Kirchseeon, the quaint little suburban/rural town in Bavaria just about 15 miles East of Munich that I call home, made national headlines because of its newly installed radar speed trap. The approximately 7,000 people currently living in Kirchseeon have been complaining for decades about traffic on the one (and only) main road cutting through town. Federal road B304 is travelled by over 17,000 thousand vehicles daily. Noise, dirt, and congestion are the main concerns. Accidents, luckily, are not a real problem – thanks to the congestion and speed limits of just 30 km/h for most of the side roads in town we only had 11 incidents involving cars in all of 2022. No fatalities from those.
So in 2023 our municipal council, lead by a young energetic mayor, devised a plan how to turn the stream of vehicles into a stream of revenue. The radar speed control camera went live on December 20th and paid for itself within the first ten days by taking over 3,000 expensive black-and-white photos of drivers in an awful hurry – both ways, in and out of town.
Kirchseeon and the successful income generator were quickly noticed by media all over Germany. Now, with January in the books, we see a slight downturn – “only” over 4,000 flashes in January – but still a pretty elegant way to augment our struggling budget. Who knows, maybe money from this contraption will some day help to fix the public swimming pool?
In my opinion the most genius part of this project was picking the best location for the trap. The reasons given – “there’s a school nearby” – “we want to improve traffic safety in town” – don’t sound very credible. The school entrance is on a side road, about half a block West of the camera. Traffic safety in town will likely not improve by radar control at a location 300 ft. West of city limits.
The location was picked specifically for topographical reasons. It sits at the bottom of a hill. People driving East, out of town, can see the city limits sign, and the speed limit changing there from 50 km/h to 70km/h on top of the hill. So everybody naturally steps on it right before the speed trap to “race” to the top of the hill. People driving West, coming into town, reach the top of the hill at the permitted 70 km/h (or often higher) and are met with the city limits sign – no chance to slow down to 50 km/h within those 300 ft. remaining.
When I was just a child, I simply grabbed his hand and tried to keep up with his long, fast-paced strides. A rather futile endeavour, since my father had clear goals for his future and no patience to wait, or slow down, for anybody.
Physics was his life. He breathed quantum mechanics. Hundreds, if not thousands, of students listened to his lectures. I admired the clarity of his thoughts and the depth of his knowledge – wondering if there was room for anything other than physics in his mind. I worked hard in school, but never hard enough. Not being an obvious genius in one specific subject, like my father was, I tried out dozens of different things – and ended up knowing a little bit about all of them.
With a certain haste the woman went outside and retrieved a package from behind one of my mom’s big trees. Aluminum foil, wrapped around a black plastic bag, inside of it an old camera – battery compartment empty, no memory card.