Truckers Watching the Highways
Highway Watch is yet another civilian distributed counterterrorism program. Basically, truckers are trained to look out for suspicious activities on the highways.
Why? Two things: training, and a broader focus than terrorism. From their overview:
Highway Watch® training provides Highway Watch® participants with the observational tools and the opportunity to exercise their expert understand of the transportation environment to report safety and security concerns rapidly and accurately to the authorities. In addition to matters of homeland security - stranded vehicles or accidents, unsafe road conditions, and other safety related situations are reported eliciting the appropriate emergence responders. Highway Watch® reports are combined with other information sources and shared both with federal agencies and the roadway transportation sector by the Highway ISAC.
Sure, the “matters of homeland security” is the sexy application that gets the press and the funding, but “stranded vehicles or accidents, unsafe road conditions, and other safety related situations” are likely to be the bread and butter of this kind of program. And interstate truckers are likely to be in a good position to report these things, assuming there’s a good mechanism for it.
