Q. What do the flashing blue lights off to the side of the freeway mean? They flash at the end of long poles, perhaps near construction materials. There is one at the Pacific Coast Highway exit on the southbound 5 Freeway in the Dana Point-Capistrano Beach area.
– Mike Chamberlin, San Clemente
A. What you are likely seeing, Mike, are mobile security units protecting construction equipment or other stuff. Honk spotted such a unit in a Home Depot parking lot.
LVT, or LiveView Technologies, is out of Utah and has produced thousands of such trailers holding box-like containers and solar-power panels, each with a pole pointing skyward. The trailers can be customized with assorted doodads.
There are cameras on them, so a third-party surveillance company or someone else can watch what is going on in real time. Monitoring can be done via cellphone.
The trailers can be equipped as well with alarms, two-way speakers, automated voice commands, flood lights, and radar and thermal imaging to alert whoever is keeping an eye out that someone is loitering.
A faraway security guard can blurt out, “You in the red hat, you need to get out of here,” as Matt Deighton, an LVT spokesman, put it.
“I have plenty of footage of people scrambling over themselves to get away,” he said.
The devices’ cameras can zero in and get license-plate numbers and more, Deighton said: “I can zoom in and read someone’s name tag.”
The goal isn’t to catch the riffraff – it is to let people know they are being watched and to behave or the police will be called.
Hence, the continuous blue flashing light – a color used on law enforcement vehicles – to get the attention of passersby. (It can be set to go off only when an alarm does; and it can also be white, yellow or red.)
“What it is saying is, ‘This place is being watched,’” Deighton said.
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Q. Hi Honk: I can’t figure out why the Baker Street off-ramp from the southbound 55 Freeway is closed. It’s been that way for more than a month for no apparent reason, and no one seems to be doing any construction or maintenance on it. Puzzled in Trabuco Canyon.
– Mike Banner
A. Dear Puzzled:
A sinkhole doomed the ramp for a bit.
It appeared on the left shoulder, and the ramp was shuttered on June 29. Repairs kicked off in recent days, after you reached out to Honk.
Nathan Abler, a Caltrans spokesman in Orange County, said the reopening is slated for Sept. 23.
“The work schedule is subject to change due to traffic incidents, weather, availability of equipment and/or materials, and/or construction-related issues,” he said in an email.
HONKIN’ FACT: In front of this school year, Los Angeles installed more than 250 speed humps near 92 campuses where speeding can be a problem, and reduced the speed limit near some schools from 25 to 15 mph when children are about for 450-plus street segments, according to the office of Mayor Karen Bass.
To ask Honk questions, reach him at honk@ocregister.com. He only answers those that are published. To see Honk online: ocregister.com/tag/honk. Twitter: @OCRegisterHonk
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