Gov. Jerry Brown signed the bill, which was penned by L.A. Assemblyman Mike Gatto, into law on Monday, City News Service reports.
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“We do continue to try to work with the governor’s office and explain to him the merits of this idea and the unfairness of having this regime in place in San Francisco and Oakland, but not in Los Angeles”, Gatto said.
The measure would also have allowed the state Department of Transportation to study whether similar openings should be used on other freeways in the county. Though, Gatto pointed out that the same digital freeway signs were being used to tell residents about the drought and urging them to save water, so there should be room for hit-and-run alerts. “We should give law enforcement tools to try to catch somebody by crowdsourcing it, if you will”. Additionally, the alerts will be sent out only if the collision causes a serious injury or death.
“If people know that their information will be broadcast on these signs and there’s a chance they’ll be caught, the likelihood of them fleeing will decrease”. And there are 20,000 of these hit-and-runs reported each year. There were 956 hit-and-run injury collisions in 2013 and 1,058 in 2014 in Orange County, according to the CHP. A description of the auto involved along with its license plate will be shown on the signs.
“This is just going to be for those unique cases where we get information that meets the criteria for using it”, Wert said.
The proposed yellow alert. Alerts will exclusively be issued if an individual has been killed or sustained a critical damage in a hit-and-run collision, in line with the invoice.
In many cases, Caltrans will be able to post Yellow Alert messages on signs within five minutes of notification from the CHP, he added. The public alert system will go into effect on January 1.
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“If that word had gone out right away, they might have found the auto before it even made it to the center because people would be on the lookout for the vehicle”, said Lord.
