No lines - can they get you?
Discussion
I usually avoid this forum because the thought of paying for our police to be ordered to waste their time on fashionable PC nonsense gets me a bit irate, but....
Today I saw a standard Gatso but the road had been resurfaced and hence there were no calibration marks. Would a conviction stand? And if so, why bother with the marks?
Today I saw a standard Gatso but the road had been resurfaced and hence there were no calibration marks. Would a conviction stand? And if so, why bother with the marks?
Not sure about this. The marks & 2 photos can be used to manually work out your speed, but the radar itself has already worked out that you're breaking the set limit in order to make it take the pictures in the 1st place.
I seem to recall that when Gatsos were 1st introduced in the uk, they didn't bother with the lines at all for a while...
I seem to recall that when Gatsos were 1st introduced in the uk, they didn't bother with the lines at all for a while...
The Gatso which got me in 1994 didn't have any markings on the road.
I read somewhere that with the original Gatso cameras they used a transparent overlay (like an over head projector slide) with markings on it to lay over the photographs. I would have thought that for the overlay to be accurate the camera would have to be carefully aligned with the road in some way so they know how to put the overlay on the photograph. So maybe they started to paint markings on the road because it's easier.
I read somewhere that with the original Gatso cameras they used a transparent overlay (like an over head projector slide) with markings on it to lay over the photographs. I would have thought that for the overlay to be accurate the camera would have to be carefully aligned with the road in some way so they know how to put the overlay on the photograph. So maybe they started to paint markings on the road because it's easier.
I asked the question of some colleagues and here are their answers:
1) I know someone who got off with it because the marks were not the regulation distance apart. Would you believe he measured them!?! So I would have thought....no marks, not conviction.
2) For what its worth, I'd contest any NIP from a camera where there wasn't any road markings. The reason for this is that though the authorities would
claim, and probably prove, the camera was calibrated, it has been repeatedly proven that the camera can pick up speed readings from things other than the
vehicle in the frame. There is the famous one where a lorry was caught doing some ridiculus speed whilst crawling along at 2mph in a traffic jam. The
idea of the road markings is that you can, given the two pohots taken, measure how far a vehicle has travelled in a given time frame and hence its
speed. Without the road markings I would argue that it would not be possible to determine accurately how far you've travelled, even if you used other
items as they would not be in the same plane/direction as that which you
travelled and therefore prone to error.
3) Yes, the principal evidence is the speed calculated by the computer, from information generated by the radar.
So the lines are probably NOT needed - but at least they serve to give us a bit more warning - so we can slow down and thus avoid the compulsory curly headed tot.
1) I know someone who got off with it because the marks were not the regulation distance apart. Would you believe he measured them!?! So I would have thought....no marks, not conviction.
2) For what its worth, I'd contest any NIP from a camera where there wasn't any road markings. The reason for this is that though the authorities would
claim, and probably prove, the camera was calibrated, it has been repeatedly proven that the camera can pick up speed readings from things other than the
vehicle in the frame. There is the famous one where a lorry was caught doing some ridiculus speed whilst crawling along at 2mph in a traffic jam. The
idea of the road markings is that you can, given the two pohots taken, measure how far a vehicle has travelled in a given time frame and hence its
speed. Without the road markings I would argue that it would not be possible to determine accurately how far you've travelled, even if you used other
items as they would not be in the same plane/direction as that which you
travelled and therefore prone to error.
3) Yes, the principal evidence is the speed calculated by the computer, from information generated by the radar.
So the lines are probably NOT needed - but at least they serve to give us a bit more warning - so we can slow down and thus avoid the compulsory curly headed tot.
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