In-car speed camera detection system

No, but I would be very cautious about buying one. In the bad old days when the police were stopping people and confiscating their dashboard mounted devices, somebody (can't remember the precedent case-I'm sure somebody on this group will!) had the balls to drag the case through the courts, and won when it was adjudged that their device did not actually interpret the information within the police operated device (which was and still is illegal), but merely alerts the driver to the presence of a carrier wave. The fact that this device would appear to use information within the speed camera/laser/whatever, eg.. prevailing speed limit, would concern me greatly. I would think that what with the police attitude to raising revenue by enforcing speed limits coupled with the fact that they were seething over losing the previously mentioned test case, you will find some unlucky sod will find the whole weight of the plod being thrown at them, and the subsequent banning of such devices. No, I'll think I'll keep my 300 quid in my pocket, thanks.

iirc, this thing has stopped being sold or something I was talking to a guy who had one for demo purposes only (fully working and stuff like that) and he said they were not selling them anymore much better deal he said was to get something like a road angle or a snooper that's just come on the market that tells you everything and picks up stuff from everywhere and is even downloadable for up to the minute site info

They don't need to do that, the GPS knows where you are & the speed limit is ,pretty much by definition, in the public domain. Won't spot lasers though.

Yes, the speed limit is within the public domain, but the way you receive this information is the part in question. If you use your eyes to read a road sign, that's fine. If you have a pice of equipment which interrogates the information from within a police transmission, that's not. It's the same breach of the law as when a criminal uses a scanner to intercept police transmissions to find their whereabouts- highly illegal and quite rightly so!

GPS-based speed camera detection systems are not illegal and it's highly unlikely they will become so. Many police forces take the view that anything that draws a motorist's attention to speed limits is fine by them.

Your analogy is fatally flawed as no transmission is interrogated, as you have been told by myself and others.

If you don't believe me, go and do some research and see for yourself.

but this works (if u checked out the demo) by knowing where you are (gps) and what seed your doing (gps again) and knowing where a camera is! this same technology is now being incorporated into new navigation equipment for cars.

and if blunkett gets his way it will be incorporated into a cars electronics (new cars) so as to limit cars to a speed.. (but this will never happen cos speeding is a revenue generator and NOT a real crime issue (imho)) in most "speeding related" accidents the real crime is failure to observe, not necessarily some arbitrary 20+ year old speed limit imposed when cars were crap, but the road ahead (beside, behind etc) or conditions. not saying ive never made these mistakes myself, we all have.

IMHO this device is a good idea (and something ive been looking for) cos the audible warning you are above the limit means I don't have to keep taking my eyes off the road to check my Speedo, thus my observation can be improved as well as my speed watching!

Locations of speed camera's are now in the public domain too (some forces even tell you where a mobile unit will be in advance) so the what I see it this is a good idea, what remains to be seen is if its good value for money and if it does actually work.

Mark

Except you don't need to interrogate the transmission. In the case of inductive coil speed cameras there isn't any transmission anyway. All you need is the location & the local speed limit which you can look up anyway.

snipped-for-privacy@nemesis.nu (Neil Barker) mumbled:

But only as good as their database...which with mobile speed cameras is not necessarily good enough.

Sure - hence why you really should run one together with a good quality radar detector.

Cue all the usual bollocks along the lines of, "If you don't exceed the limit...."

To which I'll say - show me a driver who's never exceeded the limit and I'll show you a liar.