Safe Speed Forums

I don't know if my bit is in or on the cutting room floor, but this is a

MUST WATCH - BIG NEWS

It's first on at 1:30pm.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Now it's gone out - this Safe Speed PR issued at 13:47:

PR440: Gatso cameras can't be trusted - epic blunder

news: for immediate release

BBC TV local news programme "Look East" reveals today that Gatso speed camera
calibration procedures raise an anomaly that casts doubt on the evidence from
around half the cameras.

The problem is that when cameras have been sent for routine annual calibration,
about half of them had to be repaired before the calibration process was
completed. This provides documentary evidence that around half the cameras
became faulty at some point during the year before calibration. Since we cannot
know when the faults first appeared it does mean that any camera so affected
cannot be relied upon to provide accurate legal evidence to the standards
required by our courts.

This came to light when Sally Chidzoy of BBC TV Look East obtained camera
calibration invoices under the Freedom of Information Act.

The invoices so far obtained apply to Essex and Hertfordshire cameras. It's
likely that a similar situation applies to all Gatso cameras in every area.

Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign
(www.safespeed.org.uk) said: "Nothing about the incompetence of speed camera
operations surprises me any more, but this particular blunder is certainly of
epic proportions."

"This information casts very substantial doubts on the safety of evidence from
thousands of cameras used against hundreds of thousands of motorists."

"Confidence in speed cameras is already at rock bottom, but this information
will drive it down further. I can only imagine that hundreds of thousands - or
even millions - of motorists are going to be asking for their money back."

<ends>

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

http://www.bbc.co.uk/england/realmedia/ ... tvbull.ram

Starts at 3:12

The interview I gave is in the longer version for the Politics Show on Sunday apparently, when it will be showing again at 12 noon.

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

That is an absolutely disgusting, disgraceful, dishonest and devious piece of information that has been dug up about the scameraships ever. Even worse than the LTI "slip" effects.

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Prepare to be Judged

So if you have been caught by a Gatso recently, immediately ask for a copy of its maintenance log including any invoices for repairs for the last annual maintenance. If it is due for its annual maintenance then you could probably challenge the penalty in court wouldn't you say?

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Prepare to be Judged

It seems that there is a fundamental lack of understanding when it comes to calibration of instruments.

(Edited to add - not on SS of course)

A single calibration on an instrument while useful actually tells you very little about the future performance of the instrument. The important data comes from a calibration history i.e the variation between successive calibrations is what is really important. The calibration history of many instruments can then give you useful data concerning the instruments designed performance as a whole.

A repair to an instrument can often break the chain of calibration history for an instrument.

This means a driver caught by a camera should demand the calibration history of the camera as well as chasing up the next calibration after the offense.

It's when the NEXT calibration includes need of repair that the real problem arises.

So if you get photographed in June...
And they calibrate in December...

If it needs to be repaired to get through calibration in December we simply can't know if it was faulty in June.

And there's a DOCUMENT to say that we can't know.

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

What happens to a gatso that never makes its next callibration?
one that is totally distroyed!!!
and there are quite a few of them

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Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

I guess this all points to a year not being an appropriate time interval for camera calibration/maintenance.

In order to make speeding convictions 100% sound, the device would have to be calibrated before and after every 'snap'. Sadly this would make the speed camera programme untenable, shame.

Perhaps an FOI application to all scameraships and police forces requesting their calibration and tech logs for all their speed measuring equipment could yield some interesting figures. Granted, it would be against the equipment and not the concept of automated enforcement, but its a start.

The obvious thing to do is to look at the mean time between failure figure and the variance. Then choose a sensible interval based on the probability any camera will fail between the calibration time and the snap time. There also should be an automatic procedure which would remove any points of drivers who were photographed between those dates if the camera needed repair. This would make them realise they'd have to start calibrating all their cameras monthly in the hope of hanging on to their ill gotten gains. The cost would reduce their appeal immensely.

I don't know if that's good enough when we're looking at legal evidence. How much doubt is a reasonable doubt? 1 in 100?

If we guess from the '50% of cameras needed repairing' that MTBF is one service year then perhaps we'd be calibrating every 3 days to get to 100:1. That'd spoil the party, especially since calibration costs £491+VAT.

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

None of this will benefit anyone who filled in the NIP and took a £60/3 point hit because they have admitted guilt. However, if you maintaned your innocence and went to court you might have a good argument that the evidence against you was flawed as the accuracy of the Gatso at the time of the incident was unknown.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

That's why there has to be a procedure for cancelling previous tickets if the gatso has a fault or develops one. It's still too late for someone that is already on 9 points and is sent over the edge though.

Question is, is the accuracy of a gatso more or less unreliable than the opinion of a police officer who can also judge someone to be exceeding the speed limit?

Sounds like it is time to offer a cut price calibration service

I wonder how many people have been wrongly convicted and put off from saying they weren't speeding by the bullying tactics of pratnerships?

Can we use the accounts to find out the rough calibration intervals if calibration is mentioned as a specific cost? If an lti-20-20 has to be set up for every session then surely every single gatso should have to be calibrated each time the film is replaced?

Paul, I have just seen the look east clip,

photo checking thread
"norfolk said "they allways check against road markings"
however none of the camera partnerships could produce a satifactory reply to these FOI questions

1 - Do you use an automated system to issue or handle Photos NIPs reminders and summons. If so what system do you use and are the photos manualy checked before the issue of a nip for thinsg like two cars in the photo or number plate mis-reads?

2 - Do you have a quality management in place such as BS5750 or ISO 9000. If so what system do you use?

3 - Could you please supply the process hand book or local instructions for civilian staff for checking mobile and static camera photographs before issuing a nip, fixed penalty notice and court summons (a photo copy of a few pages will do, to illustrate the way photos are checked and a description or flow chart of the process).

admitidly I did not write to Norfolk

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Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

Are the road markings calibrated?

They may be unlikely to change (unless some public spirited person repaints them further apart of course) however if they are used to measure a vehicle's speed then they should have a calibration certificate.

I would be reasonably convinced if an engineer had produced a drawing of the markings and measured them and signed them off as true.
I would not worry about annual callibration

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Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

The road markings raises an issue I had been considering.

If there are two photos taken a known time apart, and progress is compared to markings of known interval, then it doesn't really matter if the radar equipment triggering the camera is faulty or not.

However, if everything else in the unit is so prone to malfunction during a cycle of less than a year, then can the 'clock' determining the time interval between the pictures be considered any more reliable?

I know we haven't heard from him in a while but David Edgar has found holes with regards to the timing:

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/notso.html

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1500

Quote Blacksdouglas@ Pepipoo


http://forums.pepipoo.com/index.php?showtopic=18080

Oh yes it does matter. No one piece of evidence is sufficient to convict. Evidence requires corroboration, so with a fault affecting either part of the camera (let alone both) no conviction is possible.

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety