They’re watching you.

If you’ve traveled on U.S. Highway 59 south of Lawrence you probably didn’t even see them, but chances are they saw you.

“I’ve got a group of three comin’ out of Baldwin Junction,” Kansas Highway Patrol Pilot Darrell Linenberger radioed this week from his Cessna to troopers in patrol cars on the ground. “This little red car’s in a hurry.”

For the first time in nearly a decade, Kansas state troopers are taking to the skies trying to catch drivers breaking the law on one of the most dangerous stretches of highway in the state. According to state figures, U.S. 59 between Lawrence and Ottawa carries about 10,000 vehicles a day.

“It allows him a bird’s eye view, if you will, of the traffic,” patrol Lt. Al Ackerman said. “He can see things that we on the ground can’t see.”

From his vantage point in a single-engine airplane 3,500 feet above U.S. 59, Linenberger keeps his eyes peeled.

“I’m just kind of looking down there to see if anything catches my eye,” he said over the headset to the trooper sitting next to him in the six-seater plane. Linenberger has been a highway patrol pilot for 18 years, flying the department’s planes and helicopters. He’s been a trooper for 24 years.

‘Sometimes they bite’

Trooper Darrell Linenberger patrols above U.S. Highway 59 near Baldwin Junction. The highway is among the most dangerous in the state.

After just minutes in the sky, Linenberger spotted a car going 66 mph in a 55-mph zone.

“You just have to hit it right,” Linenberger said. “It’s just like fishin’. Sometimes they bite, sometimes they don’t.”

Drivers on U.S. 59 may have noticed new signs and markings on the roadway, as the highway patrol prepared to begin the aircraft enforcement.

“Speed Check by Radar and Aircraft” signs recently went up near Pleasant Grove and Baldwin Junction. And after troopers measured out mile increments on a stretch of the road, the Kansas Department of Transportation painted giant “T”s on the highway — markings for the pilot to calculate a vehicle’s speed.

“I have a measuring machine in the patrol car, so I measure the marks out at 5,300 feet, that’s 20 feet longer than a mile, and I spraypaint a mark on the side of the road,” Linenberger said. “The DOT comes along and sees where I put that spraypaint mark and they’ll put down a reflective ‘T,’ something that I can see from the air.”

Other violations

As cars travel over those markings on the highway, Linenberger starts a stopwatch to calculate how fast a driver makes it from point A to point B. He could have as many as five stopwatches going at any given time.

¢ 6News video: Highway Patrol goes airborne¢More stories about U.S. 59

Linenberger isn’t just looking for speeders. He also keeps an eye out for drivers passing in no-passing zones and cars following too closely.

“Guys on the north end, I’ve got a white truck following a semi,” Linenberger radioed to troopers stationed near Pleasant Grove. “The split is point-seven-four seconds,” he said, referring to the amount of time between the two vehicles, which should be at least two seconds. “I’m going to bring one to you.”

In a two-hour period Wednesday, troopers stopped a dozen drivers for numerous infractions with the help of their “eye in the sky.”

The highway patrol has three aircraft — stationed in Topeka, Hays and Salina — for scouting speeders with three pilots each.

“We used to run aircraft lanes a lot about eight years ago,” Linenberger said. “Recently we just don’t have the manpower to do it.”

Safer, more efficient

Kansas Highway Patrol troopers, from left, Lt. Al Ackerman and pilot Darrell Linenberger, discuss the day's routine before Linenberger heads to the sky to patrol over U.S. Highway 59.

However, after numerous complaints and a number of fatal accidents along the stretch of roadway, the highway patrol decided to target U.S. 59.

“According to accident stats, (U.S. 59) is a highway notorious for having bad accidents on it,” Ackerman said. “It’s gained a lot of attention. One way to curtail accidents is through enforcement, so we’ve increased our enforcement efforts out here.”

KDOT figures show the highway south of Lawrence has an accident rate 25 percent higher than similar highways elsewhere in Kansas. From 1995 to 1999, the stretch of road had 376 wrecks that left 193 people injured and 11 dead.

In August, the highway patrol, along with the Franklin and Douglas county sheriff’s offices, began a series of extra traffic patrols aimed at making the road safer.

Troopers said the highway’s design made it difficult for them to do any sort of selective enforcement from the ground.

Kansas Highway Patrol pilot Darrell Linenberger, who has been with highway patrol for more than two decades, explains how he tracks speeders along U.S. Highway 59.

“With the amount of traffic that 59 carries it’s hard to do enforcement action in the car,” Ackerman said, “because I have traffic behind me to worry about and oncoming traffic, and I can’t get turned around and catch the violators. That’s why aircraft is great for this.”

The aircraft also provides the patrol with the element of surprise. Watching from the skies above, out of sight of motorists, the flying patrollers know they still won’t catch everyone breaking the law.

“We’ll just call him a miss,” Linenberger radioed as a speeder slipped away.

“It’s kind of like going duck hunting,” he laughed. “You’re not going to shoot all the ducks.”

Troopers said they planned to conduct the aircraft enforcement sporadically when staffing permits.