RE: Digital speed cameras arrive
Discussion
Zippy.. said:Sensible comments by Mr Zips there. Trouble is, I think he is just realising exactly what the reason d'etre is for speed cameras. (And here's a hint, boys and girls - it's not about road safety.)
I've seen two of these going up on the A14 west in Cambridge, not the main road but the last uphill/downhill stretch before the road becomes one lane and turns into the A428. They've been onveniently placed near the bridge so that you only see them last-minute, that is what really get's my back up: by hiding them they want you to be caught so in effect they want you to break the speed limit not slow down. They should be about compliance not capture. I've driven that stetch of road for years and NEVER seen an accident there. It's utterly ludicrous, and I'm not even against speed cameras in principle, I think they have a limited role. If you get plenty of warning and they're at a potential accident spot like a country road funneling onto a dual carriageway, then fine slow the traffic at that point but far too many are misplaced.
Oli.
nubbin said:
One was installed on Portsmouth Road just outside of Kingston town centre a week ago, well hidden in the dark! There's no 'Speed Camera' signs around it either so it's proabably paid for itself already...
That is actually illegal - all speed cameras must have signage withing 1km (IIRC) to show where they are, and the speed limit has to be posted.
It's probably either:
1) Not operational yet
2) Currently being tested
3) Not a speed camera
dickymint said:
Why dont they also fit a ATM machine just passed the camera so that we can stop and pay the fine straight away to save the postage
You could bet your life that those ATM machines would NEVER be 'out of order' 
Nikko2 said:
Perhaps these new cameras which contain delicate electronics would not appreciate being in the presence of one of the stronger neodymium magnets for too long.
Mind you you would probably never get it off again or kill yourself getting it there.
Hehe, I'm building a XYZ robot (CNC) with linear drives (they have many rare earth magnets in them - down the 5 foot pole). You'd kill the camera but like you say, they aren't coming off. When I was moving these drives I got my keys stuck on one of the poles - cue constipation like straining to get them back off!
>> Edited by polus on Thursday 13th April 17:48
smeggy said:
Looks exactly like a red light camera they've installed in Chilwell in Notts. Does anyone know if they are being used to do both speed and light jumping? I always slow down for it but loads of people seem to speed through when the lights are on green!
There's a couple on Colwick loop road as well and I wonder the same thing. My g/f swears blind that they do both red light jumping (which IMHO is a bigger problem in Nottingham than gun crime) and speeding and claims to have seen the camera flash when the lights are on green.
RedSpeed is either/both of:
Redguard (red light violation) and Speedcurb (speeding violation)
www.redspeed-int.com/en/products_redspeed.htm
The ones on Colnwick loop are definately speed and red light - IIRC the case for their installation cited that they would catch those who speed up to 'run' changing lights.
Found part of it -
Nottinghamshire Road Casualty Reduction Partnership operational case 2004 said:
Cameras will also be installed at three new sites, the A6005 Woodside Road, Beeston, A6005 Byepass Road, Chilwell and the A612 Colwick Loop Road, Nottingham. It is proposed to install Monitron digital fixed speed cameras on the Westdale Lane, and A6005 Woodside Road sites. The A612 Colwick Loop Road will have a Monitron combined speed and red light camera installed.
full link www.streettactics.co.uk/FOI/opcase0405/0405Word_Submission.pdf
Watch out A14/A428 users there is one just after the BEdford turn off ...wondered what it was High up under a bridge forward facing......evil little bu~~er at least it was yellow but Much smaller than the old type....
Guess we will have even more accidents watching out for them...PS this one had very visible wirew going upto the bridge....insulated wire croppers anyone
Guess we will have even more accidents watching out for them...PS this one had very visible wirew going upto the bridge....insulated wire croppers anyone
Just when you thought it was safe to go back on the roads! With the possibility of a camera on every section of our roads,(as they become self financing) accidents are bound to go up. In Cardiff there are 3 cameras within 300 meters and all on a hill if the first one doesn't get you then the next 2 will ( unless you keep your foot on the brakes).
I hear they also have the technology to put a camera into cats eyes in the middle of the roads, we might as well all start to take the train/ buses or taxis at least if the taxis are booked you don't have to pay the fines...Its all part of the master plan!
Buy a sportscar and do track-days is the answer!
I hear they also have the technology to put a camera into cats eyes in the middle of the roads, we might as well all start to take the train/ buses or taxis at least if the taxis are booked you don't have to pay the fines...Its all part of the master plan!
Buy a sportscar and do track-days is the answer!
gilberninvader said:
Just when you thought it was safe to go back on the roads! With the possibility of a camera on every section of our roads,(as they become self financing) accidents are bound to go up. In Cardiff there are 3 cameras within 300 meters and all on a hill if the first one doesn't get you then the next 2 will ( unless you keep your foot on the brakes).
Actually they are moving away from self financing. From the next financial year netting off (the process of self funding) ceases & SCPs will be funded from government instead.
gilberninvader said:
I hear they also have the technology to put a camera into cats eyes in the middle of the roads, we might as well all start to take the train/ buses or taxis at least if the taxis are booked you don't have to pay the fines...Its all part of the master plan!
Buy a sportscar and do track-days is the answer!
Of course you could just obey the speed limit.
How do you know i break any speed limits at present, i've never said i do. I have a clean licence, and in this day and age thats pretty rare.
I'm saying that motoring used to be a daily pleasure and now thats been stripped from me by over restrictive practicesby Government,Local Gov etc. they put speed cameras in to stopspeeding however with the introduction of digital cameras the possibilities are endless and are seen as a major money generator for the Government. You have just confirmed that by saying that the Government will be paying for them i assume therefore they will be keeping the vastly increased fines. What a shock!
I'm saying that motoring used to be a daily pleasure and now thats been stripped from me by over restrictive practicesby Government,Local Gov etc. they put speed cameras in to stopspeeding however with the introduction of digital cameras the possibilities are endless and are seen as a major money generator for the Government. You have just confirmed that by saying that the Government will be paying for them i assume therefore they will be keeping the vastly increased fines. What a shock!
vonhosen said:
Of course you could just obey the speed limit.
One of the roads local to me had a few weeks ago been reduced from 40 to 30 (IMO unnecessarily so; wide road, great visibility, appropriate street furniture). I gave my little bro a lift last week, when on that road I thought I would test him so I asked him what he thought the limit was – he said 40! You see, all the 40 signs had just disappeared and there were no new signs indicating the new speed limit. He was right pissed off, his license is slightly more than 1 year old and has got 3 points already (speeding) so now he always religiously abides by all speed limits (even his mates mock him for refusing to do 1mph over the limit). Had I not told him and he was caught doing the old limit on that road, he would have lost his license and job.
So it’s not quite as simple as ‘don’t speed and you won’t get caught’
vonhosen said:Won't go through all the arguments again, but:-
Of course you could just obey the speed limit.
- Speed limits were set >40 years ago, when cars were orders-of-magnitude less capable and safe (for all road users) than they are now;
- Speed limits seem to only move one way - down - despite said advances, and often for no good reason on perfectly safe roads with no history of SPEED-INDUCED accidents;
- Artificially low speed limits cause people to lose concentration - there is a natural 'flow' speed to each road, that was what speed limits were there to reflect - something like a (statistically valid) 85th percentile speed, not the current 'mean speed' b'll'cks;
- There is NO statistically-valid study that shows that 'free speed' has any more than a cursory link to road-safety (the old '1/3' lie is actually 30%, comprised of c.7% "excessive speed" (not even breaking the limit, just 'excessive'), a similar amount for "failure to judge another's speed" (nothing to do with limits then or absolute speed levels!), one other vaguely speed-related category, and then the police catch-all "OTHER" )
So...if people are bringing speed limits down for no apparent reason, if the vehicles we drive are immeasurably safer and more capable, and if free speed is largely irrelevant to road safety (except where huge excesses (c.50%+ over current limits) are concerned)...then, aside from that old saw "It's the law"*, why should we obey speed limits?
* Laws change...especially where they're out-of-date or inappropriate. However sometimes it takes a big push to get a law changed...extreme examples would be slavery laws, or non-universal suffrage.
>> Edited by havoc on Friday 21st April 09:13
havoc said:
why should we obey speed limits?
Surely Havoc you've realised by now from all Vh's posts, we should obey the law because it is the law, we shouldn't question it or strive to improve the country we live in, we should all just grow large woolly coats and baa alot, because we are told to do so by some of the thickest, most corrupt idiots in the nation.
Davi said:
why should we obey speed limits?
Surely Havoc you've realised by now from all Vh's posts, we should obey the law because it is the law, we shouldn't question it or strive to improve the country we live in, we should all just grow large woolly coats and baa alot, because we are told to do so by some of the thickest, most corrupt idiots in the nation.
His Tonyness said:
You are free...to do as we tell you. You are free...to do as we tell you. Here, have another ten channels of reality television. Go back to sleep Britain, your Government is in control. Go back to sleep Britain!!!
(Apologies / thanks to Bill Hicks)
havoc said:
...then, aside from that old saw "It's the law"*, why should we obey speed limits?
I'll float a sensible answer to that if you like?
1. We need to prevent / punish drivers who drive dangerously fast.
2. "Dangerously fast" is very dependent on conditions so we could either:-
i) Have an qualified enforcer look and say "that was dangerously fast" in my opinion
ii) Set a numerical limit which is roughly right in some cases.
3. If we pick option (i), then drivers won't know how fast the enforcer thinks is dangerous today. Furthermore, the enforcer will make mistakes, but his word is law, so people will be convicted for safe actions. Moreover, it requires presence of highly skilled enforcers in many circumstances. So option (i) is flawed.
4. If we pick option (ii), then some of the time it will not be safe to drive at the number, and some of the time it will be safe to drive above the number. Drivers will know (more or less), however, whether they are above or below the number, so it is predictable in terms of law-breaking. Enforcement is done by measuring a number, so does not need a highly skilled judge of danger. Option (ii) is flawed, then, but in a different way.
5. We prefer our laws to be enforceable, consistent and predictable. So we pick option (ii).
6. We mitigate the weaknesses in option (ii) by saying that punishment should only start when we're sure that the driver knew he was over the limit.
7. The good drivers who could safely drive faster than the limit are constrained as part of a trade-off where they accept the roads will be safer overall as the bad drivers who could drive fast will be stopped as well.
Fair argument, 7db. And that's what we did have, in the past - the limits were enforced very 'broadly' by flesh-and-blood coppers, depending on how an individual was driving and what the conditions were. There was an element of variability due to the individual coppers, but there was also a significant degree of latitude available, if not always exercised. People 'felt' the system was fair, even if it was inconsistently applied, from a numerical standpoint. (odd eh?!?)
Now, we have a very strict numerical interpretation, enforced by grey boxes and by quango's with hairdryers, neither of which have heard of the words 'discretion' and 'appropriate'. People now consider the system to be unfair, despite a far more even approach to enforcement. (Also odd!!!)
Contradictory? Perhaps, but the counter-argument is that 'appropriate speed' is not a 1-speed-fits-all level on each road, and never has been. This was recognised in the past, and was the basis for the 'inconsistent' enforcement - 62 in a 60 in the driving rain through a busy cross-roads is stupid, but 75 in a 60 in the dry in quiet conditions could easily be perfectly safe. Yet under the new system the 62 will go unpunished while the 75 will not. People are seeing this, and are waking up to the fact that traffic laws should be dynamic as the traffic environment is dynamic.
However, THAT is far more difficult (and expensive) to police and enforce...so 2 successive money-fixated governments have increasingly changed the focus to cheap, 'fixed-rate' enforcement, so as to waste money elsewhere building empires.
Is it as effective? No, because the side-effect of the change in speed-enforcement has been to remove most of the non-speed traffic enforcement, which looking at the stats was, for the most part, the more effective enforcement from a safety-perspective. So there is now cheap, fixed-rate, evenly-applied speed enforcement...but no road-safety enforcement.
Is there a solution? Not without throwing money at it to reinvest in trafpol...and that will mean cuts elsewhere or higher taxes (and per-capita taxation is at it's highest in the UK ever, counting direct and indirect).
Now, we have a very strict numerical interpretation, enforced by grey boxes and by quango's with hairdryers, neither of which have heard of the words 'discretion' and 'appropriate'. People now consider the system to be unfair, despite a far more even approach to enforcement. (Also odd!!!)
Contradictory? Perhaps, but the counter-argument is that 'appropriate speed' is not a 1-speed-fits-all level on each road, and never has been. This was recognised in the past, and was the basis for the 'inconsistent' enforcement - 62 in a 60 in the driving rain through a busy cross-roads is stupid, but 75 in a 60 in the dry in quiet conditions could easily be perfectly safe. Yet under the new system the 62 will go unpunished while the 75 will not. People are seeing this, and are waking up to the fact that traffic laws should be dynamic as the traffic environment is dynamic.
However, THAT is far more difficult (and expensive) to police and enforce...so 2 successive money-fixated governments have increasingly changed the focus to cheap, 'fixed-rate' enforcement, so as to waste money elsewhere building empires.
Is it as effective? No, because the side-effect of the change in speed-enforcement has been to remove most of the non-speed traffic enforcement, which looking at the stats was, for the most part, the more effective enforcement from a safety-perspective. So there is now cheap, fixed-rate, evenly-applied speed enforcement...but no road-safety enforcement.
Is there a solution? Not without throwing money at it to reinvest in trafpol...and that will mean cuts elsewhere or higher taxes (and per-capita taxation is at it's highest in the UK ever, counting direct and indirect).
havoc said:
People 'felt' the system was fair, even if it was inconsistently applied, from a numerical standpoint. (odd eh?!?)
Not odd at all, because that's completely the point. Speed, or what could be considered excess speed to be more accurate, is TOTALLY dependant on the conditions at the time, therefore a number enforced by a machine that cannot take account of these is unfair.
Davi said:
People 'felt' the system was fair, even if it was inconsistently applied, from a numerical standpoint. (odd eh?!?)
Not odd at all, because that's completely the point. Speed, or what could be considered excess speed to be more accurate, is TOTALLY dependant on the conditions at the time, therefore a number enforced by a machine that cannot take account of these is unfair.
And similarly the view of the conditions taken by a human enforcer will be unpredicatble and so unfair.
It is important to realise that having people do the assessment doesn't make the errors go away -- it just changes around the group of people who get unfairly done and those who unfairly get away with it.
7db said:That's right as far as it goes - but I think we should go further 7db.
And similarly the view of the conditions taken by a human enforcer will be unpredicatble and so unfair.
It is important to realise that having people do the assessment doesn't make the errors go away -- it just changes around the group of people who get unfairly done and those who unfairly get away with it.
Having people do the assessment allows, even if it's subconsciously in the most robotic of enforcers, a consideration of the degree of risk in the particular situation observed. Ideally this ought (all this imo of course) to be an essential element of the whole speed enforcement process where and when reasonable limits are in use. Since speed isn't dangerous of itself there need to be situational factors that justify enforcement. Automated speed enforcement is flawed partly because speed alone is rarely a problem.
So, yes, people will make mistakes and these will have to be accepted like the mistakes inherent in any system we could devise, but the wider benefits of removing the present arbitrary and totally unthinking approach shouldn't be underestimated. With a shift of enforcement to target people who drive their cars, bikes, vans etc carelessly or dangerously in a way that involves excessive speed, rather than targeting the merely fast (but safe) road user as well the road safety fatac record, which is now stalled, would have a chance to get back on the downslope again.
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