![\"Shoulder](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/aq63ppbjvekp50xw.jpg\")
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COOK COUNTY<\/strong> – We\u2019ve all seen it: impatient motorists snaking through traffic, weaving between lanes and treating the emergency shoulder like it\u2019s just another express lane.<\/p>\n For years, drivers got away with it \u2014 no warning, no stop, no consequences. Until now.<\/p>\n On Aug. 27, the Cook County Sheriff\u2019s Office deployed what it calls its “big gun” in the fight against illegal shoulder driving: a new $11 million helicopter equipped with advanced surveillance technology.<\/p>\n “It\u2019s a useful tool they now have,” said Jim Gosling, a tactical flight officer with the sheriff\u2019s police department. “Before, they were borrowing helicopters. Now, the Cook County Sheriff\u2019s Department has their own.”<\/p>\n Tech that reveals all <\/p>\n On board the aircraft is a state-of-the-art MX-10 camera system with night vision so sharp it can pick up tiny movements \u2014 even someone scratching their chin in the dark.<\/p>\n Gosling, the man behind the camera, controls the system using what he calls “the hammer.”<\/p>\n “I can zoom in, switch to infrared. It\u2019s extremely helpful,” Gosling said.<\/p>\n From hundreds of feet above, Gosling and his pilot scan for shoulder riders, tracking each vehicle\u2019s make, model, color and plate before alerting deputies on the ground.<\/p>\n “They\u2019ll tell us along the way what the infractions are,” said Cook County Sheriff\u2019s Officer Lakesha Palomino.<\/p>\n Hundreds of drivers cited <\/p>\n Since the operation began in June before the chopper was in action, the sheriff\u2019s office has issued more than 700 citations to motorists illegally using the shoulder.\u00a0<\/p>\n The enforcement push has also led to:<\/p>\n Deputies say shoulder driving isn\u2019t just infuriating \u2014 it\u2019s dangerous.<\/p>\n “I sit on 290 myself sometimes\u2026 then you\u2019ll see somebody driving down the shoulder real fast,” Gosling said, noting the domino-effect crashes that often follow.<\/p>\n Excuses, excuses <\/p>\n Palomino says she\u2019s heard every excuse imaginable.<\/p>\n “They\u2019re in a rush to get to work, they\u2019re pregnant, they have to use the washroom \u2014 the list goes on,” said Palomino.<\/p>\n As an everyday driver herself, she admitted the behavior infuriates her.<\/p>\n “Just because they feel it’s an emergency doesn’t mean everyone else doesn\u2019t have someplace to be,” she said. “You need to be in traffic like every other motorist.”<\/p>\n Palomino didn\u2019t have to wait long to catch her first violator of the day. Body camera video shows her confronting a driver with heavily-tinted windows who insisted she “wasn\u2019t doing anything.”<\/p>\n “You passed the point of merging. You were riding the shoulder,” Palomino explained.<\/p>\n The driver eventually admitted it and was issued a citation.<\/p>\n A price that stings <\/p>\n For first-time offenders, the penalty is steep:<\/p>\n “It starts as a $250 fine and three days of community service,” Roe Conn, chief of strategy and communications for the Cook County Sheriff\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n That community service often includes cleaning up the same highways where they were caught driving illegally.<\/p>\n “It\u2019s a four-month process,” said Conn.<\/p>\n Repeat offenses escalate quickly.<\/p>\n “The second violation is $500\u2026 it can go up to a thousand bucks,” said Conn. “It can mean multiple weeks of roadside cleanup.”<\/p>\n More than just tickets <\/p>\n During FOX 32 Chicago\u2019s ride-along, deputies issued over 100 shoulder-use tickets in less than three hours.<\/p>\n Some stops uncovered more serious violations.<\/p>\n “This driver has suspended plates and a suspended license,” Conn noted during a traffic stop.<\/p>\n The SUV was towed on the spot. The driver will need to appear before a judge, resolve her insurance issues, and pay fines before she can legally drive again.<\/p>\n Shoulder riding isn\u2019t only selfish \u2014 it\u2019s lethal.<\/p>\n According to the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, 63% of fatal crashes involving roadside assistance providers between 2015 and 2021 happened when a vehicle left its lane and struck the shoulder.<\/p>\n Sheriff Tom Dart says shoulder riders often believe they can duck back into traffic before being spotted.<\/p>\n “We already have all the video footage from up above,” Dart said. “We just get behind the person, put the lights on, and pull them over.”<\/p>\n FOX 32 Chicago watched that play out in real time as deputies pursued a shoulder violator identified from the sky.<\/p>\n What’s next:<\/p>\n Illinois State Police say shoulder misuse is dramatically underreported the numbers aren\u2019t all-inclusive, meaning \u2018driving on the shoulder\u2019 could\u2019ve been a contributing factor for a crash but a citation wasn\u2019t necessarily issued for one reason or another.<\/p>\n The following number of \u201811-709.1 Driving on the Shoulder\u2019 citations were issued by ISP as a direct result of on-scene crash investigations that occurred in Cook County:<\/p>\n The sheriff\u2019s office says this new shoulder-sting operation is just getting started and drivers should consider themselves warned.<\/p>\n The Source:<\/b> The information in this article was reported by FOX 32’s Tia Ewing.\u00a0<\/p>\n Cook County<\/a>Crime and Public Safety<\/a>Special Reports<\/a>News<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"COOK COUNTY – We\u2019ve all seen it: impatient motorists snaking through traffic, weaving between lanes and treating the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":438923,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,5404,6082,5386,1818,50,6166,6403,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-438922","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-chicago","9":"tag-cook-county","10":"tag-crime-publicsafety","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-illinois","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-series","15":"tag-special-reports","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115698114671023049","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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