Re: Finding an address for a truck firm

Conor ( snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

Umm, no.

The >7.5t truck speed limit in the UK is 60mph. That's 96.6km/h.

I doubt many other EU countries have a 96.6km/h speed limit for trucks.

There may be a common required setting for speed limiters, but that's not the same thing as the speed limit.

You reckon? - if they can prosecute you on the basis of timing between splodges of paint on the road, then timing between posts would almost certainly be acceptable.

Timing between "splodges of paint on the road" is done with the aid of photographic evidence. Timing between posts is done by the reactions of PC Plod with his finger on a button.

It pretty much is.

GPS is used extensively on aircraft, but you're right that it isn't how the autopilot or landing system works and a 747 will only have GPS available as a backup system for telling the pilot where the plane is and little else.

Auto landing is done with radar and beams, isn't it?

The Highways Agency recently had to reposition marker posts because significant numbers of them were in the wrong place. Whenever there is an RTA and the marker posts are hit, the teams reinstating them tend to plop them about where they think they should be. Not at the surveyed position.

Had this been known at the time of the alleged offences, the court would have dismissed the cases. The fact that police forces used the marker posts to calibrate VASCAR does not mean that they were correct to do so. Nor does it mean that subsequent convictions were sound.

It means that the police got away with it.

BTw there is no such thing as "THE Traffic Department" there are 46 Traffic Divisions in the police forces of England and Wales. Each of them independent from the others.

Yes you have and you must.

No, not always. VASCAR is used in conjunction with splodges of paint on the road.

As is timing between splodges of paint on the road.

Who is this "we"? What is your involvement?

Then it will never work. Because the database will never be correct and up to date.

I really can't be arsed to argue yet another complete irrelevancy, but I somehow doubt that me changing it back to the original every time I reply to one of your postings is the same as "hasn't changed", that setting the Followup To line is functionally equivalent to changing the Newsgroups line, that your newsreader is broken, and that you are an argumentative f*****ad.

Since they can, and do, prosecute for speeding merely on the unsubstantiated word of a police officer, arguing about whose posts are more accurately placed is completely pointless.

Wrong on both counts. VASCAR can time between arbitrary landmarks.

With the HGV speedometer being within 2% accurate and a speed limiter that prevents more power being applied after 56mph (up to 57 max if the limiter is as accurate as the speedometer) then the only gain in speed can be by gravity?

AJH

I stand corrected, but my point still stands - arguing about the distance apart the posts are, or posts via paint splodges, is debating the colour of the deckchairs on the Titanic...

Huh?

Do you mean there are roads that nobody else knows about, or that there are speed limits that nobody knows about, on some roads?

(Apropos which, my in-car sat nav tells me when I am speeding...)

GPS accuracy is 7-10, waas (read, north america or europe) is more like 2-3 yards accuracy for a receiver that supports it. This depends on how you state your accuracy figure, as it is a statistical cluster (like, "how tall are human beings", as they vary from one to another and with age and similar)

It doesn't really matter what quality the GPS unit is, with the exception of very ancient systems that had less than 12 channels and weren't bothered as SA was adding 100 yards anyway so why bother?

These days, you have waas enabled and without. I've yet to see anything that was inferior in measuring precision due to cost, that wasn't basically years out of date.

For the point of view of knowing where you are to around a meter if you have to wait a bit for the needle to stabilise, as it were, a cheap sirfII based receiver (tom tom use these) gives you about a yard or so fairly reliably, call it three to five if you need all the plots to be relied on. This is fine for car speed control with an intelligent onboard computer interpreting the envelope (e.g. using the speedo figure while going through tunnels, not thinking it has suddenly gone from the motorway to the road bridge over the top, and so on.)

The next generation (Galileo) will give a fraction of this, i.e. a meter with reliability and more like six inches to a foot for the weighted average, which will exceed anything you need for moderating car speed.

Military kit has long lead times and has to operate outside waas regions so you can expect it to deliver the 7-10 figure, the words will include what the quoted figure means e.g. a CEP of 12-18 meters is pretty much the same sort of thing. The error basically isn't in the kit, it is in the GPS system as a whole.

For the person quoting 41 meters in 2d mode, well yes, the GPS is reporting that someone has their hand over the antenna / is in a building / forest / alleyway and it can't see enough satellites to get a proper lock. This is not normal operational performance, and it isn't reporting a position, but an estimate. It is like arguing that speedometers are useless for this task by showing an old Metro with a matchstick in the cable giving a needle swinging to and fro between 54 and 15 mph and saying "the car is actually doing 20". It makes good copy but most speedos simply aren't like that.

Then XNews is a pile of festering crap. And what you are doing is plain irritating. Since my server doesn't carry uk.rec.cars.maintenance I post a reply to your message only to find it rejected.

Could you be prevailed upon to stop pissing about?

The message from snipped-for-privacy@quickwatchsales.com contains these words:

I understand the Americans aren't too happy about this - 'cos GPS is owned and run by them - Galileo is a joint EU venture for civil use.

What would the default speed limit be on these GPS based speed limiters that some people seem so keen on?

I ask 'cos the GPS signal is easy to jam - it's very low power by the time it get to the surface - it ain't particularly high powered when it leaves the satellite.

This means that if it defaults high then users could easily jam their own systems, and if it default low then blackhats could cause motorway chaos by jamming and watching everyone with a limiter drop to 20mph while all the older unrestricted vehicles plough into the back of 'em.

Nope. What he means is there is no centralised database and those that exist aren't necessarily kept up to date.