Nobody?s spying on you. The truck with a camera on top cruising Carroll County streets will be scouting neighborhoods so police, firefighters and paramedics can more easily find destinations in emergencies.
The camera atop the truck will photograph every house in the county along its public roadways, said Julia Lukans, project manager for Spatial Systems Associates Inc., the company taking the pictures.
The operation begins in December and will continue for up to six months.
“People are often curious about the contraption on top,” Lukans said. They?ll stop when pulling into their driveway and cautiously ask what?s going on, but the county doesn?t want to fret.
“They don?t have to worry about anybody coming onto their property, and they don?t have to worry about the pictures being made public,” said Vivian Laxton, Carroll County spokeswoman.
The information collected will mainly be used to verify addresses, but it will also show the best streets to access a building, said Mark Ripper, head of the county?s Office of Information Technology.
The center lines on roads will be photographed to show where residents? property lines end, and aerial views will also be taken, Ripper said.
The images can be used in countless areas outside public safety.
For example, the Board of Education can use the information to coordinate its bus stops. Officials can see the area where a stop is proposed and determine its safety by gauging how the spot aligns on a narrow or open road.
But the Columbia-based company taking the pictures, hired for about $650,000, realizes residents may grow leery of a truck rolling to a stop in front of their house, Lukans said.
And the camera on top doesn?t make it any more comforting.
But employees never get out of the vehicle, and they never go down private driveways, she says. The camera is controlled from a laptop computer on the inside of the truck.
Because the main goal is to verify addresses, a mailbox with a number on it will often do fine.
