Safe Speed Forums

Publication : Which Car Magazine (approx 1 million copies)
Date : 10 dec 2010 - due out in Jan 11

Topic : FOI showing that Nationally only about 40% of Gatso cameras are operational.

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

Be very interesting to see if they get taken out of service when the calibration certs are out of date .

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

Where they use 'roaming camera equipment' their certificates will relate to the camera not the location, so many Gatso's are empty and used only when they decide.
They rely on the paranoia instilled on the motorists to spend crucial time watching their speedo's.

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

Do they mean 40% of cameras or 40% of boxes at the side of the road?

I would have put the number of boxes in use at any one time a way less than 40%.

The claim was of 40% were in use at any one time - I have not seen the document for myself.

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

If one were to determine if a particular housing had innards, would placing a sign to that effect upstream of the site be regarded as obstructing a police officer do we think?

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Regulation without education merely creates more criminals.

The sign might have little effect on the behaviour of motorists tough ? As how would you know if the sign is up to date and official - or possibly even a hoax? If there is any doubt whatsoever, you just cannot risk it, so you still potentially might brake and continue to therefore act (with all the negative effects) as if the camera is live.
This is also why I have stated in the press that simply knowing that some are un-used, has little effect on the motorist, as it cannot be a certain fact, and why there needs to be an official bag over the unused cameras.

An official or readily identified sign that one learns to accept as fact and totally reliable, would enable less attention to be provided to the camera. However, observation and focusing on the camera and the speedo, is now almost second nature to millions of motorists, so the practice will be hard to break. Then if you start to learn to be less observant of a few cameras can you afford to be - very likely not as then you might miss one that has 'film' in it. People will still brake to 10 mph less than the 'known' speed in case they missed the bad signage or want to play it safe just in case.

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

How about putting a black bag over it then.

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Regulation without education merely creates more criminals.

I think that a marked 'Not in Use' labelled bag observed from both front and back is best.
Also clear warning signs of all speed camera enforcement. Whilst a good quality database is behind some Sat Nav's it cannot be considered exhaustive. Police can still do speed enforcement too without warnings of course ... perhaps that too should have a warning on the road, like the 'unmarked police car in operation'.

As Sat Nav's have only a message to give they are of course approved. ('96 order).

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.