But the term has passed into far wider use, and it appears in the New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. In the past couple of years alone, a check of local newspapers shows an FBI agent warned that a raid on medical and legal clinics should serve as "an official Sigalert to those involved in insurance fraud," and a sportswriter described a sneeze-prone golfer as having "Sigalert sinuses. It got really big in the mid's.
By the early s, the rapidly growing number of automobiles in Los Angeles had greatly increased the frequency and severity of traffic accidents and jams. Radio stations reported traffic conditions, but the LAPD refused to call radio stations with this information, so each station would call the LAPD, a process that tied up telephone lines and forced officers to repeat the same information again and again.
In , Loyd C. Eisenhower's staff, in charge of non-combat radio communications in the European theater. Now, he proposed to apply his knowledge of complex radio networks to the situation in Los Angeles. Sigmon developed a specialized radio receiver and tape recorder. When the receiver picked up a particular tone, it would switch on the tape deck and record the subsequent bulletin. Parker, was interested though skeptical, warning the inventor, "We're going to name this damn thing Sigalert.
Initially, half a dozen stations installed "Sigmon" signal receivers that had "Sigalert" stamped on its side. When a message had been received and recorded from the LAPD, a red light, sometimes accompanied by a buzzer, would alert the radio stations' engineers.
Depending on the nature of the problem, the engineer could air the police broadcast immediately, interrupting regular programming if necessary. The early use of the Sigalert One of the first major "Sigmon traffic alerts" was broadcast on January 22, , causing a traffic jam. The alert described the derailment of the Santa Fe's San Diegan passenger train near LA's Union Station and requested any available doctors and nurses to respond to the scene.
Too many doctors, nurses, and sightseers drove there, making the situation worse. Is it time for a suburban revival? Cities with populations between 25, and , continue to see an influx of migrants lured by lower costs of living and high quality-of-life metrics. Electric vehicles are a relatively new technology, and cities are still developing compatible infrastructures.
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But even local story buffs who know for whom the SigAlert was named admit to some confusion over just what constitutes a SigAlert. The confusion is understandable, since even the arbiter of such distinctions--the CHP--is a bit hazy on the subject.
By pressing a button, the engineer could air the message within a matter of seconds and would often break into a program. SigAlerts of that era warned listeners of such problems as flood warnings, gas leaks and missing children in addition to traffic congestion. In one case, a pharmacist who had made a potentially deadly error in writing out a prescription phoned police; the customer heard the ensuing SigAlert in time to avoid disaster.
SigAlerts really caught on. Bob Hope made jokes about them. Minor accidents and slowdowns are routine and, although annoying, are considered an ordinary part of the commute. But what about the large-scale interruptions; the overturned rig sprawling across three lanes, the five-car injury wreck, the hazardous materials spill, or the bomb threat?
Los Angeles has a special name for its traffic updates about unforeseen incidents that have caused what will be lengthy lane closures: SigAlerts. Causes of SigAlerts are many and varied; some tragic, some funny. One of the more unusual SigAlerts was the Tuesday morning in October when a truck transporting ten tons of pies overturned on the transition from the Harbor to the Hollywood freeways, creating a pastry-coated traffic snarl that stretched for miles. The word SigAlert eventually became a common and familiar term to Southland drivers, even though few of them were aware of its origins or knew what criteria triggered such an alert.
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