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pvr wrote: ↑Mon Apr 09, 2018 11:20 am I have never seen an average speed camera in 30 limits though, always at 40 - 50 only. Drives me mad.

I've been along 30 av speed zones. Feels like a crawl, but guess they're there for the right reasons.

mmm-five wrote: ↑Sat Apr 14, 2018 11:09 am

Lazza wrote: ↑Sat Apr 14, 2018 10:15 am Here’s an interesting thought... speed cameras probe that speeding isn’t really an offence. The real offence is getting caught! Hear me out!
If you were being followed by a police car, speeding over a fair stretch of road, when they do pull you over you will get a single speeding ticket (ignoring any Dangerous Driving / Due Care & Attention they might throw at you) but if there were 3 cameras on that stretch, you would get 3 tickets. Even if you could prove that the timing of those 3 tickets prove that you only exceeded the speed limit once, you get a ticket for each time you are caught!

This isn’t meant to actually mean anything meaningful, just thought it was interesting

Whilst you may get a ticket for each one...you can ask to have them all treated as the same offence.

Of course 3 tickets over the course of a 10 mile average speed camera zone is one thing, but 3 tickets over the course of a 200 mile Welsh/Scottish hoon might be another

This is a problem with static cameras as well. You might not know you have been done and batter around all day and get caught again later.
If you knew you had already been caught earlier you may have took it easier later on.
A similar thing to this happened to someone I know who was out for the day on his bike on roads he didnt know. He went through a speed camera on his way to his destination getting flashed and then got flashed again on his way home. If he had known he had been done he wouldnt have got caught the second time.
I hate all these average speed cameras, static cameras and radar guns. The police should be out on the road and actually have to catch you speeding.
Staic cameras are put in accident hot spotsto reduce the speed. But people stop looking at their surroundings and look at their speedo to make sure they are not going to get done.
What is more dangerous? Speeding slightly or taking your eyes off the road?

Speed doesn't kill it's bad driving that does. Yes if you hit someone then the faster you are going will make a difference to the outcome but I would still argue that a bad driver is more dangerous than a speeding driver.

Had the pleasure of the new permanent average speed cameras on the M5 at Exeter, Halden Hill, yesterday. Where they are makes perfect sense to me, having had a car break away sideways, on that stretch many years ago. Happily I held it, but all I was doing was going to fast down the hill, where the cameras now limit your speed. So no objections here, to others like the young me being discouraged.

Slightly off subject but still speed camera issue on smart motorways.
Just drove down to Birmingham this morning on the M1 and there is a long stretch of smart motorway south of Sheffield / Notts area. Does anyone know if speed cameras are switched on if there are no speed restrictions being displayed? I did notice everyone slowing down when approaching the gantries just in case but it gets annoying after a while so it would be nice to know. I wasn't speeding of course.

Secondly I have seen cameras on the gantries over each lane but on this stretch there were two cameras mounted on about each forth gantry well hidden on the nearside only.

Resurrecting this thread.

I travelled up (and down) the M5 and M6 mid-week and passed through several speed restricted areas, which have been on the M5 and M6 for many years now. These areas have the yellow poles with three cameras on a boom at intervals along the speed-restricted stretches. I've always wondered if motorist ever get caught speeding because there's always seems to be one motorist who drives at 20mph faster than everyone else. Either they're complete idiots who've never driven on a motorway before, or they know something the rest of us don't.

I've heard that the cameras are actually used for facial recognition to track the movements of criminals rather than to catch speeding motorists by ANPR. I'm wondering if anyone on here has been caught speeding by this type of camera system?

exdos wrote: ↑Fri Dec 21, 2018 4:22 pm I've heard that the cameras are actually used for facial recognition to track the movements of criminals rather than to catch speeding motorists by ANPR. I'm wondering if anyone on here has been caught speeding by this type of camera system?

Might be a bit useless for the facial recognition, as most of them are set to photograph/record the rear of the car.

Have been going up & down there for years and sit at 60mph on cruise.

exdos wrote: ↑Fri Dec 21, 2018 4:22 pm Resurrecting this thread.

I travelled up (and down) the M5 and M6 mid-week and passed through several speed restricted areas, which have been on the M5 and M6 for many years now. These areas have the yellow poles with three cameras on a boom at intervals along the speed-restricted stretches. I've always wondered if motorist ever get caught speeding because there's always seems to be one motorist who drives at 20mph faster than everyone else. Either they're complete idiots who've never driven on a motorway before, or they know something the rest of us don't.

I've heard that the cameras are actually used for facial recognition to track the movements of criminals rather than to catch speeding motorists by ANPR. I'm wondering if anyone on here has been caught speeding by this type of camera system?

Unsure about up north, but down here we have the same average speed cameras and a guy in work got caught by them, doing 59mph in a 50mph patch of road.

The cameras in the gantrys (sp) above the M6 definitely work, as I've been caught by them, as has another work colleague quite recently. Both doing 60mph in supposedly 50 limits. I'm 99% sure the one I went through said 60, as I was on cruise control, but I didn't have any evidence to prove it, unfortunately.

There was a big news story a few years ago about the 50/60 signs above the M6 looking very similar and catching motorists out (here!!!). But it was a year or so after I had attended a speed awareness course. So I just let it go. It still annoys me to this day though!

Mr Tidy wrote: ↑Mon Apr 09, 2018 9:57 pm Welcome to Revenue Generation 21st Century Style OP.

I first encountered them on the A1 in Scotland in 2008. I went past the first one somewhat above the N/S/L single carriageway limit - but then spotted a lovely looking tea-room, so decided to spoil Mrs Tidy with afternoon tea! Better idea than crawling for a couple of miles.

But now they are popping up everywhere - cruise control is your friend!

My wife's 5 series has cruise and a limiter! set the limiter to the speed limit and just drive knowing you don't end up rear ending the car in front (for those of us without adaptive cruise) and can't bust the limit. Only problems are remembering to take it off as you exit the limited section and a tendency to bend the accelerator pedal to override the limiter

... and how long after a variable speed limit changes do you have to react?

In the last year on the M25, I’ve twice seen them suddenly flick 60>50>40 in a second... & two gantries later get the all clear black stripe on white background.

Bloody dangerous, as everybody jams on the anchors, where almost feel is done for fun.

There’s also allegedly a quirk in the legislation where you have to be recorded in the same lane

I know the cameras on the gantries with illuminated variable speed signs work, such as those on the M25 and M42; I suppose they're just basic GATSO type systems. But I'm unsure if all those yellow ones on a long stretch of motorway are actually interconnected so that a remote system can calculate your average speed? After all they put them up on the stretches where they are laying pipework along the central reservation which seems to take years to install, whilst the yellow cameras have gone up almost overnight. Are most of them dummies, if not all?

exdos wrote: ↑Fri Dec 21, 2018 5:38 pm I know the cameras on the gantries with illuminated variable speed signs work, such as those on the M25 and M42; I suppose they're just basic GATSO type systems. But I'm unsure if all those yellow ones on a long stretch of motorway are actually interconnected so that a remote system can calculate your average speed? After all they put them up on the stretches where they are laying pipework along the central reservation which seems to take years to install, whilst the yellow cameras have gone up almost overnight. Are most of them dummies, if not all?

They don't need to be connected together by wires - the ones made by Siemens, and presumably others, use a 3G connection to send data to a central datacentre for processing so all that really needs to be known is the location of the camera that's sending the datastream and the others in its local group

PerryGunn wrote: ↑Fri Dec 21, 2018 6:02 pm
They don't need to be connected together by wires - the ones made by Siemens, and presumably others, use a 3G connection to send data to a central datacentre for processing so all that really needs to be known is the location of the camera that's sending the datastream and the others in its local group

So would it be easily possible to tell if any of the yellow gantries are sending data over 3G?

exdos wrote: ↑Fri Dec 21, 2018 6:17 pm

PerryGunn wrote: ↑Fri Dec 21, 2018 6:02 pm
They don't need to be connected together by wires - the ones made by Siemens, and presumably others, use a 3G connection to send data to a central datacentre for processing so all that really needs to be known is the location of the camera that's sending the datastream and the others in its local group

So would it be easily possible to tell if any of the yellow gantries are sending data over 3G?

Well you could probably use an IMSI catcher to sniff the tower signal but I couldn't see why they'd bother putting up a dummy one as it would take just as long as erecting a real one - unless, of course, there's a large cost differential between a real one and a dummy one...

ben g wrote: ↑Fri Dec 21, 2018 4:45 pm

exdos wrote: ↑Fri Dec 21, 2018 4:22 pm Resurrecting this thread.

I travelled up (and down) the M5 and M6 mid-week and passed through several speed restricted areas, which have been on the M5 and M6 for many years now. These areas have the yellow poles with three cameras on a boom at intervals along the speed-restricted stretches. I've always wondered if motorist ever get caught speeding because there's always seems to be one motorist who drives at 20mph faster than everyone else. Either they're complete idiots who've never driven on a motorway before, or they know something the rest of us don't.

I've heard that the cameras are actually used for facial recognition to track the movements of criminals rather than to catch speeding motorists by ANPR. I'm wondering if anyone on here has been caught speeding by this type of camera system?

Unsure about up north, but down here we have the same average speed cameras and a guy in work got caught by them, doing 59mph in a 50mph patch of road.

The cameras in the gantrys (sp) above the M6 definitely work, as I've been caught by them, as has another work colleague quite recently. Both doing 60mph in supposedly 50 limits. I'm 99% sure the one I went through said 60, as I was on cruise control, but I didn't have any evidence to prove it, unfortunately.

There was a big news story a few years ago about the 50/60 signs above the M6 looking very similar and catching motorists out (here!!!). But it was a year or so after I had attended a speed awareness course. So I just let it go. It still annoys me to this day though!

The Smart motorway cameras on the M6 around Birmingham are now mounted at the nearside of the road not on the gantry itself. They are about every 3rd gantry and as such are partially hidden. When they were above they were only 'on' when the speed limit was shown, usually 50mph and below, but now I am not so sure. Went down that way a couple of weeks ago and traffic was no problem until I hit this 'smart' section warning of queues ahead and slowing the traffic to 50mph. Yes there was queues but only as a result of the speed restriction. Once it was back up to 70mph the queues miraculously disappeared?