OT:speed cameras

Excellent! I wonder what the ratio of destroyed gatso to revenue generation is?

I prefer to fight these revenue cameras by forcing them to court, costing them lots of money and getting the case thrown out - 2 so far and currently working on the third. . . . . :)

there was a great one in melbourne, australia a couple of weeks ago. a datsun 120y (do you have them over in pommyland? thay are a s***ty little

What's the technique?

There was a programme on BBC Look East last night, they were even interviewing one bloke who admits to going out to deliberately vandalise the cameras, and the lengths they go to. 2 in our area have been damaged by explosives!!

-- Simon Isaacs

Peterborough 4x4 Club Chairman and Webmaster

I have a much easier and less time consuming way of beating revenue cameras ... keep to the speed limit. Works every time ;-)

Regards Steve G

I agree, but unfortunately, on 2 occasions (not the only 2, I'm sure) where I have inadvertantly exceeded said limit, I've been done. Annoying when many people consistently drive over the limit and are totally point-less (so to speak). I'm one of the few people who actually agree with speed limits and enforcing them, but it's frustrating when you miss the sign one day and get done.

David

|| || There was a programme on BBC Look East last night, they were even || interviewing one bloke who admits to going out to deliberately || vandalise the cameras, and the lengths they go to. 2 in our area || have been damaged by explosives!! ||

Sod the cameras, I watched it for the presenter. Seriously, the guy did himself no favours at all. The gatso-vandals came over as dribbling mouth-breathers without a serious argument to offer. Personally I think destroying a camera outside a school was a definite own-goal. When the interviewer asked him how he would feel if someone was killed near a Gatso he had destroyed, he had no reply at all - 10 seconds of total silence. I started watching thinking I would be cheering the good guys, but by the end I was almost convinced the cameras were a good idea. Almost. If these guys hit the "revenue" Gatsos and left the sensible ones alone, they would have a lot of support.

FWIW, my personal view:

Review all speed limits and adjust to sensible levels - 15mph outside primary schools, 20 on housing estates, workable limits on all other roads and up to 80-90 on motorways where conditions permit. Do as the French do (for once!) and reduce limits in wet weather. Then enforce them as hard as you like - Gatsos, Specs, even real policemen in real cars. I wouldn't complain, and I think Joe Public would support the police and "partnerships" a lot more.

Fiona Bruce for Prime Minister.

I have always thought that speed limits should be mutable according to time of day and weather conditions, it is entirely possible with digital signage. There are roads where 100 is safe and roads where 20 mph is too high.

I can remember driving down the M6 in the erly morning with no traffic many years ago, why should I not have been legally allowed to do the speed the road was engineered for.

Schools are always a danger area simply because there are too many parents causing the danger by failing to see they are adding to the traffic problem.

I wouldn't go in for GATSO bashing but I would do my utmost to destroy Ken Livingstones evil machinations.

I have no problems with that at the moment, what annoys me though is these white knuckled drivers that slow down to what is almost a dead stop for sleeping policemen.

Sleeping policemen must be costing a fortune in the premature demise of already undersubsidised public transport through the discomfort it causes bus passengers and the damage it does to the vehicles. Many a new bus is reduced to a rattling screwloose wreck faster than you can say series 3.

There were a set of speed bumps near me that were between 8" and 14" tall and long enough that I could park my Discovery on them. The angle of approach on them was steep enough that I've seen some cars stall trying to take them slowly.

The local council said to the local bus company "Run more services round there - once an hour isn't enough". The local bus company said "Sod that for a game of soldiers - those speed bumps will hedgehog our busses in a month"

On month later the speed bumps have been replaced by smaller ones that are square and *just* less than the track of a RangeRover wide.

The result is that traffic has slowed down overall as they no longer have to jump the speed bumps to get over them, the busses don't get jarred anywhere near as much and I can actually drive at the posted limit on that road.

I once did an experiment when the road was empty - a Ford Maverick 3 door driven at 56 MPH would launch itself hard enough over the speed bumps that both axles would land on the far side at the same time. Would never do that when there was anybody else on the road though.

P.

My comment was a bit tongue in cheek although I do strive not to exceed the limit. Both my son and youngest daughter have been caught recently by a mobile camera and I do feel sympathy for them as they are, like their good old dad, normally very conscientious. But, bugger it ... it was them not me :-))

LOL Steve G

I would argue that some of these speed cushions are actually more dangeros, the kind that if you drive in the middle of the road, you can avoid, because when two cars going in the opposite direction, determined to circumvent the cushions ...... I leave the rest to the imagination.

Anyway one road near me has these all the way down. It used to be something of a rat run, if there is no traffic you could still belt along at 50 swerving like a maniac to avoid them all. As for the local riff raff on trail bikes, they just use the pavement.

You're in Basford?

The local council were a bit more clever than that. These speed humps are at pinch points where only one car at a time can get through, although having sets of give way one way round and the fourth one backwards leads to some interesting problems in the morning where rather than having a single flow of moving traffic you have absolute gridlock because there isn't eneough room to move.

P.

Previous 2 tickets I waited until a fixed penalty was offered and refused, asking to take it to court. Said police force continued insisting I pay a fixed penalty for the next 9 months, while I continued insisting it went to court. First one was then dropped with no charge. Second one eventually said they would sort out a court date which I responded to by asking for a copy of the photographic evidence that was being used to convict me with and a copy of the certificate of calibration for the device used to detect my alleged offense, which by law must have been calibrated within 14 days prior to the offence or it is invalid. Case was the dropped without charge. Both offences were allegedly on open rural 60 mph roads - I don't speed in town or where it is busy and both were for exceeding the limit by less than

Current outstanding charge is from a mobile camera for doing 69mph in a

For more detail see:

Normally I am not the sort to bother with things like this, but camera revenue generation is really starting to get out of hand and has had absolutely no effect on safety whatsoever as the fact that from 1995 to 2001 camera tickets issued increased from 200k to over a million and annual road deaths stayed at the same 3000 +/- 200 that it has been for a decade.

I'm afraid your technique is flawed!

Go to

Thanks Julian, that's carefully filed away for future reference. Much obliged.

gatso's: no problem. i dont think i can actually hit the speed limit in the tractor. . .

ted

'74 s3d swb

If I ever got a ticket for speeding (haven't had one for more than 20 years) I'd challenge it so I'd be one of the ones getting my conviction overturned in this case too.

Keeping to or below the speed limit is still the most likely technique to minimise the number of tickets received. Thank heaven for cruise control and speed limiters :-)

Regards Steve G

I'm mostly using POI Warner on my Ipaq now, which warns me when I'm approaching a speed camera.

Hopefully, the next step will be for the GPS mapping companies to code the road speeds into their maps as well, so the satnav devices will automatically tell you when you're going over the limit, even when the limit is changing.

Finally they will presumably wire them in to the car's electronics so the car automatically inhibits the speed based on the road's speed limit, so you can't speed accidentally (along with an on-off switch for the majority of the population who doesn't want this, plus an over-ride so you don't lose power when overtaking).

Well, I'd buy it.