Safe Speed Forums

Let me get this right, this site is anti speed cameras because speed cameras are dangerous? Speed cameras divert the driver's attention from the road to the speedo, causing lapses in road concentration, right?

But you are pro- camera detectors? Camera detectors which bleep when you approach a speed camera, causing you to, um, divert your attention from the road while you check you speedo, but, conversely, this doesn't cause a lapse in road concentration?

Surely it's not that simple? Am I wrong? Can someone put up a legit argument for a camera detector?

That it protects the licence of someone who is quite probably causing no harm to anyone at all by exceeding the speed limit. Not a very good argument, but I'm sure those who actually have them will be able to come up with better ones.

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-mike[F]
Caught in the rush of the crowd, lost in a wall of sound..

Statisticaly cars with speed camera detectors have fewer accidents. Is that not justification enough.

In any case we don't need a legitimate argument...they are legal.

Have you ever used on or are you just making assumptions?

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Speed camera policy Kills

Safe Speed takes no position at all on "camera detectors" (or related warning devices). The campaign is neither pro nor anti.

Personally I don't have one, but I can understand the improvement to the peace of mind of a high mileage driver.

Saying that cameras are distracting is one facet of the argument. Yes, they are distracting, but there a great deal more to it than that. However, if we do focus on the distraction for a moment, the distraction is significant because the consequences of missing a camera are serious. People lose their livelihoods.

Now you might say the consequences of "speeding" are even more serious - "people lose their lives". But the net loss of life caused by modern policy is truly frightening. I estimate that we now have about 1,300 lives lost each year on the roads because of a decade of the wrong policy. Speed cameras are absolutely the foundation of that wrong policy.

It is also a gross oversimplification to suggest that speeding causes loss of life. There are many dangerous behaviours on our roads that cause both speeding and loss of life. In this speeding is usually an effect rather than a cause. (Think drunks, reckless driving, joy riders etc) Loss of life caused by a normal responsible motorist simply exceeding a speed limit is very rare indeed.

[edited because I've worn out my keyboard! Must get another!]

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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

No. I don't buy into those kind of stats. Stats can tell you anything they want. Any references for the data used to produce those stats? Whose analysis was it?

So whose stats do you prefer to believe then!

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Speed camera policy Kills

The premise of this post is fundamentally flawed, as if there were no speed cameras then there would be no detectors.

Yes a driver with a detector is still mildly distracted by the issue of where speed cameras are, but he is LESS distracted than without the detector. If there were no cameras, the problem wouldn't exist at all.

By the way, a few years ago I used to be against detectors too, because I didn't like the idea of any driver being untouchable. However, it is now clear that speed cameras do nothing to target truly dangerous driving and are all about netting the maximum amount of money. Therefore a camera detector is a reasonable tool for the average motorist to both lessen the distraction of trying to spot cameras, and defend himself from entrapment by concealed cameras, which are supposed to be highly visible anyway.

and
In answer to your earlier question and in response to this statement I ask a simple question;

Which is more dangerous? 1. constantly scanning the side of the road looking for cameras, 2. constantly monitoring your speed to ensure that it will not matter if you miss a camera or 3. have a camera detector so that you can concentrate on driving with occassional reminders to check your speedo.

I'm sure you will offer another alternative of just driving slower, but if you have to travel a long distance you will be losing a lot of time to achieve this option because you will need to travel at around 10mph below the speed limit to ensure you will not accidently creep over it.

But the simplest and best solution is to ban cameras as they are nothing more than revenue raisers and distract government from fixing the real problems on the road. The reason for this site, and many other sites, is to draw attention to this dramatically flawed belief that the cameras are best way to address the road toll.

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Ross

Yes I'm a hoon, but only on the track!!!!

M3RBMW, I notice you are in Vic. Having just moved back to UK from a couple of years in Melbourne, where speeding tolerance is way lower than the UK, I am fully aware that cameras represent an economic policy rather than a safety policy. If my memory serves me correctly, Vic state govt budget figures for 2005 need to pull in $60m AUD in fines. In other words, they need their own road safety policy to fail in order to reach their target revenue (this is revenue from all types of fines, not just speeding). Ludicrous policy, and no, I do not support it as the road safety policy that it is masked as.

However, my original question was asking if detectors represent as much of a distraction as speed cameras allegedly do. I have heard that detectors can go off every time your car passes a shop security door, for example, - i.e. more distraction, especially in areas of heavy pedestrian traffic.

I am a detector-sceptic. Instead of a driver being speed-aware, does a detector not take aware the driver's own ability to judge speed? After all, you are placing your dependency on a gadget, rather than learning to use your own judgement? Lazy driving?

I think you are a couple of years out of date.
Modern ones have better filtering anf the GPS ones don't at all..

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Speed camera policy Kills

You would have the problem of more speeders getting away with it.

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I stole this .sig

And that is a very bad thing....

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Speed camera policy Kills

My first detector (can't remember the brand) was prone to giving false alarms. Actually that's an understatement - the damn thing used to go off several times on every journey. In that respect it was a poor buy, since after a while I began to ignore it, and eventually stopped using it altogether.

However, I wouldn't call it a distraction by any means. It would depend on how a driver with a detector reacts to it when it goes off. If their reaction is to start looking around to see if there really is a camera and where it is, then yes it is a distraction, but I would argue that the driver is probably not a very good one if they allow themselves to be put off the immediate activity of driving so easily. Similarly, if the reaction is to do another speed check, even if the last one was 5 seconds earlier and confirmed that you're under the limit, again it's a distraction. On the other hand, if the driver reacts by continuing to drive as before but now with the knowledge that there may be a speed trap nearby, then it is no more distracting than having the stereo switch from your favourite CD to the local radio's traffic report.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

As others have said, newer detectors are more able to avoid false alarms like that. However, in such a scenario as you describe there, with someone driving along a shop-filled pedestrian-filled street, any driver possessing the slightest amount of common sense would be driving below the posted limit regardless of whether they believed there to be a speed camera in the vicinity.

Generally though, whilst the audible/visible warning given off by the detector may be a distraction that wouldn't exist if the detector weren't fitted, it's surely better to have advance warning of a camera site so that you know you've got time to check and adjust if necessary your speed in a safe and gradual manner, as opposed to the problem we see too often of someone suddenly noticing the camera and panic braking to bring themselves under what they think the limit is, even if the actual limit is somewhat higher.

Put it another way, if you were driving along an unfamiliar road, but your frontseat passenger knew every inch of it and kept offering advice as to approaching hazards before they came into sight (sharp bends, hidden junctions, camera sites etc.), would you consider that distracting to the extent that your drive along that road would be less safe than if the passenger remained silent (or you were alone) and you were left with no idea of the road ahead?

I suppose some drivers could be sufficiently distracted by an extra bit of audio/visual feedback from an in-car system such that, for them, a detector would do more harm than good. But, realistically, how many drivers have such an inability to deal with distractions?




Not at all, it merely acts as an extra tool in the drivers collection. Besides, the speedometer is a gadget designed to show the vehicle speed - should we do away with those on the grounds that some drivers may rely on them to determine their speed rather than being able to judge it by use of sensory cues? In addition, given the shabby state of too many speed limit signs in this country (hidden by foliage or other badly-placed signs/street furniture, penny-pinching local authorities installing the smallest repeaters as far apart as is legally allowable, old signs not covered/removed when a limit is changed), even the most aware of drivers may sometimes find themselves genuinely unable to state with complete certainty what the speed limit is on a stretch of road. In such a position, which driver would turn down a gadget which told them exactly what the limit was at all times, for every stretch of road across the entire country?

Pace notes...

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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

It seems to me that the over simplification of having to adhere to a number on a dial in order to apparently preserve safety, is also removing drivers speed awareness.
If yo couldnt drive from one end of the country to the other without a speedo, then you shouldnt be driving.

My point being that drivers are not being encouraged to be 'safe' speed aware, just speed limit aware, two very different things.

As for the whole, 'camera detector' debate, surely anything that slows people down so they dont loose there livelihoods, is also achieving the supposed purpse of the cameras? How can that be a bad thing? Of course we know the answer to that.

Getting away with what? It's not really a crime im my book. Or are you just refering to excesive speed for the conditions, which is a different thing altogether.

Round our way TPTB are imposing ridiculous limits for no good reason, and that shouldnt be making criminals out of competant drivers/riders. It seems the system is pandering to the worst road users who cant travel at reasonable speeds, and unishing those of us that can.

This is such a nanny state, tha has completely lost the plot, at the expence of more lives.