LA Freeway Jargon: "Sigalert"

I am trying to be even-handed and look at Los Angeles, my hometown, with the same curious scrutiny that I applied to my adopted home of Binghamton, New York. So there is a term Angelenos constantly hear on the TV and radio but probably don't know what it means: Sigalert.


Sure, we Angelenos know that it means "traffic" and "headache" and "goddamn it I'm going to be late again." But what is the definition?

Wikipedia, a.k.a. my best friend, is saving me a lot of research on this one. It tells me that a Sigalert means "any unplanned event that causes the closing of one lane of traffic for 30 minutes or more."

Apparently it started in Los Angeles in the 1950s with a former military communications guy named Lloyd Sigmon. After WWII, he became a VP of an LA radio station and invented a device, adopted by the LAPD in 1955, that somehow alerted radio stations to bad traffic conditions. This "push" technology saved the radio stations calling the LAPD about traffic conditions and tying up police phone lines. But the LAPD would only use the technology if it were open to all radio stations. The special receivers were stamped with "Sigalert" on the side and had a red light and buzzer that would alert the radio station engineer when a traffic alert had been put out by the LAPD.

In 1969, the California Highway Patrol took control of freeway traffic from LAPD, and the Sigalert system was eventually adopted statewide.

Apparently, though, CalTrans defines the term differently (ugh), expanded the definition to mean any traffic accident that will tie up two or more lanes for two or more hours. Inflation, I guess!