Cheap speed camera heralds huge expansion?
Tiny camera measures speed over distance
Spike - spot this
Called Spike, it can measure how fast a car has travelled over a distance, rather than snapping it just at the point when it passes the device.
The only system that was been able to do this until now was SPECS (Speed Check Enforcement System). It costs hundreds of thousands of pounds, which has limited its implementation.
Spike costs just £20,000, in the same price range as a Gatso. The system, which is also portable, has been submitted to the Home Office for approval, according to a report in The Telegraph. What's more it's tiny and hard to spot.
PIPS, the company which makes the product, boasts that Devon County Council plans to install the system around Exeter and Newton Abbott, with further expansion planned for Barnstaple and Totnes.
Bizarrely, the AA Trust said that the system would cut down on people driving into trees and undertaking rash overtaking manoeuvres on single carriageway roads.
Road safety campaign Safe Speed's Paul Smith said: "This will lead to people looking at their speedometers every couple of seconds, rather than looking at the road. It is the massively expensive cost of the Specs system that has stopped it being introduced more widely. Speed cameras are highly destructive and ones which take an average are even more so."
"Research commissioned by the Highways Agency, the largest of its kind, associated average speed cameras with a 4.5 per cent increase in crashes in motorway road works sections, and a 6.7 per cent increase in crashes on open motorways.
"We know for sure that road safety hasn't improved as expected in the speed camera era. I believe that this is because speed camera come with dangerous side effects. All cameras cause side effects, but the side effects of average speed cameras appear to be especially subtle and insidious.
"Speed camera side effects are everywhere, but none of them have been adequately studied."
Picture courtesy PIPS Technology
YEP could be time to get horse & cart-but they'll probably legislate against horses & droppings... 
& it'll simply increase the number of cloned plates even further. Safety my ass 
Time for a drivers revolt or time to check the ferry times & your house value & leave the country alltogether.
My front plate seems to always be hitting rabbits and breaking.
But that doesn't stopped me getting wound up that they are still scamming us and giving us the same bull sh*t about roads and speed!
A GPS system makes more sense now than ever for statics, but as this is passive the portable ones wouldn't show up even on a (probably now illegal) detector. If these start going up around your way you have a few options:-
- Buy a bike (but see this week's MCN)
- Fake # plate (but illegal)
- No # plate (again illegal)
- Unreg'd car (again illegal)
- Move
- Emigrate
- Buy a bus pass
...as the chances of enjoying your driving without losing your licence could well disappear.
WTF has this regime got against speeding? Would that they put half the resources into combatting burglary, or violent crime.
You would have hoped that data like that would make the decision makers see sense. This mess has been going on for so longer I imagine they are blind to the possibility of the scamera system being flawed?
Eh? Does it lean in through the window and help you steer?
I've contacted the AA Trust to ask them to explain this one to me. Their answer is keenly awaited.
The number of accidents this'll cause will escalate hugely, people will see something they're not too sure about up a pole and jump on the anchors.
The number of licences requiring 'processing' will bring the system to a halt.
It will become obvious to people as stupid even as Monbiot that this is not working and peoples lives are being ruined for the sake of a load of spin.
The amount of people taking it to court will cause that to back up too
The number of accidents this'll cause will escalate hugely, people will see something they're not too sure about up a pole and jump on the anchors.
The number of licences requiring 'processing' will bring the system to a halt.
It will become obvious to people as stupid even as Monbiot that this is not working and peoples lives are being ruined for the sake of a load of spin.
The amount of people taking it to court will cause that to back up too
The processing of licences now involves someone writing in the endorsement in Biro!!!!
I didn't beleive this until I was shown one by a friend of mine.
Maybe it is time there were some protests outside the manufacturers of this type of device. I am not suggesting anything illegal, but comparisons could be drawn between these companies and those the animal rights campaigners seek to expose. PIPS are affecting human rights after all.
There will be 2 groups of motorist now:
1. Those who make every effort to drive EXACTLY on the speed limit, this will involve checking the speedo every 5 seconds and not looking at the road (safe eh!)
2. Those who drive safely (ie not looking at the speedo constantly) but when they do spot one of these little babies they will want to make sure their average speed is sufficiently low to fall under the radar, hence they will go from crusing at 65 in a 60 limit, to 10mph as they pass the camera. At best this will cause massive tailbacks on todays busy roads. At worse it will cause loads of rear end shuts near these cameras.
www.pipstechnology.co.uk/products.php?section_id=5&article_id=30
Now that's the real point. The government, in an unusual outbreak of honesty even admitted only 5%, but still press ahead with a scheme which addresses what they have now said is the most minor causes of accidents. But, and I guess this may be the most significant factor,
it's the only one where significant easy revenue is to be had (and, even worse, from the statistically safer driver).Gassing Station | Speed, Plod & the Law | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff