Saratoga News

Safety commission explores rat boxes to catch scofflaws

Red-light runners are the target

By Sarah Lombardo

The Saratoga Public Safety Commission is looking into adding to the rat population. And if the idea gains support--and funding--there could be more rats in Saratoga's future.

Metal rat boxes, that is.

The Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department and the commission have begun discussing the advantages of rat boxes, a relatively cheap and effective device designed to help deputies catch red-light runners.

The rat boxes are small boxes mounted on traffic lights that enable deputies several hundred feet away from an intersection to see if a traffic light has turned red.

"An officer can sit on the opposite side on an intersection and see what color the light is," Lt. Carey Colla of the sheriff's department's Westside Substation said. If a car zips through an intersection against a red light, Colla said, an officer can honestly determine that the light was red because he saw it for himself.

Not only do the rat boxes enable the officer to catch more red-light runners, but they provide the officer with a higher degree of safety while doing so. According to Colla, the device allows deputies to monitor intersections from safer locations, instead of right in the heart of the intersection.

That feature is what some cities who use the rat boxes have said is its best feature, but not necessarily for safety reasons. In Milpitas, which became the latest to use rat boxes a year ago, the fact that officers could sit farther away from an intersection was hailed because it meant red-light runners could not see patrol cars and so were likely to run the light according to habit.

Colla said the boxes also help more tickets meted out for the offense stick when taken to court. "It's easier to testify in court that the light was red," he said. "It gives officers an unquestionable reading of the light."

The best thing about the device, however, seems to be its price--about $150.

The city of Cupertino was the first to install rat boxes at some of its most heavily trafficked intersections more than two years ago. And Saratoga currently has one device located at the intersection of Fruitvale and Saratoga avenues.

But before drivers start scanning traffic lights for small metal boxes, city staffers caution that the rat box issue is still just at the idea stage. "Commissioners were just curious about them," Jennie Loft, city administrative analyst, said. The idea, Loft said, will have to go through many more phases before it becomes a reality.

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