Are the overhead cameras on the M25 always live?

[derekmuesli]

Does anyone know if any of those overhead GATSOs on the M25 between the A3 and the M4 are live ? Has anyone been caught by them recently ? My other half seems happy that unless a variable speed limit is displayed, they are not active and she persists in flying under them - so far with apparent impunity - touch wood ;-) (She''s been doing it for a long time..) I remember reading something a year or two back about a speeding case being thrown out because those boxes were not designed to work in such close proximity to one another as their radars could interfere with each other.

[derekmuesli]

Cheers for the info... hopefully I can at least talk the missus into staying under 90.. ;-) For what it's worth, when it's working properly, the VSL seems a reasonably successful way of regulating traffic flow - of course there's nothing it can do to compensate for a complete block - by an accident or such like - but it does help prevent the waves of sudden braking and bunching up you get on the M6. I'll get me coat...

[derekmuesli]

This is the first I've heard of putting the lorries onto trains - dunno why I didn't discover it earlier. Still, I think we'll all agree that the rail infrastructure is creaking at the seams as it is. So I'm not sure we'll ever see anything like that here.. :-( Do you think the 56mph limiters help or exacerbate this phenomenon of overtaking at microscopically different speeds ? When the lorrys had no limiters and could all do 60mph you'd get them creeping up to 62-65mph which is bad (me speeding good.. 38t lorry speeding bad ). Is anyone here optimistic enough to seriously believe we'll ever get additional lanes whilst the tree-huggers are busy shoving twigs up the politicians noses ? Edited by derekmuesli on Wednesday 26th September 19:51

[derekmuesli]

Indeed - same in Germany and Belgium (Probably NL too).. But then they also have zipmerging as a recommended practice and TV ads to that effect.. in this country the powers that be frown upon zipmerging.. clearly they prefer waves of emergency braking and muppets who won't let you in because you're 'cutting in' the queue. There's are a lot that could be learned by a good look at how they deal with some of these things in northern Europe. (Well, what would be the point of looking at Greece?) Edited by derekmuesli on Thursday 27th September 16:53