Speeding duck: Switzerland traffic cameras catch flying mallard

bbc.co.uk

3 points·ColinWright··5 comments

I'm interested in knowing the tech they're using to measure the speed, and how it's being triggered by a bird flying through it.

Is this not something they anticipated? Is it rare enough that they just don't care[0]? Can it not be "fixed" to avoid this problem[1]?

[0] It's reasonable to ignore low probability events that can be dealt with by a suitable process, but the scenario should be analysed.

[1] See point [0].

More importantly, what would have happened if a car (that was not speeding) just happened to be visible in the photo?

I’ve never received an automated speeding violation, but have received turn-on-red ones before. In those cases, the violation includes a link where you can see a video of the whole scenario and offers a button to click where you claim it was not actually a violation. Hopefully the speed cameras also have such a system where you have some reference points to calculate time travelled between frames in the video (with a know frame rate).

Before they are enabled they have to be calibrated or else they are not usable in court. There have been cases where this calibration was broken for whole models and the defendants got free even where they have definitly been speeding.

Ok, I will assume that the speed of the duck is accurate because the machine has been properly calibrated.

What if there just happened to also be a slow car in the photo? How do you prove that the reported speed is that of the duck and not of the car?

Usually its Radar or Laser in some devices. Its not an daily occurence and there is no damage for anyone.

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