Ericson and Haggerty's 1997 book, Policing the Risk Society (referred to as EH), represents a formidable epistemological gamble. The EH set out to replace Egon Bittner's (1970) classical, coercion-based reading of the police with a radically new model that foregrounds the panoptical or knowledge work dimension of the police and its potential to serve the interests of nonpolice social-disciplinary institutions. This paper analyzes this neo-Foucauldian model on the basis of a body of research into road traffic policing or 'policing the road risk society' (RRS). The first test analyzed in historical depth the development of road risk policing in the United States and the history of the interaction between the police organizations concerned and the environment of the public and private owners of road risks. The second test recapped the first in the form of two interlocking details to be added to the EH model: (1) analysis of the social pressures on police organizations in terms of road risk management could conceivably reestablish the primary progressive meaning of social control viewed as the capacity of a society for self-regulations and (2) the police organizations are not becoming centers of calculation in the pay of those asking for services. As a result of the analyses, it was observed that though nonpolice owner-managers of new risks challenge the societal immanence, centrality and publicness of police organizations, with time, these challenges fail. It is therefore argued that Ericson and Haggerty's notion of panoptical policing should be taken as a theoretical innovation, enhancing Bittner's model with a new force. References