Operation Yellow Jacket Hoax or True?
I got this email forwarded to me this morning…
Watch your speed. New State Trooper Vehicles
KDKA and WDVE & CBS3 confirmed this. in PA.
Look out for Penn dot trucks parked along the road or appearing beh ind you pacing you, it could be a Trooper driving the truck, it is called Operation Yellow Jacket and will be off and on all summer, each district has a truck cleaned up and ready to go!
Watch Your Speed In PA!
USE CRUISE CONTROL -NO MORE THAN 2 MILES ABOVE POSTED SPEED LIMIT.
Starting today, Pennsylvania will launch a 30 day speeding ticket frenzy. The state estimates that 9 million dollars will be generated in speeding tickets. 1 million will go to pay state troopersovertime. There will be 50 state troopers on duty at all times patrolling
the 9 main intersections and highways. They are the following:
Rte. 1 north and south
PA-220
I-99 north and south
I-95 north and south
I-279 north and south
I-276 east and west
I-376 east and w est
I-76 east and west
I-80 east and west
I-79 north and south
I-70 east and west
PA-60
PA-66
US-22 & 322
5 mph above the limit can justify a ticket and every state trooper is supposed to pull
a car over and write a ticke t every 10 to 20 minutes. They have issued 30 brand new unmarked Dodge Charger Police cruisers and are bringing in all of their part timers on full time. If you work in Pennsylvania, you will probably take one of these highways. Its up to you how fast you are going then they clock you.
KDKA and WDVE & CBS3 confirmed all of this in PA.
Starting on August 15th, the price of a ticket for violation of PA Law 39:3-29 (failure to show your drivers license, registration, or insurance card at the time you are stopped) is going from $44.00 to $173.00.
Make sure your vehicles have the proper documents in them. And the fine for not having all three documents is $519!!!
End Email Quote….
Now the first thing I thought was to check snopes.com for a report… so I found this…
http://www.snopes.com/politics/traffic/speeding.asp
The email has all the classic signs of an urban legend… No real dates, or links to the supposed stories on the radio/tv stations listed. Also the email plays to the common story of the city/state using speeding tickets to boost revenue. I then dug a little further and found this…
http://www.dot.state.pa.us/Penndot/Districts/district12.nsf/Operation%20Yellow%20Jacket?OpenPage
Which seems to be a legitimate page on Penndots website. So basically this is a semi-myth. The 30 day push and increasing revenues to the state are the urban legend part, but it appears that PA has been using PennDot trucks for speed traps for quite some time. Its always good to slow down in work zones anyway, and remember to turn your headlights on as well.
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Posted: 6th July 2009 | Author: Kevin Schappell | Category: Automotive News
