The Lyon County Sheriff’s Office expects to have two new radar trailers in use around Fernley by mid-October, Chief Deputy Mitch Brantingham said during his report at the Sept. 2 City Council meeting.
Brantingham said the City of Fernley purchased the trailers, and the sheriff’s office is completing minor upfitting before putting them into service.
Mayor Neal McIntyre asked whether the trailers would be used like automated ticket cameras, photographing drivers or license plates and issuing citations.
Brantingham said they will not.
“We cannot issue a citation based off a photograph in the state of Nevada,” Brantingham said. “I know they do that in a lot of surrounding places, but in Nevada we can’t.”
He said the trailers do not photograph vehicles, drivers or license plates, but they do record the date, time and speed of passing vehicles. Brantingham said that information can help deputies identify problem areas and times of day.
“For instance, if we have a vehicle that speeds through the same location every day at the same time, we could get that data and then do targeted enforcement on that one vehicle,” he said.
Brantingham said the sheriff’s office recently used a similar trailer on Six-Mile Canyon Road in Dayton to track traffic volume, average speeds and whether the trailer was having an effect. Over one week, he said, speeds in that area dropped by about 68 percent.
He said the data gives deputies a way to focus patrols where they are most needed rather than using the trailer itself as an enforcement tool.
“If we see a recurring problem or we don’t see that reduction in speed that we’re looking to see, we now have a targeted time as well as the number of vehicles going through that area,” he said. “So we can put an effective enforcement package out there to try and do the speed enforcement that we need to in those regions.”
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