But initially the Sig Alerts weren’t only restricted to traffic jams. Then, and to this day, a Sig Alert is generated when the responding officers (CHP took it over from the LAPD in the late ‘60s) estimate the accident will cause more than a 30 minute delay in usual traffic. After its inventor, the police chief named the bulletins Sig Alerts. Parker accepted on the terms that the technology be given to every radio station, not just KMPC. The radio station could then carry that recording over to the airwaves right away. They’d hit the tone which would trigger a tape recorder and they would broadcast their emergency bulletin. What if when the LAPD picked up a major accident there was a system in place to immediately broadcast that information over the radio? He created a machine that could be triggered by a specific tone on the end of the police. In 1955, he came up with an idea and pitched it to chief of police William H. Now with an influx of drivers crowding the city and freeways, Sigmon saw an opportunity. Auto accidents were before both minor and few and far between. Sigmon was looking to get an edge over television. The original call sign of KMPC now hosts Radio Korea, serving the largest Korean-American community in the United States.) Its main station was KMPC-AM 710, the flagship broadcaster for the Dodgers in the late ‘50s. Spending 20 minutes to see which route was going to lighten up and woefully watching each entryway get redder and redder, cursing under our breath, “fuck, we should have left 20 minutes ago.”īut what does “Sig Alert” mean? Where’d that name come from?Įnter its inventor: Loyd Sigmon, an ex-Army Signal Corps radio operator turned executive at Golden West Broadcasters-a media company owned by Gene Autry. The irony is, this would often make things worse. When authorities arrived, both vehicles involved were gone, though officials said that dispatch received a call that the victim of the shooting was at a Tarzana hospital being treated for a non-life-threatening injury to the upper body and was expected to recover.Īll northbound lanes of the I-405 at Victory Boulevard were shut down for several hours while CHP investigated.Īerial footage from Sky5 showed an officer canvassing the roadway with a bomb-sniffing K-9 and several evidence markers on the ground.After printing out the directions from Mapquest to some party in the confusing, curving streets of the hills (whichever hills the party was in), we’d check to see which freeway to take. CHP said calls about a possible car-to-car shooting came in around 3:24 p.m. The incident occurred north of Victory Boulevard. The California Highway Patrol issued a SigAlert for northbound lanes of the 405 Freeway in Van Nuys Monday as they responded to reports of the shooting. Police are searching for a gunman who opened fire Monday on the 405 Freeway, wounding a driver and creating a massive traffic backup. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated. This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated.
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