Oh Boy....This is not Going to End Well
/Back in October, FTVLive told you how the news car is becoming a thing of the past.
News cars are being replaced by "Mobile Weather Labs", "Vote Trackers" and now the "Traffic Tracker."
WPEC in West Palm Beach took the wraps off Traffic Tracker 12 which is used to....get this....track traffic.
OK, really it's just a car with a couple of cameras, but Traffic Tracker just sounds so much cooler.
WPEC Traffic Reporter Sam Kerrigan will be switching between 3 cameras and controlling one camera that pans 360 degrees and controlling lights that are mounted all over the vehicle.
Kerrigan will be doing all this while she is also driving the car. Yeah....no safety issues there?
In Florida, there is a law against texting and driving. But, there is no law against driving and reporting, switching between 3 cameras, panning one and operating a bunch of lights.
"Traffic Tracker 12 took months to bring to reality," said Michael Pumo, CBS 12 General Manager, "it took quite a while to design in all the features to make it unique on Palm Beach County roads." And unique it is. Packed with 3 cameras and video switching equipment, Traffic Jam Sam Kerrigan can bring viewers a real time view of what's snarling roadways. Sam can use wireless Internet to view exclusive traffic status information and use cellular technology to transmit live pictures back to CBS12 studios. It's like having a rolling TV studio and data center covering traffic.
"We can get early word of where a snarl might be forming," said Sam Kerrigan, CBS12 traffic reporter. "and we can show viewers just how bad it is and give them advice on how to avoid it."
Because let's be honest, there is NOTHING more exciting then a traffic jam.
