The Cincinnati Enquirer says that drones will be tested in Ohio to monitor traffic. It used to be that you would see choppers overhead, but now you may be seeing GeoData Systems Inc's little Airborne Data Acquisition System (ADAS) UAV drone overhead. Each of these little model airplanes cost about $150k and are about 55 pounds with a wingspan of about 12 feet and flies below 500 feet to get past the FAA flight restrictions. These drones with their cameras could give the big picture and track traffic patterns and even with sniffers could tell if gasoline or ammonia may have been spilled in a localized area. Of course these drones have problems with the weather and they are expensive, and there are privacy problems, but they do seem to work better than current sensors embedded in the roadway solutions for resolving traffic jams.

More virtually duplicate articles that drone on and on about traffic monitoring drones: Pilot Online: Remote-control plane tested to survey traffic, crops, USA Today: Drones to be tested for traffic management tasks, WorldNet Daily: Drones to be used in traffic control, Channel 5 Cincinnati: Pilotless Planes May Soon Track Traffic, ABC 7 Los Angeles: Eyes in the Sky, CantonRep.com: Drones may fight Ohio traffic jams, Gazette.net: New information-collection technology aimed at protecting Washington area,

And don't forget that Model planes are becomming terror threat.