SPECS and night driving
Discussion
Sorry if this has been posted before (Search didn't show up anything), but does the SPECS system which doesn't have a flash really work when it's dark?
On the M1 near J9/10 where there's a limit of 40, I often see drivers doing 50 at night because presumably they think the cameras won't read their numberplates
On the M1 near J9/10 where there's a limit of 40, I often see drivers doing 50 at night because presumably they think the cameras won't read their numberplates
They do it a lot during the daytime as well.
Guess the drivers don't understand how specs works & the implications
Don't know about the night sensors on the specs but I take it they still work.
Never run the risk personally
Would be interesting to hear from anyone caught by the Specs camera's ?
Guess the drivers don't understand how specs works & the implications
Don't know about the night sensors on the specs but I take it they still work.
Never run the risk personally
Would be interesting to hear from anyone caught by the Specs camera's ?
razbox said:
Sorry if this has been posted before (Search didn't show up anything), but does the SPECS system which doesn't have a flash really work when it's dark?
On the M1 near J9/10 where there's a limit of 40, I often see drivers doing 50 at night because presumably they think the cameras won't read their numberplates
On the M1 near J9/10 where there's a limit of 40, I often see drivers doing 50 at night because presumably they think the cameras won't read their numberplates
SPECS does have a flash, in fact it is always going off many times each second, but it's Infra Red so you wont be able to see it. Daylight makes no difference to SPECS cameras; the incoming light is filtered out such that they operate in a solar blind area of the solar spectrum (effectively operating in darkness even in bright sunshine).
Perhaps your speedo over-reads significantly and the other drivers keep their true speed to just within the threshold set by the ACPO guidelines. Perhaps the other drivers aren't aware these are average speed cameras, or they are making up the (average) time after previously being held up by 'elephant racers'. Perhaps the other drivers were tailgating a truck when passing the first SPECS camera such that their speed can't be determined.
Ahhahaha
Been here done that etc
Yes the camera reads the plate (sort of as it got ours wrong) well the ANPR bit did, had to be manually over read. However the nice little picture they take whilst you proceed at 48mph at 2.30 am!!! shows nothing more than pair of faint headlights
& neither of us could work out who was driving at that time anyway, hence we asked for the evidence.
So yes they do take a picture in the dark but don't take very good pictures of the vehicle or you or the car & trailer behind.
Been here done that etc
Yes the camera reads the plate (sort of as it got ours wrong) well the ANPR bit did, had to be manually over read. However the nice little picture they take whilst you proceed at 48mph at 2.30 am!!! shows nothing more than pair of faint headlights
& neither of us could work out who was driving at that time anyway, hence we asked for the evidence. So yes they do take a picture in the dark but don't take very good pictures of the vehicle or you or the car & trailer behind.
Parrot of Doom said:
What we need are number plates that don't reflect IR light, or indeed anything near that wavelength. You might get a slighly turquoise number plate as a result though....
Actually, I've seen plates like this on some cars. I wonder if thats why they're pinkish...
Actually, I've seen plates like this on some cars. I wonder if thats why they're pinkish...
An IR emitter on the plate would work wouldnt it?
smeggy said:
Plotloss said:
An IR emitter on the plate would work wouldnt it?
If the emitter is strong enough to create blooming of the imager then yes, otherwise you would need a large emitter covering the characters (heater elements won't do it) or lots of IR LEDs.
take a look inthe Maplin Electronics catalogue. "Night Sun" unit for use with CC-TV. Same wavelength as the units SPECS uses. Angled up at the right angle...
A front facing array of IR LEDs, IR camera and I have night vision... and what a shame SPECS can't see me but I can see them! 
eliminator said:
What is the wavelength?
Just out of interest.
Not that I'm thinking of anything at all.
No, really I'm not.
Just out of interest.
Not that I'm thinking of anything at all.
No, really I'm not.
They can use anything between 810nm to 950nm. I don't know what the typical value is.
I work for a company which goes through literally millions of high efficiency 880nm LEDs, it's not impossible for me to acquire the occasional hundred
esselte said:
Does SPECS differentiate between HGVs and ordinary traffic? Speed limits for these two groups can be different on the same road.Does the system check every no. plate it sees to determine the type of vehicle before calculating whether or not it is speeding?
Reading of the VRM and consulting the (DVLA?) database would indicate the appropriate limit for that vehicle, so I guess the system would have to check each plate. The image from the colour overview camera would aid the operator in determining the class of vehicle but they can’t be expected do that for all vehicles at speeds above the limit of lowest common denominator.
smeggy said:
razbox said:
Sorry if this has been posted before (Search didn't show up anything), but does the SPECS system which doesn't have a flash really work when it's dark?
On the M1 near J9/10 where there's a limit of 40, I often see drivers doing 50 at night because presumably they think the cameras won't read their numberplates
On the M1 near J9/10 where there's a limit of 40, I often see drivers doing 50 at night because presumably they think the cameras won't read their numberplates
SPECS does have a flash, in fact it is always going off many times each second, but it's Infra Red so you wont be able to see it. Daylight makes no difference to SPECS cameras; the incoming light is filtered out such that they operate in a solar blind area of the solar spectrum (effectively operating in darkness even in bright sunshine).
Perhaps your speedo over-reads significantly and the other drivers keep their true speed to just within the threshold set by the ACPO guidelines. Perhaps the other drivers aren't aware these are average speed cameras, or they are making up the (average) time after previously being held up by 'elephant racers'. Perhaps the other drivers were tailgating a truck when passing the first SPECS camera such that their speed can't be determined.
so to be clear the first camera has to see you
why are there several banks along the way do these also work ??
and i trust that each camera only measures one lane at a time
so an exmaple the m6 at junc 13 has several banks of cameras. the first point to lane 1 the next two or three sets point to the outer lane and the contraflow, the last point to lane 1
on that basis by changing lanes at the right time you could avoid being detected ??
hanse cronje said:
so to be clear the first camera has to see you
Either camera of a pair: yes. If not there’s no way it can determine your average speed.
hanse cronje said:
why are there several banks along the way do these also work ??
The more cameras there are the greater the chance they have of nabbing you.
I don’t know if these multiple SPECS installations measure vehicles speeds between pairs (between alternate sites) or between all cameras.
hanse cronje said:
and i trust that each camera only measures one lane at a time
SPECS cameras use fairly bog-standard monochrome CCD cameras, operating at a resolution of ~750x580. If one camera is shared across multiple lanes it would run the risk of not having enough pixels for the OCR system to properly distinguish the characters. I think I once read that 1 SPECS cam can cover a width of 3.7 meters (works out to be 5mm per pixel).
hanse cronje said:
so an exmaple the m6 at junc 13 has several banks of cameras. the first point to lane 1 the next two or three sets point to the outer lane and the contraflow, the last point to lane 1
on that basis by changing lanes at the right time you could avoid being detected ??
on that basis by changing lanes at the right time you could avoid being detected ??
You might be right but I wouldn’t stake my license on it.
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