Safe Speed Forums

http://www.lep.co.uk/news/Speed-trap-blunder-cops-to.5074239.jp


Ask yourself what possible effect this could have had on the accuracy of the cameras - RSS won a high profile case in Yorkshire which was fought on the same grounds, and the defendant was hit with £7000 of costs!

The technician had also lied about carrying out the checks in court cases, yet has got off with merely losing his job!

Drivers in the Lancashire area who have been found guilty of PCoJ by taking points for drivers caught speeding should ask to have the cases reviewed in case any of their clients were not actually speeding!
Lancashire already has the highest numbers of motorists going to court to dispute the speeding allegations - partly because of the publicity surrounding not just this case, but others.
The whole rotten apple barrel is being looked into - not least by the Audit Commission, who are looking into financial irregularities, and a county council official who is alleged to have mislead the council.
Please take the time to follow this case, as they are desperately trying to keep the lid on it. The 18 months spent investigating this case is a crude attempt to deflect the adverse publicity which was bound to follow!

I hope the technician who lied in court is brought to book in similar fashion to the PCoJ cases!

_________________
Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

They are definitely coming home to roost Ernest see link below then read on!

http://www.lep.co.uk/travel/Speed-trap- ... 5074239.jp


The actual Lancashire Court figures,
obtained from authentic Home Office
& Ministry for Justice issued Stats are:

court cases 2002 2,182
court cases 2003 7,400 Lancs. Police Court Referrals 5,088
court cases 2004 5,453 Lancs. Police Court Referrals 24,911
court cases 2005 5,081 Lancs. Police Court Referrals 26,805
court cases 2006 6,087 Lancs. Police Court Referrals 27,364



I have recently received the provisional court figures for 2007 and:

The COMBINED TOTAL OF ALL MOTORING OFFENCES FOR CUMBRIA & LANCASHIRE TOGETHER ARE ONLY 167 short of Lancashire Constabularies claimed speeding offences for that year.
The Court figures are from yearly published Ministry of Justice “Motoring offences 2002 -2006” on their website
Now....... The National Audit Office, who is responsible for auditing the courts accounts, after investigating for 2 months says:

Paul Keane
Financial Director NAO 19/03/09


There appears to be over 64,000 issued summonses (including the 2007 figures) that have never been processed to the courts but Lancashire Constabulary have they been paid for them? Of course from the income from the mugs who pay the FPN without quibble
So........ where can they be?
Well I cannot believe that the courts would have any vested interest in not processing legitimate summonses so... they must be other traffic offences THAT DO GO THROUGH THE COURT SYSTEM AS FPNS!!!! Mobile phone, seat belt offences etc; but of course, THIS ISN'T ALLOWED!!!

If this isn't true then..........

As a betting man, it seems that any speeding motorist has A 4-1 ODDS ON chance of hearing nothing more if he ignores the summons!!

In other words this is "creative accounting" to subsidise The Constabulary's budget from Government, from camera generated incom, but not allowed under the Road Safety Camera Scheme.

As these missing "FPNs" have been "authenticated" by:
The Head of Audit Commission North West
Lancashire County Council's Finance Officer
Lancashire Police Authority's Account(Same bloke as LCCs Finance Office)
LCCs internal auditor (Same bloke as LCCs Finance Officer)
Blackburn CTO
The Ministry for Transport
The Home Office
The Ministry for Justice (Jack Straws Dept; who just happens to be the Labour M.P. for Blackburn and the guy who forgot a dodgy £3,000 donation to his birthday party!)
Vernon Coaker, Minister for Justice
As being "AUTHENTICATED TO EVIDENCE" as speeding offences - where are they??
All ideas would be appreciated by the above named bodies to assist them in the enquiries.... So long as they don't contain the phrases, "milking", "cash cow", "fiddle" or "burglars in pinstripe suits".

The credit crunch has exposed the banking fiddles now perhaps it's the turn of the Public Authorities Accountants & their "overseeing?" body The Audit Commission!
I'm thinking of getting them to do my tax returns next time and see if I qualify for a rebate from The LRSP for work I "HAVEN'T DONE FOR THEM!" You never know there might still be a little room left on the gravy train!
Surely these two guys couldn't be responsible for such a fiddle? But if not, who is????

absolutely none at all, its made to sound like a complex procedure by the media to me no more complex than checking my screenwash

so the manufacturers manual / ACPO states that a fixed distance check and scope alignment check shall be carried out at the beginning and end of each shift, say for instance i carried out a FDC and SA monday morning / afternoon, tuesday morning / afternoon, weds morning, thurs morning / afternoon, fri morning / afternoon,

one FDC and SA missed on the weds afternoon, does not make the laser red dot go out of alignment

_________________
now retired

No, but it's also true to say that the motorist who stays within the speed limit Monday morning and afternoon, Tuesday morning and afternoon, Thursday morning and afternoon, Friday morning and afternoon, Wednesday morning...

...and then gets caught over the odds on Wednesday afternoon, gets shown no mercy.

Sorry, but if this is all about rules, then what's good for the goose has to be good for the gander!

You're right Mole, but what if you're caught with a bent cameraman operating the camera and you're not really speeding but the Partnership need a bit more money so they offer you a criminal record or payup? Highwaymen comes to mind here.

You seem to be missing the point! The entire set up in Blackburn CTO was rotten from the Highest level down, but it was allowed and encouraged to operate in this manner. It was covered up from a very high level and made & is still making millions of extra money for both Lancashire Constabulary and Lancashire County Council.
LRSP is a PR machine, a front, simply set up to pick the pocket of the motorist whilst convincing them it is "In theirs and the interest of Road Safety".

Don't forget it was Lancashire's Chief Constable at the time, 2003, now the No 1 man at the Met, who:

Took speeding out of the law, by doing away with the 3 penalty points for speeders even though the law (Government rules, Mole) said it was a criminal offence,by raising the prosecution level to 39,49,59 mph for first offenders,resulting in speed awareness courses increasing overnight from a turnover of a few thousand grand a year to nearly £2,000,000 , producing hundreds of thousands of pounds PROFIT between LCC & The Constabulary,and then selling the scheme on to ACPO who are now making millions every year from refererral charges to check if they have had a speed awareness course in the last three years!
In Lancashire, as an example, in one particular year 2005, over 57,000 "speeders" were referred for a speed awareness course, The police were paid £127,000 for these referrals by LCC, but only 18,000 actually took the course.
So.. what happened to the rest? They certainly didn't All go to Court and they certainly didn't ALL pay a fixed penalty, and this is the pattern for every year! So did they pay by some other method, still undiscovered, to avoid prosecution & penalty points?

This is the outfit who abused ACPOs own code of conduct,set up to avoid the police being innundated by data protection requests, by selling the speeding camera photographic evidence to anybody who was willing to pay a tenner!! Greed & Profit my friend!

This is the outfit who allow civilian employees to do the job of police officers, then go on to lie in court. Ever thought why Mole! Because if it was a serving police officer and if PCoJ could'nt be proved, he would certainly be done for abusing his position in a public office. Employees do not hold public office so can't be done!Simple! Another brick in the "wall of rules" kicked in!

Mole, I don't have a beef with the everyday coppers. They are there to protect you & me from the bad guys and do a good job.

No it's the top men, financial advisers and wannabees, who hide behind their authority, change the law for profit, break the rules for profit and, if you have the right connections or are a member of the right organisation will create doorways in the system that allow them to "overlook" your offence because they believe they are too clever to be caught!

Well they were exposed in Lancashire and if you compare the listings of Road Safety Meetings 2 years ago with today's you will see how the Mighty have fallen; CTO manager, Partnership manager, summonsing Officer-ALL GONE!
Now it's up to the new broom to convince us that we really were speeding when we get caught and not beenfitted up!!! I'm still not convinced.
The cameraman, in this case was the fall guy. The IPCC investigation only covered 6 months Sept 2006 - May 2007:

It's taken nearly a year to bring the two employees to a hearing but it only covers a 6 month period of failing to process court doucuments because that is the time scale of the IPCC set by The Chief Constable! Whatever happens the public will never know the outcome or who they were!

Secret Societies are well & running in Lancashire (as well as everywhere else in the country).

Let's hope these two "employees" have the right membership to protect their interests; as a betting man again I'm sure they have the right connections that will ensure that they are rewarded for their failure!.
After all Lancashire Constabulary have been for years!!!

I have had the chance to handle an older, out of use, one of these. I have to say that given the construction it is unlikely that the laser and red dot scope would go out of alignment without a significant impact, such an impact would probably also inflict other noticeable damage. The unit I tried had not been set up for many months and the laser was still tightly aligned with the scope. I suspect that adjustment is very seldom needed, can you confirm this CO?

The purpose the tests should serve is to show that any measurements performed between the tests are valid or not. If an alignment check is missed then what it really does is extend the period over which any results could be invalidated. It is reasonable to assume that any measurements made between two alignment checks where alignment has been maintained without any adjustment to be valid. This is subject to an number of provisos, the main one is that the instrument should have a good history of stability, i.e no adjustment has been needed to pass the alignment check for some time. If an instrument has a history that shows adjustments are needed then it is quite possible that the alignment is undergoing some kind of drift when in use and two successive valid alignments may only be due to chance.

You can take my opinion as you wish, it is one based on ten years experience working with optical systems to military and space standards.

In the end this comes down not to the accuracy of the equipment, but how much the process or people can be trusted. It would be easy for someone to skip the alignment check or lie about the scope needing adjusting to pass at the end of session check. While this may happen I think it would be more due to laziness or fear of being told off for having to write off a whole shifts readings. One thing you would have to ask is what advantage could be gained by deliberately misaligning the scope and laser.

While I think failing to follow the procedures should be grounds to quash a speeding charge as, if one arbitrary rule must be followed then so should the ones needed to enforce it, however unless the instrument is actually faulty the alignment will not really be in error.

Do not for a moment think I have any support for these things though, it is simply that I believe the main problem is the usage and policies rather than the accuracy of the equipment.

_________________
Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

Hi Toltec,
Thanks for your comments.
Would it be possible to deliberately set one of these to automatically record any passing vehicle as travelling with a fixed range of speeds, say 31 to 38, irrespective of the speed they were travelling at?
I have no technical knowledge of the cameras and just wonder how far they could be fiddled.
Thanks

The unit I handled had an on/off switch and a trigger to activate the laser, there were no external controls that would let an operator adjust anything. This one did not have the video camera and recorder attached so I do not know if any adjustments are possible on that part of the equipment. Presumably the firmware code could be made to give whatever readouts you wanted, it seems unlikely this could be done by an operator in the field though. One interesting thing I was told was that the UK spec units have accelerometers in them to detect excessive movement during a reading to prevent vibration or sweeping across a target vehicle from producing readings. All I can really comment on with any surety is the apparent robustness of the units design in respect of the alignment of the laser and scope unfortunately. I believe I have a good idea how the electronics and optics work in the unit from looking at some of the published calibration procedures, it should not be that hard to make it work properly. To get a speed reading the critical factor is going to be the algorithms which process the returned signals though. At a working distance of several hundred meters the laser beam will have spread to a diameter in the order of 1 metre, this means the returned signal will be spread over time by the differing distances to the various parts of the vehicle it is reflecting from. I was told that the software/firmware analysed a number of returned pulses to determine not only the speed but the stability of the the aim, i.e. that the beam was not being flicked down the bonnet for instance. I think the largest chance for incorrect readings lies at this stage, it all depends on how well the algorithms have been written and tested.

The other thing that occurs to me is the possibility of measuring a vehicles speed from the video footage if you think this is the case.

A bit brief unfortunately, I have to go and wash the dishes and go to bed now

_________________
Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

I don't think it is possible to tamper with the gun in a manner not requiring exceptional skill, so that rules out operators
However, it may be possible to add a 'box' between the gun and the data recorder (or just not bother with the connection to the gun at all) to create the necessary data for a conviction; this is well within the realms of plausibility and operator ability.



Accelerometers, or gyroscopes (angular rotational velocity sensors) won't help a jot. The usually gun has to be panned to get a reading of a target vehicle of which the path is not directly towards/away from the gun. Non-smooth panning would likely be detected (by inference) by the gun’s algorithms anyway.


The gun can interpret that as an overly strong signal (saturation of the avalanche sensor), in this case it could reduce the sensitivity/power to compensate.


This is the real flaw - the sensor cannot determine speed in any direct way. It doesn't matter how good the algorithms are because the method used to capture the data is too simplistic. The sensor cannot differentiate between returned pulses from a moving target and pulses returned from a slipped surface; hence no amount of subsequent processing can prevent a false reading.


That's what RSS do, as have I on occasion.


Indeed. The products our company manufactures needs to be calibrated, so we have a system where equipment must be signed for when taken. This is for tractability of those who have used it, as opposed to tracing the person who currently has it. Should the equipment fall outside the allowed bands of operation, all those listed as having used it since the last calibration will be notified and judgments would be made for the checking of their results.

_________________
Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

Off the top of my head I can think of some methods to analyse return pulses but it would require a detector capable of outputting an amplitude against time profile for the return. You could then compare a set of returned pulse profiles to determine if there had been any slippage during the time frame.

Of course if they do not do this then, iirc, with a measurement interval of a third of a second you could add three metres a second with a sweep from windscreen to radiator grill. This should show up on the video though so it should be difficult to get away with.

It is probably possible to produce an instrument that would be accurate enough and able reject slippage etc. Whether the Lti2020 is such an instrument I cannot say, the scope alignment looked good when I checked against static objects and the construction appeared robust enough to maintain it without constant adjustment. That is why I was careful to offer an opinion on that aspect only.

I still think the main problem is not the accuracy of the LTis or the ability/trustworthyness of the operators, rather that they are used to enforce a technical offence which has no bearing on safety. If an instrument of irrefutable veracity could be used for the task then the policy would still be wrong. Still I suppose there is nothing much wrong with attacking the technical capabilities of a system designed to capture a technical offence.

_________________
Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

[quote="toltec"

I have had the chance to handle an older, out of use, one of these. I have to say that given the construction it is unlikely that the laser and red dot scope would go out of alignment without a significant impact, such an impact would probably also inflict other noticeable damage. The unit I tried had not been set up for many months and the laser was still tightly aligned with the scope. I suspect that adjustment is very seldom needed, can you confirm this CO?

[/quote]

i have never heard of a laser going out of alignment

_________________
now retired

I think you are on the right track. The method you describe, while being a step in the right direction, wouldn't prevent a slip reading. A pan along a road surface would still pass that test.

I think it is impossible for a snapshot distance ranger to reliably detect a slip error, but ......
sorry, I'm not going to post those thoughts on a public forum. I don't want to give those lying SCPs (they already lie about camera effectiveness against KSIs) a means to lie about the reliability of these flawed lidar guns.

_________________
Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

Many thanks Toltec,Steve & Camera operator.

My thoughts were that the camera operator would have to be able to do something simple but it appears that in the case of Lancashire he was just the fall guy to distract the publics' & press attention away from the other two employees !
The IPCC Press Releases did rather dramatise the camera operators role and play to the tabloids and all the press attention was focused on his activities.

(Looks like the IPCC didn't do a good job in their investigation for the public interest but did from Lancashire Constabulary's point of view and pocket!)

He was very quickly dispatched but it has taken a year to get a hearing for the activities of the other two employees for incorrectly processing court documents.
The CPS refused to prosecute - not enough evidence despite his admittance that he PCoJ by stating to the courts that his evidence was true when it obviously wasn't ?

The other two:
The CPS refused to prosecute - not enough evidence again!
Not suspended, probably on "garden leave" till everything cools down and forgotten, quck disciplinary and sent back to work with a rise; IPCC forget to publish a Press release: Job Done!!.
(No reward for failure hadn't been coined when they were napped! )

The facts that the publicly produced figures from Lancashire Courts & Lancashire Constabulary indicate that anyone ignoring a court summons in Lancashire for speeding has better than a 3-1 ODDS ON chance of nothing happening to them is remarkable.
No fine, No Points No criminal record - Nothing!!!

The Fact that the National Audit Office, responsible for the accountability of the courts' system nationally & all Government Offices is unable to explain the differences after a 2 months investigation seems unreal.

However as they say, the facts speak for themselves.
It is a fact that these summonses have been sent to the courts as Lancashire Constabulary have been paid for them to be sent to the courts from the money paid by the public who admitted they were speeding & paid their FPNs without quibble and proven to The Auditors by LCCs Director of Finance.

It is a fact that they were not SACs, confirmed by LCCs Finance Director as LCC paid Lancashire Constabulary for all referrals, wether they took up the offer or not,from the money paid again by the public to LCC for going on their courses. Well over £100,000 a year!!!

I stress these are not MY FACTS but simply reported facts & figures published by the Government and all participating bodies, freely available to anyone with an interest.

If anyone is interested in the government statistics for motoring and a nice flow chart showing how it is possible to get paid twice for the same work they can be downloaded from here:

http://rapidshare.com/files/212475314/D ... _Money.rar

http://rapidshare.com/files/208694431/m ... 3_2006.rar

Is there a recommended program for unstuffing .RAR files?

_________________
Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

I use Winrar. I can't find a freeware version, but I can email you something useful if you wish.

_________________
Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

Get winrar here:
http://rapidshare.com/files/201020390/wrar380full.exe
Enjoy the stats!

Provisional figures for 2007 from Lancashire Courts show that the combined number of ALL MOTORING OFFENCES FOR CUMBRIA & LANCASHIRE are 24,500! The claim for payment from Lancashire Constabulary for ONLY speeding offences is 24,363 paid for from the income for FPNs paid under the Road Safety Camera Scheme! How long does this Constabulary believe that it can carry on in this manner?
Here's the latest to Nigel Evans M.P.


A licence to print money & do they milk the cash cow dry!!!!
I mean these figures are simply unbelieveable but the muggings motorists are expectedto cough up!
When it gets to the stage that the protectors of the public purse fail who do we turn to!
Everyday it seems that the Authorities are bigger criminals than the people they are prosecuting. Fiddles are fine! What was called fraud is now "creative Accountantancy"! The statements from the Authorities that this is beneficial to us but you still have to pay has gone too far.
Maybe this is a global problem(Fiddle!) perhaps George Orwell's 1984 has arrived & we don't know about it.
But what we do know, under the FOI is that SOMEBODY is on the fiddle, IN A BIG WAY, and the accountants are running the country with immunity from the Law Protectors! Where is the Fraud Squad when you need them, After all this is a bigger fiddle than a £1,000,000 a year..... but I forget it's the police that are involved!

Maybe a copy of your letter should be sent to some of our national news papers? Or do they already frequent these forums.

_________________
Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

But would "the national newspapers" make any difference ?
The problem is not one of proof, but one of interest and duty.
Obviously, if the police are the ones committing the fraud then you have major problems.
And since the police intimidation of newspaper reporters carries-on, one has to ask for what reason are they doing it ?
And whether the police service is now a separately operating political unit in its own right ?
Certainly the ACPO seems to be following its own agenda, with little interest in law, but lots in money.
And the press are so institutionalised now that they may as well be considered part of government.

_________________
The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing