrested speeders as a sort of retaliation effort. Saving face the Orientals call it.

And that would seem to suggest some formula to avoid arrest - or losing face. Tar Heel safety authorities, to a man, suggest: "Always drive at legal-and common sense - speeds."

Those whammies. They first came to Tar Heel highways in 1952. Patrol officials, ordered by Scheidt to stop speeding, put them to immediate use. The electric timing gadget (whammy) is familiar to motorists traveling Tar Heel roads. The highway patrol operates 60 such pieces of equipment, which are switched at random on roads throughout the state.

The first sign of a whammy is a quarter-inch black rubber cable stretched across the highway and anchored at each end by a slab of metal. One hundred and thirty-two feet down the highway (1/40th of a mile) is an identical cable. Linking the two is an electric cord attached through mercury switches to a recording head located some distance from the set up. A black box, about the size of two cigar boxes, contains the whammy's brain. Set in the middle of the box is a stop watch and around the perimeter of the watch gradations in miles per hour.

An approaching vehicle striking the first cable starts the watch ticking. When the vehicle strikes the second cable the watch is stopped. Its hand points to 50 mph, 63 mph, 90 mph or what have you and troopers go into action if the hand is over 55 mph, the state's legal speed limit.

The watch's accuracy is unaffected by the weather. Where manufacturers permit variances of seven to 10 per cent in auto speedometers, the whammy is calibrated to within a fraction over one per cent accuracy. The stop-watch is inspected, cleaned and regulated once a month by a railroad watch inspector. Periodically, it is further checked by radio with the Bureau of Standards master time signal in Washington, D. C.

Though still a bitter pill to the motorist who drives at illegal speeds, the Tar Heel whammy remains at its concealed post, its influence applicable only to the lawbreaker.