[Mike S]

Silly you (insert rude expletive of choice in place of you) I hear people say!

Don't worry... I was only crawling through at about 10-15mph near kerb to allow for the police car with blues and twos going to 'howl' past... methinks the (double) flash was for him.
He was the second who had past me in about a minute and not long after came a third. As I turned off the road further up, anotheree came up from our local copshop. Must have been something interesting they were all off to.

Will be interesting to see if I do get a little letter through the post.... it would just go to show that there is some little jobsworth just looking at number plates in camera pics and not at what the picture is telling them.

Mike

 

[Ian D]

I've had similar happen to me before, never had anything come through, this was 3 years ago now, they should see some big flashing lights on the pic and know why it set off.

 

[JagEnthusiast]

I've been flashed by one when another car (not an emergency vehicle) shot through directly alongside me at well over the limit, triggering the camera. I wondered how on earth they would be able to distinguish which of us was speeding, but I guess they do know what they're doing as I never received anything through the post.

It's the average speed cameras on the motorways that get me nervous - one moment you're going at 70mph, the next you're having to rapidy drop to 40 or 50mph before you reach the first overhead camera. I've sometimes found myself not making it in time for the first (say, 10mph or so over) then praying the remaining cameras along the stretch will bring the average down.......!

The risks of picking up endorsements are huge on the roads these days.

 

[Fitzy]

That's why they have the white paint markings on the road as well, so they can workout what speed you were doing. First flash on first white mark then second flash on whatever mark further on. They know that at the set speed you should only have traveled a certain number of white marks, they can ten workout your speed based on the mark your on at the second mark.

I know someone who got off a ticket because the marks were wrongly spaced, plus they only have 14 days from date of offence for you to receive the ticket, that's if the camera had any film in it and at over £14000 per film many never have film in anyway but are just switched on as a deterrent.

They also have a varying percentage of roughly 10% plus 2-3 mph over the limit before they prosecute drivers, this is to allow for variations with speedos (which should always show 10% more than actual speed for legal reasons), different tyres, wheels etc, so I wouldn't worry about it really.

Dave

 

[Litho]

My Trafficmaster tracking system has an added active speed/average speed camera warning fitted. Mind on other things I failed to slow down enough on hearing the warning and was flashed. No post ! Do these things contain film or is the photo transmitted to central control by other means ? I've never seen anyone working on these cameras in my life.

 

[scm]

this is to allow for variations with speedos (which should always show 10% more than actual speed for legal reasons),

No, they're "allowed" to show up to 10% higher. and must never show lower, than true speed.

 

[Fitzy]

The last three cars I've owned have all been exactly 10% over what my sat nav showed and my Ford Scorpio and now my S-Type were both tested on a rolling road and both were exactly 10% higher than what the rolling road was set at.

And a good friend of mine who's a motorway cop told me that all production cars speedo's must be at least 10% higher than actual speed being done. That's why all traffic police cars etc are calibrated every three months to see how far their speedos are out by and standard patrol cars are not and standard patrol cars and vans cannot stop you for speeding as their speedo's haven't been calibrated.

I was cleared of speeding about 10 years ago, because I was stopped by standard police car for doing 38mph in a 30mph limit, but once in court my lawyer had dug out the rule book regards calibrations etc and the magistrate through it straight out as the evidence was untrustworthy as the speedo of the police car couldn't be verified as accurate.

You can even take your chances with the handheld speed guns in court and ask for their latest calibration certificate to be produced and if it's over three months old the gun cannot be used to check speeds.

Dave

 

[scm]

And a good friend of mine who's a motorway cop told me that all production cars speedo's must be at least 10% higher than actual speed being done.

You'd better get your motorway cop mate to correct this Wikipedia entry, then, which seems to bear out what I say (and no, I didn't write it!):

The Motor Vehicles (Approval) Regulations 2001[12] permits single vehicles to be approved. As with the UNECE regulation and the EC Directives, the speedometer must never show an indicated speed less than the actual speed. However it differs slightly from them in specifying that for all actual speeds between 25 mph and 70 mph (or the vehicles' maximum speed if it is lower than this), the indicated speed must not exceed 110% of the actual speed, plus 6.25 mph.

Speedometer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Fitzy]

Well Wikipedia can be out of date at times!

"the indicated seed must not exceed 110% of the actual speed, plus 6.25 mph" does mean the speedo will read roughly 10% over what you're actually travelling at. So actually proves both our points.

So if your speedo reads 77 mph your actual speed will roughly be 70 mph +/- a few mph, hence why the police allow 10% + 3/4 mph before they nick you for speeding. Your speedo reads 80 mph, actual speed = approx 70-72/73 mph.

Thats the way the police interpret it and they're the ones who have to enforce it, so I think I go with what they say regards this and not some website!

Dave

 

[redfox666]

The older cameras work with film, I think the more modern ones are digital with a direct link. Here in the West Midlands the percentage of fully functioning cameras is actually pretty low and there's quite a few that have had "firework related accidents" that they haven't bothered to repair, additionally where they have re-surfaced the road they haven't bothered to paint the lines again which suggests the camera isn't doing much.

 

[scm]

... the police interpret it and they're the ones who have to enforce it, so I think I go with what they say regards this and not some website!

But what you've described is what the website says. Your original post, which I responded to, claimed that "speedo's must be at least 10% higher than actual speed", so you seem to have changed your mind. Good to see we're in agreement.

 

[iwvc]

You'd better get your motorway cop mate to correct this Wikipedia entry, then, which seems to bear out what I say (and no, I didn't write it!):

The Motor Vehicles (Approval) Regulations 2001[12] permits single vehicles to be approved. As with the UNECE regulation and the EC Directives, the speedometer must never show an indicated speed less than the actual speed. However it differs slightly from them in specifying that for all actual speeds between 25 mph and 70 mph (or the vehicles' maximum speed if it is lower than this), the indicated speed must not exceed 110% of the actual speed, plus 6.25 mph.

Speedometer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I used to work with the UN ECE regs and the EU Directives. The regulation specifies that the speedo is tested at 3 speeds, 40, 80 and 120 km/hr. The difference between the indicated speed and the true speed at each of these points must not be negative (ie it can't show a speed lower than the actual speed) and not more than 10% + 4km/hr above the actual speed. (In English this means at a true 25mph it can read up to 30mph, 50 mph it can read up to 57.5mph and at 75mph up to 85mph.) In practice most modern speedos are much more accurate than this so don't assume that your indicated 85 is only 75 when passing the speed cameras now mounted on the gantries on motorways with variable speed limits! The difference in speed allowance in the wikipedia article (10% + 6.5mph) is due to the regulations wikipedia quotes being those for "single vehicle approval" where some of the construction requirements are relaxed not the ones that have to be met by the volume production manufacturers.

I had an interesting experience a few years ago when filtering my bike between two lanes of slow moving traffic in N London. The cars were doing about 15mph and I was about 20mph. The 30mph camera obviously got confused with the proximity of my bike and the cars and must have bounced signals off both in a way it then interpreted as one vehicle over the limit, as it went off. Never heard of anything from that one, although the driver of the car probably told all his mates down the pub that a bike went speeding past him so fast it set the camera off!

Ian C