New UK police speed gun can read license plates from half a mile away at night
thedrive.com
thedrive.com
In those countries, it seems like everyone just drives the speed limit.
If the point of speed enforcement is to, you know, ensure that everyone is going the speed limit or slower, they're awesome. Norway's system of timed speed cameras are particularly wonderful -- they simply photograph a car and then photograph it again many kilometers later. If you get there too soon, then at some point, you must have been speeding.
These systems are safer for police and drivers as there are no traffic stops for speeding. Yes, the bill goes to the car owner, but if you're loaning your car out to someone who speeds, at least some of the culpability falls on you.
Can speed cameras be used as a revenue source? Yes. It is reasonable to place requirements on the determination of speed-limits and camera-locations to prevent abuse. Beyond that, if you don't want to get a fine, don't speed.
With no attack on the parent, this reminds me of the general driving attitude of South Africa where I am from. A combination of lack of road enforcement and public mistrust in the police have created an environment where the rule of law on the road, designed to protect lives, is treated merely as suggestions or guidelines, often ignored.
It’s extremely common to see drivers speeding from 10 to even 30 km/h above the speed limit, even on urban roads. Sometimes these drivers are so confident in their right (freedom?) that they’ll flash their lights at you from behind if you’re going too slow, even if you are a good citizen driving at the speed limit. And speeding is only one half of it...
When I came to Europe for the first time it was amazing to see how almost everyone respects the road rules (I know this isn’t the case everywhere) and it generally makes me feel much safer on the roads. Although it’s still scary as hell cycling in some cities without protected cycle lanes.
In next-door North Carolina, going 9mph over (14kph) will only get you insurance points not license points (the state tracks them separately) so many drivers limit themselves to that on the interstates, and sometimes 5mph over (8kph) inside city limits.
[0] Highway SH-130 outside Austin Texas has the fastest speed limit in the US at 85mph (136kph). So what is safe & legal there can get you placed in handcuffs in Virginia.
And I think SA is a whole other level of breaking laws.
Anecdotal: Coming from Northern Europe (Denmark), I found people in NYC, Boston, SF , and LA to drive very well-behaved compared to people back home. I had to take care to stop driving like a European, since it made my fellow American passengers cringe.
Not in Germany it doesn’t. Only the actual driver can be found guilty of speeding, even by speed-camera.
I understand they’ll take pictures of the front of the vehicle and check against who’s lives at the registered address. Not sure if it’s an infraction for the registered owner to refuse to identify the likely driver.
Source: my German car rental company didn’t auto-pay anything, they forwarded me a “ticket” from the police department asking me to pay 20 EUR to go away or they’ll try to identify the actual driver and try to charge them a higher fine.
While this is more work, I think it’s reasonable for us to expect law enforcement to identify the guilty and not just convict someone that’s easy to blame.
This was a problem in 2008 when a car with steering wheel on the right systematically got caught speeding. The driver knew full well what was going on an placed a muppet in the passeger's seat. The picture is fantastic:
https://gizmodo.com/the-muppets-animal-caught-speeding-drivi...
There is a catch however: while you might get out of a ticket once or twice, the authorities can order you to keep a drivers log in the car. That means, a written log of every single drive has to be kept. So that there is never any ambiguity of naming drivers going forward. And having to keep logs of all your drives going forward is something you really want to avoid.
In practice this just leads to a lot of penalty points or license suspensions for the 80 year old (grand)parents, or anyone who has a license but never drives.
If a speed camera photo is blurry or dark (like in a place with darkness most of the year) the case is as far as I know closed and no inquiry is made.
If I realize too late that I’m going to speed past a traffic cam then I usually just hold my hand up near the wind screen to cover my face and the risk of a ticket would be nearly zero.
There has been talk of making it an administrative fee rather than a crime (like parking tickets) which would make it possible to attribute to cars and not owners.
Rental companies name the renter, which is what you describe, and it is then up to the renter to accept or name a sub-lesser; by default, the responsible party is the latest to accept, or for court to determine (but that would likely require dissenting potential drivers to file legal complaints against each other)
Occasionally, people use this to equalize penalty points in a household (say, married couples) because other than fines, there’s a point system where 3-5 nontrivial tickets in as many years will get your license suspended or revoked for a while, and other sanctions.
This practice - admitting a crime you didn’t commit - is of course illegal, and not very prevalent - but there have been a few high profile cases involving famous (and infamous) people caught doing that.
-Same in Norway - ticket is sent to registered owner by default, if s/he contests the claim, s/he is summoned to the local police and shown the photo. If s/he claims not to know who drove the car or refuse to identify the driver, the police may investigate if it's a slow day in the office - say, call you for a formal interrogation (during which you are legally obliged to provide truthful answers or else get slapped for obstruction of justice), compare the speedcam photo to other members of your household &c.
In short, the owner of the vehicle will never be on the hook for a speeding ticket with unknown driver - but is required to assist the police in finding out who the offender is.
Two identical twins back where I grew up claimed to have gamed this system on numerous occasions - claiming they couldn't remember which brother had driven the car on the day in question.
After all, refusing to cooperate is a crime. Not remembering isn't.
They did this to me when someone ran a red light in a car I’d sold (and electronically transferred) six months prior.
I’d suspect what they did wouldn’t hold up in court if it weren’t for the fact that the San Francisco court house was engaged in this behavior.
Apparently, this scenario is so common in California that places that accept cars as donations often have a specialist to help donors deal with extortion demands over revenue tickets.
We also have demerit points, so if you get caught speeding say three times in a row you will most likely have ran out of points on your license and automatically get a 3 to 6 month license suspension. Most of this is automated, so you may find out you were suspended by getting pulled over before the letter arrives. It's all very strict.
Similar arguments have been made against average speed cameras on UK motorways - “I’ll have to be entirely focused on the speedo the whole time!”. No, you just drive within the speed limit.
The speed limit is not a target.
This rule of thumb means I really don't have to waste any mental energy keeping an eye out for police, since someone else is almost always going faster and I find it doesn't significantly impact my trip times since traffic and stop lights tend to cancel out most potential gains from driving any faster.
I often say that Brits can be pretty rude until they get behind the wheel, whereupon they turn in to gracious, giving angels. Australians directly mirror this: in person, they’re adorable, yet behind the wheel they’re selfish monsters.
I hate driving in this country. So much so that I don’t own a car.
More likely they saw e.g 66km/h in a speed gun with 4km/h error, so they know you did at least 62, and can book you stating 62. But most likely you were doing 66 or even 70 then.
> "The alleged speed is lower than the detected speed to allow for tolerance in detection equipment"
> Norway's system of timed speed cameras are particularly wonderful -- they simply photograph a car and then photograph it again many kilometers later. If you get there too soon, then at some point, you must have been speeding.
Uk has a combination of:
* Average speed cameras (as per the Norway example)
* Variable speed cameras (where the speed limit varies depending on the conditions of the road and congestion)
* Fixed speed cameras (traditional speed cameras dug in next to a road)
* Mobile speed cameras (as per the bbc article, with a purpose to make sure the position changes each day so locals don’t know where the cameras are).
> These systems are safer for police and drivers as there are no traffic stops for speeding.
Traffic stops in the U.K. are very rare, and even mobile cameras just send the documentation to your registered address with no stop. A stop would only be done in the U.K. if there was a belief that the driving was putting others at immediate risk (eg appears drunk).
There are some incredibly forward thinking laws here. Non-compete being illegal, lane splitting for motorcycles is explicitly legal, etc. Of course, tons of stupidity too.
Only time I got caught speeding in 20+ years was an avcam at the bottom corner of the m60 near Stockport.
Perhaps not as common as gatsos but not very rare.
Such that, when I was looking for a new car, cruise control or a speed limiter was a must.
As far as deaths go, the most common contributory causes are loss of control and failure to look properly. Exceeding speed limit was a cause in just 16% of deaths.
https://www.regtransfers.co.uk/content/common-causes-for-roa...
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
That may be in part due to camera-based enforcement of the speed limits.
Also, road accidents kill quite a lot of people. If it's the 10th most common cause, that could still be enough to kill more people than many other things that we regulate.
Also, it does make the environment less hospitable for pedestrians and cyclists which is a good enough reason alone.
It isn't wonderful at all. UK has average speed cameras as well and they are horrible. Every time I drive in average speed zones I spend more time looking down because
1) I don't want to go 5mi over the speed limit because I will get fined otherwise 2) I don't want to go 5mi below the speed limit because then drivers behind me have to break one by one which eventually causes a traffic jam 3) I can't overtake a lorry going 65 because it would take me too long and I might miss my exit, which then makes anxious because I have to extend my commute time if I get stuck behind one 4) I can't safely let people merge onto the motorway because if I speed up or slow down then 1) or 2) happen 5) I can't calculate my average speed and to avoid 1) and 2) I have to keep looking down not paying much attention to what's going on around me
This only works on roads with little traffic, like in Scotland, where you can set cruise control and drive for miles. It doesn't work in Cambridge where AADT is ten times higher.
"These systems are safer for police and drivers as there are no traffic stops for speeding."
You are comparing average speed cameras to traffic stops, rather than stationary speed traps...
"Can speed cameras be used as a revenue source? Yes."
No because the primary reason for speed cameras is ensuring road safety, not generating revenue in which case you are encouraging installing speed cameras where they are not required. Speed cameras are not as safe you believe they are, otherwise they would be installed every 100 metres.
"Beyond that, if you don't want to get a fine, don't speed."
That's like saying "if you have nothing to hide, you don't need privacy" using the same "don't do the crime, if you can't do the time" principle, which is flawed. There are plenty of situations where you would want to occasionally speed 10% over the speed limit, but that's not equal to speeding 100% over the speed limit for a very long time. Both will get you a fine. It's not as simple as black or white.
Seems odd to me that Govt's struggle to raise revenue via normal taxes when they have a large pool of stupid people they could raise extra money from? Maybe making a regualr speeding fine a life changing amount rather than the negligable sum it is now would improve people's behaviour, raise some much needed revenue and save a few lives too?
Extracting money from drivers was one of the causes of community tension in Fergusson.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05pqskm
> Are excessive traffic fines and debtors' jails fuelling community tensions in suburban Missouri? Claire Bolderson reports on a network of ninety separate cities in St Louis County, most of which have their own courts and police forces. Critics say that their size makes them financially unviable and allege that some of them boost their incomes by fining their own citizens and locking them up when they can't pay.
The fine is negligible if you are well off. It isn't if you aren't. If you get points (for SP-30), the increase in insurance is about £300-400. So the actual cost of the fine is closer to £400-500 which is the rent for the month.
There has already been talk of making the fine be adjusted to how much you earn.
NYC generally saw revenues decline after the initial installment of more cameras as drivers adjusted behavior: https://bklyner.com/revenue-camera-enforcement-nyc-sheepshea... The fine is only $50.
There are a lot of automatic speed radars (at a single point), and a bit fewer average speed radars but they work over a few km at most (and don't interact with the toll).
Also my GPS (via bluetooth headphones) tells me when I'm entering and leaving a zone (not that I speed).
Are you also terrified that just anyone can read your house numbers or the address on your mailbox?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recogni...
There's very strict rules about how you're legally allowed to point a fixed installation camera in Sweden, you're not allowed to have a fixed installation that'll record anything that isn't your property. Not even the corner of the pavement. All in all, Swedes don't want cameras pointing all over, you have to put up signs if there are cameras and usually you should apply for a permit before installing cameras.
Inside your house you're free to record as you like though.
https://bit.ly/37dMVx2 <- Translated law regarding cameras.
My concern with this kind of thing is less about the speed limit and more that I believe people should be able to move around in public without being identified and tracked by the police. It’s one thing if the police have to observe something suspicious and then take the time to stop you for ID to find out who you are. It’s another if they can track and identify everyone all the time passively.
You can. Just not in a car, because cars have license plates so not only can police identify you, anyone who can lookup a plate can. It’s non-anonymous almost by definition.
Where I live the registry is public so if I want I can ask for the owner of a license plate from the relevant authority.
And right now it’s true you can mostly walk or bike around in public without being tracked, but that’s just until we get the facial recognition really going. Then the argument will be that you were always showing your face in public and it was always possible that someone would recognize you so this is no different. But of course it will be different.
And now it’s possible, if you have a conversation in a cafe, that someone will overhear you. But if every conversation were being recorded, transcribed, and transmitted to the authorities, that wouldn’t be the same thing at all.
Absolutely yes. Speed contributes in two major ways when it comes to accidents, which this is all about: reaction time and energy.
Going faster means you have less time to react and handle the situation.
If you're going 100 km/h instead of 80 km/h, and something happens 100m in front of you, you have only 3.6 seconds instead of 4.5 seconds to react and deal with it. This scales with distance.
If you're going at 100 km/h instead of 80 km/h, your car has 50% more kinetic energy. This translates fairly directly into increased breaking distance.
So as speed increases you have less time to react and in addition you require more time to slow down.
If instead you're going 100km/h, your car will be still be doing over 60km/h after 53m...
Obviously the exact numbers will vary based on car and conditions, but the point stands about just how much things change when you're speeding.
[1]: https://assets.digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk/media/559afb11e...
In all studies I read or heard about, speed is a huge factor for increasing injuries and deaths.
> You can be driving the speed limit and be going at an unsafe speed.
Then you are driving too fast according to the law. At least in France or Norway.
> So the speed cameras make it more likely that people will be under the speed limit. But are the roads safer?
Yes. The numbers talk for themselves whenever a new speed camera is installed in a road.
If so (and there is no inclement weather), then the speed limit is too high.
Snow; rain: darkness; traffic.
Speed limits are intended to an upper bound, not a target.
Our city has the most dangerous road in Canada, speeding is the norm not the exception, and I haven’t seen any debate about average speed cameras
I got a 100€ fine for speeding on a 130km/h. My crime? I was driving 100km/h instead of the supposed speed limit of 80km/h.
Every day I drive down that section I slow down to 80km/h while everyone else rightfully drives at almost twice the speed at 130km/h or even faster without getting a ticket. I don't think this is safe. It's also not good for me psychologically. It means the rules are stupid and arbitrary and not worth trusting.
Presumably this doesn't apply with a 'formal' rental arrangement?
This is actually dangerous because people need the ability to use discretion.
Suppose you're transporting a part to repair a machine which is causing a fatality every five seconds as long as it's offline. Getting there 20 seconds faster saves four lives. Do you still want a chip that prevents you from exceeding the speed limit?
> Oh wait, this wont generate revenue - so it wont work. Never mind.
This is a major reason why the US doesn't have many speed cameras either. Also why most of the speed limits are set 10-15 MPH below the ordinary speed of travel. If violations are prolific and enforcement is sporadic, they can generate fine revenue whenever they want.
If enforcement is automatic then people figure that out and do what's necessary to avoid the fine, but then you're left with an expensive boondoggle that isn't generating revenue.
It also deprives the police of the excuse they currently have to pull over cars at whim when everybody is speeding at all times, and they wouldn't be happy to lose that at all.
You'd expect a machine that saves a life every 5 seconds to have some kind of investment in redundancy. Either is spread over more machines or the wonder device has spare parts that are kept stocked.
And if not, I'm sure parliament could pass a law to clear the streets for the day.
Outside of the US (and perhaps a few other places, but not many), speeding tickets are not designed to be a revenue source. (They do produce revenue, of course - but are not optimized or planned for that purpose)
1: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-Cincinnati-speed-gov...
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/288592-eu-wants-speed-go...
If it had been able to cut the engine (or, worse, apply the brakes) then that could have produced a dangerous situation.
Part of driving safely is that you may need to speed up to avoid a situation, or change lanes safely or what have you - a time of travel camera (in the way they get implemented which is identical to single-point speed cameras AFAIK) is essentially just a random ticket generating machine. If we're going to use these things, let's just require them to publish the license plate and time online, so our phone's can download the number and tell us if we're currently going to get ticketed going past them.
Because tickets aren't just monetary - at least in Australia, license demerit points mean you eventually lose your license, thus your ability to drive and very likely your job as a result.
Assume you drive at 60mph and then you suddenly have to "speed up" to 80mph to avoid a situation. How long can you drive at 80mph before you're ticketed? 69 seconds.
If you're driving for 69 seconds at 20mph above limit then you're not "avoiding a situation". You are speeding.
Systems that measure your instantaneous speed will ding you for speeding up to avoid (or reduce the probability of) a collision. Time of travel as defined in GP only dings you if your average speed over many km exceeds the speed limit, a few temporary bursts of speed won't change your average speed significantly.
It is ridiculous how blaze most roads users take speeding.
And yes, most countries have a point system.
If the two cameras are more than 1km apart, that makes your point moot.
If you cannot safely pass someone without speeding, slowing down is generally an option too.
If you're speeding to escape a homicidal maniac, challenge the ticket later.
My teen is less than a year into his license. The other night he was driving us in an unfamiliar area and missed a sign indicating that the 3 lanes were merging into 2. He found himself at the merge point completely blocking a car trying to merge. Yes, the merging vehicle is obligated to yield but speeding up for a few seconds with open road in front of him was the safer move than braking hard or maintaining speed and hoping the merging vehicle yielded appropriately before it ran out of pavement.
That being said it's so extremely rare there is no point debating those cases. If speeding was physically not possible it would be a better and safer world.
And the only monetary aspect is not the fine, it is the also the increased insurance premiums. The latter can be much more punishing than the former.
People object to speeding fines but receiving them is entirely optional.
Personally, I'd rather they clamped down harder on tailgating, poor lane discipline and uninsured drivers than on motorway speed limits.
Either works - I've had them do it for me but since I don't speed I just nod and continue my ride.
The main issue is using fines as punishment, since people can affordably keep speeding if there aren't enough speed traps. The only way to solve most road problems is to forbid speeders from ever driving.
You already need a driving exam to drive, it doesn't seem crazy to now allow criminals who don't care about speed limits or safety from taking it.
There's some interesting facts (?) that I've learned on the topic of traffic safety over time: certainly the speed one has is directly proportional to how bad an accident will be should a crash (née "accident") occur because of the kinetic energy involved.†
However, the speed differential between different vehicles also has a correlation to the accident rate because some folks are going 'too fast' but others are going 'too slow'. I've heard this used as an argument for variable/dynamic speed limits which are changed on factors such as road conditions and visibility.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limit#Variable_speed_lim...
* https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00014...
† Numberphile has an interesting video on the topic: if a blue car is doing 70 (units/hour) and manages to just stop before an obstacle, what would happen to an identical model/mass red car going 100? Even though the red car was going only 30% faster, at the point that the blue car managed to (just) stop, the red car would be going 70.
The energy scrubbed from a starting speed of 70 is 70^2, so 4900; but going at 100 you have 10'000 energy (100^2): so if both cars managed to scrub ~5000 worth of energy, the blue car stopped, but the red car still at 5000 worth of energy left—i.e., 70 units/hour of speed.‡
* https://kottke.org/18/02/why-speeding-is-so-dangerous
‡ If you had the same blue/red cars going 55 and 100, while the red car would been going 'only' twice as fast, it would have had three times the kinetic energy because of 55^2 versus 100^2.
1) The speed limit obviously an arbitrary choice - the chance of death is decent at 50k/h (standard "town" speed limit in Slovenia) (so why not 40hm/k or 30km/h), and e.g. Germany has no speed limit on the highways (in some places) so there's really no good reason to set a limit of 130km/h (why not 110km/h or 150km/h)?
2) The easiest objection to (1) is "society has jointly decided about acceptable risk limits" but that clearly isn't true. Speed limits are simply a bad idea. A much better idea is speed constraints - roundabouts, speed bumps, chicanes [0] - i.e. actually forcing people to drive slower or else they ruin their cars.
The fact that governments default to traffic cameras etc. is proof (revealed preference) that they don't actually care about safety and people driving slowly, but what they want most is making their citizens live in fear, punishing them and extracting money from them. This is particularly obvious when there's a hidden police / traffic control on some section of the road where it's obviously safe to drive fast, but it's just technically within city limits so it has a low speed limit.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicane#/media/File:One-lane_c...
See? It's all discretionary. As should speed limits be (at the discretion of the driver, based on the current road conditions).
The problems you mention have other, better, actual solutions (e.g. cycling lanes, speed bumps before road crossings, ...).
Its not uncommon for cheap inadequate safety measures to supplant real ones.
I have a huge problem with enormous super-highways having 60mph limits or lower.
Some of the roads out where I live were engineered with going 90+ in mind. In fact, there's a tale of an engineer going such speeds and getting out of a ticket by explaining that to the judge out here.
What was the speed limit? When you're over 15 miles from the city, it's 60, but pass a turn in the road and it's 70.
Not all road users are car drivers!
As are most limits.
I get that driving on a motorway at say 85 mph is probably not that much dangerous than the speed limit (70 mph) but 100? 120? 140?
I know about Germany, but would you say that Britain's or Slovenia's road are designed and kept to the same standard?
> 2) The easiest objection to (1) is "society has jointly decided about acceptable risk limits" but that clearly isn't true. Speed limits are simply a bad idea. A much better idea is speed constraints - roundabouts, speed bumps, chicanes [0] - i.e. actually forcing people to drive slower or else they ruin their cars.
how do you constrain speed on a motorway?
> The fact that governments default to traffic cameras etc. is proof (revealed preference) that they don't actually care about safety and people driving slowly, but what they want most is making their citizens live in fear, punishing them and extracting money from them. This is particularly obvious when there's a hidden police / traffic control on some section of the road where it's obviously safe to drive fast, but it's just technically within city limits so it has a low speed limit.
In this country (UK) there is this myth that the cameras are money making devices, when during the 2008 crisis they were turned off to save money for some constabularies, this is the same type of argument.
Roundabouts are not always a good solution, in US I kept seeing people taking them the wrong way going directly left..
Also what is your proof that cameras don't slow down traffic? Just talking about me it make me more conscious of my speed in the city to avoid getting fined. So I guess I'm the kind of people it is directed at.
Where I am in Southern California the freeway speed limit in most places is 65 MPH. EVERYONE drives over 65 MPH on the freeways. I think you are more likely to get pulled over on the freeway if you are in the left lane actually going 65 than if you are going 75-80 in one of the middle lanes (the speed everyone else is going so it looks normal).
This just creates a situation where basically everyone is "breaking the law" and gives cops a reason to arbitrarily pull anyone over that they want.
I fully agree with you that speed limits are not about safety they are about instilling fear in citizens that at any moment you could be pulled over and harassed (even worse for colored people) and about being a source of revenue to find this tyranny
Obviously these are optional extras on most cars, but the self braking and auto-distance-keeping could be made a legal requirement well before we see self-driving cars. I’d be all for that.
My car will comfortably sit at 110mph all day long, if I'm alone on a motorway in the early hours who am i hurting or endangering? It certainly isn't about safety because that same car will stop from 100mph in less distance than the highway code requires for 70.
- your loved ones
- the emergency services that have to clean your body off the road
- subsequent road users -- when the road is closed -- to clean your body off the road
There’s standard etiquette there to slow down when there are vehicles in the distance ahead or curves or imperfect visibility. You don’t have to drive like a mindless drone holding a one-size-fits-all-situations speed limit. You and other drivers are generally safer going 160 km/h on a mostly empty highway than 50 km/h through an urban where there’s a much higher risk of encountering other people/vehicles/obstructions.
>that same car will stop from 100mph in less distance than the highway code requires for 70.
What car is it and with what tires? I'll be happy to look up the facts.
And so is its "carbon footprint" 3x greater.
To answer your question: You're hurting everything that's alive on the planet.
You're welcome to drive no faster than that speed on any road you like. On several of them, please, please don't drive on any road that has a higher speed limit than 60 to keep the rest of us safe, though. And have your hazards on, so we can reasonably get around you.
Also, just as an aside, electric cars exist now.
Someone not as perfect as you won't know to back off in wet conditions.
Someone not as perfect as you won't anticipate when to brake early to accommodate the extra stopping time.
Someone not as perfect as you won't be as meticulous about vehicle maintenance.
Someone not as perfect as you doesn't have your quick reflexes.
Someone not as perfect as you doesn't apply 100% of his attention to driving, never looking at a cell phone or radio.
edit: made it nicer
> read the license plates of speeding cars almost half a mile (750 m) away. In actuality, the TruCam II itself is technically capable of clocking plates up to almost a full mile (1.5 km)
But the actual product spec of the device [2] says:
> Quickly view license plate details and collect crystal-clear images up to +/- 150 meters away!
I don't see anywhere it can actually read a license plate half a mile away. It only says in the specsheet it can do a speed measurement about a mile away:
> Maximum Measurement: 1,200 meters/1,500 meters; extended range can be modified by request
[1] https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/news/353821/new-police-speed-c...
[2] https://www.lasertech.com/TruCAM-II-Speed-Enforcement-Laser....
I don't think any speed operation would work unless the car has been sighted, number plate read and speed detected simultaneously.
I would imagine that a Police officer could testify that he measured the speed using the calibrated device and continued to observe the same vehicle until it was possible to read the number plate.
No it doesn't: not even criminal trials, with the possibility of the death sentence, are done to that standard.
It can be done to the standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt" or even "balance of probabilities" / "preponderance of the evidence" which the civil trials tends to be. Given that it's 'only' fines involved, then the latter is often used for traffic violations:
I'm what the Brits might call a "keen motorist", but as someone who considers speed enforcement a necessary evil, there's a world of difference between paying a bit more for much better tech, versus way more. If this costs 4x what a normal radar gun costs, one must ask "what is the problem we're solving", and is it worth the money? Are there renegades out there going double the speed limit, then magically slowing to below the limit 1/2mi from a radar gun, somehow?
I'm certainly happier with the idea of an officer-operated speed camera than one parked by the side of the road with no discretion whatsoever.
Of course, there are plenty of people who rightfully point out that discretion can mean discrimination.
Most of the drivers that drive at extreme speeds are usually very rich (they are always driving Mercs, Range Rovers, Audis and BMWs) and don't typically give a toss about the fine or the points.
Also there are many people (usually immigrants) who drive without a valid license and insurance.
There's a so-called "superradar" at one of the most busy intersections in Warsaw. It cost ~$65k and brought ~$200k in revenue in three weeks.
It's much safer now there, but the radar is still raking in considerable revenue.
> primarily partake in their favorite illegal motorsport
> after hours, the TruCam II also features night mode
> whereas the first TruCam, which has already reportedly
> been in use for the past six years, only worked during the
> daytime.
I think this really comes down to the letter of the law vs the spirit of it. To the spirit of the law, i.e. saving third-party lives, on a non-busy road doing 35 mph in a 30 mph really going to kill anybody? Is doing excessive speed on an empty well-lit motorway going to kill anybody?
Ultimately if you're only a danger to yourself then personally I think the responsibility is on the individual. For example, as I understand it, persons living in Scotland can drive back home drunk in rural areas as the only person they are ever likely to hurt its themselves.
As a free person I think you need to have the right to make bad decisions and accept their consequences, as long as those do not impact others. For a long time there has been an unwritten rule (at least where I live) where greater speed is generally more acceptable at night with fewer road users. It's not uncommon for the local police to overtake you at 90 mph for example.
The spirit of the law is not just to save third party lives.
When you cause an accident, you drain society’s emergency response resources (and increase the premiums of those in your insurance pool).
35mph vs 30mph is a terrible example - this is the scenario where pedestrians and cyclists are most likely to be around. 75mph vs 70mph would have been a better example.
Driving at night is more dangerous than at day because of the reduced visibility.
Driving when fewer other road users are around is safer than when it’s busy, but you don’t have perfect knowledge and there may be road users you haven’t seen, especially at night.
There’s no objective moral cliff edge between 70mph and 70mph+ε, but there is one between complying with the law and breaking it. Society collectively draws the line somewhere and you don’t get to unilaterally decide everybody else is wrong. I’ve heard people saying “I was only going a little over 30!” called speedo pedos, because it’s exactly like saying “she was only a little underage!”.
Check out the sibling comments for examples of people who thought they knew better but didn’t.
The thing about Scotland is completely wrong, I have no idea why you would think that.
If this is true, then you need to point the finger at so many things. Rock-climbing. Mountain biking. And it progresses, to "anything even remotely risky", where "risky is now the absolute lowest common denominator".
And of course, so many sports? Banned.
This sort of "walking on eggshells" view of life is quite disturbing to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_in_the_United_Sta...
So what might be unacceptable "speedo pedo"ism where you live might be completely normal going 5 miles over the posted speed limit elsewhere. My personal experience is that people tend to drive at a speed they feel safe at, and don't pay that much attention to the signs.
So some politicians and engineers draw a line so that 15% of the population is in violation and will change the speed limit at any point that this isn’t true (if nobody is in violation, they lower the speed limit). You can’t then cast moral judgment on that 15%. It’s intentional criminalization of the citizenry, even though it’s generally with the intent of saving lives.
I laughed at "speedo pedos", but is it though?
One of these crimes is clearly considerably more serious than the other, and legislators agree with me. That's why in UK law minor speeding offences attract a fine and points on your license[0], but no criminal record, whereas offences of pedophilia result in prison time, a criminal record, and addition on the sexual offenders register.
The line of thinking is superficially similar, the weight of the offence isn't, and we shouldn't trivialise serious offences by drawing false equivalences with those that are considerably less serious.
[0] This is generally the case, but if you accrue too many points you can of course lose your license. Similarly, more serious speeding offences attract more serious penalties, and may even result in jail time. There are plenty of other examples but, see, e.g., https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-34744.... The level of stupidity on display here is truly monumental.
As a person who grew up in the Scottish countryside I can assure you that is absolutely not the case, and drunk driving is _extremely_ frowned upon. In fact Scotland has generally had tougher drink driving regulations than England. (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-30329743).
This kind of comment could be interpreted as casual racism (casting Scots as child-like alcoholics living in a semi-regulated playground), but I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt, since its a Sunday morning and nearly Christmas.
Really?
In fact, even ambulances crash into each other every now and then at night, because they usually drive without their horns (technically then they aren't allowed to run red lights, only if it's been sounding for at least 15 seconds, but people want to sleep).
It's not just boy racers, but plenty of older men and women who are reckless and inpatient in their usual driving. There are people who think that their luxury cars are an excuse to break the road rules as well as the rules of common courtesy.
Despite the UK having one of the safest road networks in the world, still around 75 people die or are seriously injured per week in car accidents. For a preventable injury that is still far too high.
You're not responding to the point. The parent was talking about solitary drivers, and used remote parts of scotland as an example.
Quick check says yes: https://www.tac.vic.gov.au/road-safety/statistics/summaries/...
Or specifically, not "speeding will kill someone" because we'll always have some level of accidents. But increased speed translates to increased accidents and increased accidents translate to more deaths.
According to: https://ec.europa.eu/transport/road_safety/specialist/knowle...
That’s 48->56kmh which takes 38% to 66% chance of fatality for pedestrians (eyeballing the graph).
This driver was probably only doing a few MPH over the 40MPH limit which is quite fast enough for a rural road. There is an A-road alternative for those 'in a hurry' but such carnage is a regular occurance.
* @7pm in the morning in the winter the whole area can be fogged up and it was dark. I've driven down and cycled down there when it wouldn't have been safe doing 15mph.
* Animals can be hard to see, even in good conditions. Especially the donkeys, they are grey, on a black road and the sky is normally grey in England. Many of the animals there have high-vis collars to make them more visible at night.
* It depends what section of the road. In one section of that road the visibility is excellent (when there isn't fog). In another stretch even in the summer, the visibility is weird due to much of the road being in partial shade due to the trees.
* Drivers go much faster than the 40mph limit in that area almost all the time, especially on the high visibility parts. It doesn't help that if you come off the M25/A31 you would have been going about 70mph and so doing 40mph makes it feels so slow that you can step out of the car.
* The three A-roads near are either blocked due to heavy traffic especially in the summer (infrastructure in general is a joke in Hampshire and Dorset) or they don't go where you want.
That might have been true 40 or 50 years ago - but drinking and driving is how regarded very harshly in Scotland both legally and socially.
Yes, the stats show quite clearly that 30mph is the point where pedestrian fatality rates really start climbing. [1]
At 30mph, if you have a collision with a pedestrian there’s a 20% chance the pedestrian dies.
At 35mph it’s 50%
At 40mph it’s 90%
The article mentioned the car was doing over 35mph. Additionally in the U.K. 30mph zones are normally residential areas and city centres, places where pedestrians are very common.
[1] https://www.roadwise.co.uk/using-the-road/speeding/the-chanc...
If we're talking about safety, then the speed limits should be to reflect conditions, but instead what happens is we cap the limit at the lowest value considering worst conditions.
Realistically the way we deal with this is through selective enforcement, the police probably aren't going to give you a ticket for 35 in a 30 at 2am on a monday morning, but it's silly to pretend that conditions don't matter.
There’s a number of police Twitter accounts that you can follow in this theme to learn more.
Speed enforcement seems to be the low hanging fruit. There’s (generally) no judgment call, readily accepted evidence, it’s politically palatable, and it’s like shooting fish in a barrel: there’s always someone you can tag.
It’s a lot harder to tag someone for driving onto the freeway at 30 mph and failing to merge properly. There’s no “merge trap” to witness it so the cop has to basically happen upon it. There’s not always clear evidence, there’s probably some judgment required too. People don’t like the idea of tickets for going “too slow”; everyone acts like it is absurd. You can’t even blame the LEO because he probably knows the ticket won’t stick. Yet this behavior is extremely dangerous and happens all the time.
It makes a lot of sense in terms of road safety as well as noise, and makes little to no difference to journey times.
They go down that road at 70 mph. They also tend to be very young and incredibly stupid, and incredibly poor at judging risk.
What an absurd comment. Scotland has stricter drink-driving laws than England.
Peak Libertarian fantasy to think this should apply here. Unfortunately, the real world is never so ordered and predictable that you can know for certain whether the country road you're about to speed on is completely empty. Just like you, the rest of us have the right to use that road as well whenever we please.
Even if you were the sole victim in such an accident, you're ignoring all the second order societal costs. Who will pay for the police time spent investigating the accident, delivering the news to your loved ones, and the cost of bereavement leave on their employers? Who's going to pay for removing the wreck and fixing whatever infrastructure (e.g. the road surface) you might have damaged? What about the mental health effects on the unfortunate neighbour who discovers your mangled corpse? And if you're only injured, how about the costs of an ambulance and medical treatment? We don't all live in the USA where that is (supposedly) borne by the individual.
Whether you like them or not, speed limits exist for good reasons.
> doing 35 mph in a 30 mph really going to kill anybody?
Demonstrably yes. Check out this study by the UK's Transport Research Laboratory. The chances of killing a pedestrian rise dramatically from around 10% at 30mph. The likelihood roughly doubles at 35mph. Remember that kinetic energy increases with the square of velocity, not linearly, so even small increases in speed can have dramatic effects on accident outcomes: https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/relationship_between_speed_risk_...
If the UK police are anything like the US, they don’t care about theft even if you have a solid lead and evidence. Theft reporting is purely for statistics.
Just like most organisations common sense is gone and it's all about following regular protocols etc.
You can’t easily measure inattention but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.
The solution doesn’t only have to be in penalties, it could be in making it harder to be inattentive to begin with.
That said, this is all low priority stuff in the UK. In the UK today there are basically zero road traffic police, you are exceedingly unlikely to come across any. Their numbers have been cut relentlessly as miles driven have increased. And yet... road deaths are down over the same 20 years and mobility is up.
Road traffic enforcement isn’t even in the top 1000 issues facing the UK today.
The energy of vehicle (thus, the energy absorbed during impact by every object contained or hit) is proportinal with the square of the speed. Meanwhile, the reaction time available to avoid the collision drops linearly with speed, while the braking or turn distance increases more than linearly.
So the overall probability of accidents and their severity increases exponentially with speed.
For example, the default speed limit in the UK on most residential roads is 30mph, but if you drive past a school at 30mph at the end of the afternoon when the kids are coming out and there are lots parked cars obscuring your view, that is still inappropriately fast for the conditions.
However, slower isn't always safer. On a motorway, the speed limit is usually 70mph, but in poor weather conditions and heavy traffic, everyone travelling at lower and similar speeds may be the safest choice. If you're the one driver insisting on unnecessarily doing 20mph when everyone else is doing a steady 40mph, you're also increasing the danger to yourself and others.
Another example is that the speed limit for heavy goods vehicles on many of our major roads was increased by 10mph in 2015, having previously been 20mph below what cars were allowed to do on the same roads. The results were notable for several reasons, among them that the actual average speed of those heavy vehicles only increased a little but the safety of the roads appears to have increased. This was attributed primarily to closing the gap in speeds between different types of vehicle and thus, among other things, reducing instances of queues behind and overtaking of the slower vehicles, both of which increase the risk of an accident.
Finally, we have the classic motorway speeding situation, where on an open road in good conditions, a competent driver with a suitable vehicle could do far more than the legal limit of 70mph with negligible increase in risk. Moreover, statistically our motorways are both our fastest roads and yet also among our safest. You could certainly print money by setting up a covert speed camera watching some stretches of motorway, but whether it is a good use of police resources if your objective is to increase road safety is a different question.
Sure but there's no free lunch here. If you trade off speed in the non-accident cases, which is by far the majority of all miles driven, then there's a cost to that.
It happens to be a really hard to measure cost so it's always completely ignored. How would you even begin to measure the cost to the nation of traffic arriving 5 minutes later? Not all 5 minute delays are equal, e.g the cost of delay to an ambulance rushing to hospital is different to the increased cost of delivering packages.
>> the reaction time available
In fairness, you could make the reaction time measurable in hours and it'd be insufficient to prevent some inattention caused road incidents.
Another problem with only looking at speed is the unintended consequence of drivers de-rating the risks. E.g. if a vehicle was limited to 5mph, this as you know is slow enough to be fairly unlikely to cause a pedestrian death even if there is an impact, it would have the un-wanted effect that some drivers would view the risks as lower and would be inclined to engage in more risky behaviours, e.g. taking their eyes off the road to turn around and argue with a child in the back seat where in 20mph traffic they might choose instead to just speak to the child.
>> So the overall probability of accidents
No that doesn't hold. We don't have more accidents on the fastest roads in the UK.
With my Tesla I am able to have it chime if I exceed the speed limit by a set amount and even if a light turns green.
however the big danger is still cell phone usage and no one wants to take the step of disabling them while moving and the technology is there.
There’s more than just cell phone usage. Inattention comes in many forms and none of them is better or worse than the others.
Drivers paying more attention to the radio show they’re listening to while gently zoning out to the traffic conditions around them - this is really common on long motorway journeys.
Drivers fizzing with rage at the argument they just had before getting in the car.
Etc etc
> Road traffic enforcement isn’t even in the top 1000 issues facing the UK today.
Road collisions are one of the biggest killers of young people in the UK. It's absolutely a big issue.
Road traffic enforcement or reducing infant asthma in cities by moving tailpipe emissions away from populated areas?
Road traffic enforcement or ... you get the point.
A guy's car had issues and pulled over on a high way, police remotely helped him dialing the tow truck company, via speed cameras and a loud speaker.
The best part? The police was able to look at his phone screen clearly and yield over the speaker "no dude you got the third digit wrong with the phone number!!!"
My car has a speed limiter, radio and a computer. Imagine a near future where speed limits are sent via radio then enforced by the car computer. No more infringement!
Arbitrary enforcement leads to discrimination and corruption.
Regarding the speed limit, I think the laws are just finde and should simply be enforced.
Useful as a rule of thumb but it's not always true. Models are never perfect, the map is not the territory. We are constantly figuring out what our shared values are, and it's a moving target. And the body of law itself is a complex beast with its own surprising dynamics. It's part of an ecosystem. You can't wave away its complexity with such a simplistic ideal.
A given law may be 'bad' (regrettable, even draconian/immoral) when enforced in certain cases, and yet it may also be unfeasible to change that law to add those cases as exceptions. This is why the law gives judges flexibility on sentencing, for example.
Or they would chip/crack it.
I think if a law were passed that forced people to adopt that, there would be a backlash, and then the speed limits would very quickly be increased as well — to a far more reasonable level. I would imagine highway speed limits would rise to 110 mph (177 kmph) or something, which is far more reasonable considering how safe cars are today, and the sheer number of hours it would save in commuting times.
(If a road heavily used by commuters changed its speed limit from 55 mph to 110 mph, you’d be cutting each person’s commute time by up to half. That would add up to million of hours of time saved in a large-ish city, and not to mention, less road damage due to the lower amount of time cars are on the road, and probably less energy usage once car manufacturers optimize their engines/motors for maximum efficiency at the 110 mph point.)
Seems like a win-win for enforcing the law and doing so equally on everyone.
Nothing is stopping the cop for going to a place with a certain demographic and setting up shop.
We do not.
1. https://one.nhtsa.gov/people/injury/research/pub/hs809012.ht...
EDIT: as a thought experiment, imagine that we went full cyberpunk hell-future and they started letting private equity companies put up cameras anywhere some MBA thought their cut of the ticket revenue would pay for the camera. How many speeding/stop sign/red light tickets do you think the average driver would get on their way to work? Now ask how different that is from the average driver's experience almost anywhere.
Unsafe driving (braking distance, crossing lines, holding a cell phone) should be as good or even better revenue sources, but they are more difficult to enforce automatically. While nowadays there would be tech for implementing that, historically it has not been so, so the momentum of the history is perhaps making advancements slow?
There were some new cameras introduced here some time back which were advertised to be able to have quality sufficient to detect that seat belts and cell phones: but still, pictures were taken only when exceeding the speed limit, so those factors could not be used as the primary source.
I'm inclined to think speeding is enforced much more than other traffic offenses merely because it is the easiest to detect.
A driver exceeding the speed limit by 20%, to throw out a number, isn't likely to do so as a one-off mistake unless he misses a signed change in the speed limit. If exceeding by 20% was a one-off under an unchanged speed limit, it most likely means the driver was already exceeding the speed limit by 10-15% as a matter of course. I am much more comfortable with a driver being cited in this case.
It does in Germany, but then again, they regulate how much your dog is allowed to bark in Bavaria. The truth is most new cars have great phone assist, you'd be dumb to use a phone while driving otherwise and it should totally be enforced. Not criminalized, just classified as a misdemeanor.
The problem for me is that they are put at places where people tend to speed, and that is often because it is a major road running through a village. Instead of building the proper infrastructure to allow traffic to pass through we just slow it down.
My second problem with speed enforcement is it has caused a shift in policing. Speeding is an absolute and so is cheap to police and prosecute so gets 100% of the enforcement effort, ignoring tailgating, undertaking, lane hogging, lane indiscipline...etc. All of this can be just as serious, and I feel (as a regular driver of some of the UKs busiest roads) are getting worse. I would much prefer to have a police officer in a car enforcing the rules than any fixed speed camera
And then they might build a road hump. So now the nearby residents and pedestrians get a noisier road and anyone on a bike or in a car gets less comfort and less control even while following the speed limit.
Speed cameras allowed the government to cut back on traffic policing completely, whilst still enforcing something. From memory there are something like 40k fewer police on our little island than before the financial crisis.
It's not possible to set an optimal speed limit for all these conditions, so normally speed limits are set quite conservatively. Of course it is theoretically a limit, not a target, so you could instead set it closer to the target speed for ideal conditions and expect people to slow in other conditions. That is done in some parts of the world, but not most. And so in somewhat of a causal loop, many drivers therefore consider the speed limit to be a target rather than a maximum, and don't apply a lot of judgement in determining safe speed.
My belief is that (with sufficient time and training to reach a status quo) a system with less strict or no speed limits, and instead a focus on safe driving, would encourage drivers to be more thoughtful and attentive, and result in fewer accidents and possibly even fewer injuries and fatalities. This could include design elements such as traffic calming where appropriate to encourage an appropriate speed without using conservative speed limits. Perhaps an increase in consequences for at-fault collisions would make sense in conjunction as well.
I do recall seeing some evidence that increasing or removing speed limits can reduce collisions, although perhaps not fatal ones. On the other hand, I can certainly understand if one did believe that lower speed limits save lives, one could argue it's better to over-enforce the limits and risk wasting people's time than under-enforce them and risk wasting lives. Also any increase in legal subjectivity increases the risk of unfair enforcement. So I don't think there's necessarily an obvious best approach.
I'd be interested to see the evidence removing limits reduces accidents, I should imagine there'd be lots of data for roads that have had their speed limits reduced.
Here is some info about building a lidar detector.
https://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/usenet-arc/sub00243/msg00000.htm...
It's trivial to determine the speed a person travels down a highway from GSM timing advance data. In most countries on Earth this metadata is mandated to be held for a certain amount of time by service providers.
Like all laws, it's selective, and there's only so many prosecutors, the moment they even try to charge the first person is when that government mandated tracking device in your pocket starts losing its value.
What they can do is feed the movements of all vehicles into a big data platform and infer which car went where...
Now add facial recognition in mix on from CCTVs. And we are in whole new level of tracking everyone. Coming soon!
Seems like something that could open up for vulnerabilities.
Somewhat raises the stakes on deciding whether to lend one's car to a casual friend.
Why not just have the manufacturers build slower cars, or at least limit them somehow. Then make it ilegal for people to tamper with their cars to make them faster.
Is there any other reason than playing this game in which law enforcement/governments get to make additional money through tickets?
it's possible to program a car to cut the throttle when it hits a certain speed, but most people take a dim view of having objects that they own be programmed to disobey them. would you like to use an OS that prevents you from installing any software that could enable illicit activity?
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/288592-eu-wants-speed-go...
I also wonder if maybe by forcing cars to go slower we could: 1) reduce car accidents by a lot and 2) reduce current spend on emergency response by a big enough amount that could then allow to use it to cover faster response times (e.g. sending a helicopter)
But it wouldn’t be perfect, more likely it would occasionally pick up the 30 zone on the parallel street and limit my speed to 40 in the 90 road. No thanks. I don’t think it’s a solvable problem in the short term.