Safe Speed Forums

not seen much (any?) discussion on these two systems i've just been reading about in an industry mag.

apparently specs3 acheived type approval in January and allows
- monitoring of a network of roads within an enforcement zone
- cameras can cover multiple lanes
- each camera monitor the front or rear of vehicle (biker beware)
- each camera can act as an entry or exit camera (see above)
- a change to police operational guidelines mean the cameras are allowed to capture images in zero ambient (visible) light

competitor system redfusion is currently undergoing type approval and offers most of the abovev although the implementation is slightly different using a laser trigger to capture the image which is then post processed to pick up the plate (reduces required processing power apparently).

most average speed check systems i've come across to date i don't have a massive problem with, being mostly in roadworks.
where not in roadworks it appears mostly based on being cheaper than re-engineering the road itself, which grates a little.

one of the articles signs off with ".. the link between enforcement and revenue generation, perceived or otherwise, remains broken".

I wonder why they think this or felt that it was necessary to say it?

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

i think because they see the primary benefits of specs as safety & improved traffic flow, enforcement is just a byproduct, some of the stats they quote actually suggest the hit rate for speeding is much reduced when using specs than for static cams.

Interesting point of view but the fact remains that none of these systems would be developed if they weren't used for enforcement (i.e. collecting the money to pay for them - otherwise known as revenue generation). This is not a case of money being spent by the Government "for the greater good". It has to be at least self-financing or it would not happen.

Why do cameras get installed at sites where road engineering would be a better solution? It's the balance sheet.

I would be happy to receive the claimed benefits without the oppression of continuously looking at the speedo and doing mental gymnastics about speed.

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

mental gynastics are only required if you insist on exceeding the posted limit surely .... ?
and in a specs enforced zone you'd be pretty foolish/unlikely to do so..... hence why they work fairly well.

as for continuously looking at the speedo, it'd be a pretty poor driver who is unable to maintain an approximate speed based on gear & engine noise after more than a couple of speedo checks.

sorry to go against the grain

Self financing in what way though?

Are the judicial and penal systems monetarily self financing?

Wow, a convert to the church of weepej!

In some SPECS zones you still do have to do a form of mental gymnastic: remaining aware enough to ensure you don't creep above the speed limit, especially within long sections and the limit is set needlessly low.


In short zones perhaps, assuming the engine isn't too quiet at low speeds (such as 50/40mph), but it is too easy to revert back to normal (and reasonable) driving speeds in long sections.

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

peej. dont flatter yourself, i barely bother reading most of your posts these days.

steve... i'm afraid i've found neither a problem tbh.

Obviously, otherwise you would be sticking up for me when I get pillored for suggesting the same thing .

I don't have reason to doubt you, but you can't dismiss the real problem of awareness when fatigue claims more casualties than speeding ('too fast' and 'above the limit' combined), more so where conditions aren't conducive to concentration, such as needlessly low limits for extended durations.

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

A slightly more general point.

How will motorists be assured that the minimum time between cameras has been correctly calculated using the proper speed limits inforce at the time and accurate distance of travel?

Will motorists be able to verify these data?

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

Perhaps. We sometimes see this same occur when the driver thinks he lost our "stealthmobile"

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What if your car has a torque converter somewhere in it's drivetrain?

I can easily make an audibly different engine note (around 500rpm) without changing travelling speed, and the car sometimes will do this on it's own if the conditions change, such as a slight change in incline.

CVTs are more confusing than torque converters. The engine speed stays constant as you accellerate.

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

well i guess they'll have to be if they're wanting to challenge a ticket.
i wonder if the type approval covers this ?
there was a mention of this in the article somewhere but it was a trivial comment and i dont have the article in front of me right now.

the main evidence i guess would be the timestamped images & anpr readout for entry/exit points, hopefully the map & limit data used would either count as part of the calibration of the system, or be well version controlled & recorded along with the offence data.

ah here's the paragraph of interest in that respect:

ahd here's the reference for this:



(dubious source cited: bbcnewsonline.plymouth@bbc.co.uk !)

It makes sense in a way. Believe it or not GPS is accurate for this purpose. Sure GPS can drift by up to 40 feet, but the drift is constant across a large area, so unless you're running SPECS down a city centre street with tall buildings then you can accurately get the distance between cameras by this method.

Does it say anything about how each individual camera gets it's time (again GPS would be valid for this) or are they just dumb cameras all linked to a central controller somewhere, thus only one time source to worry about.

Short of them cocking up the initial setup (ie putting the cameras too close together) the design of the system seems pretty robust. You can't really have the system drift out of calibration. Not unless your road crosses a fault line or something.

Yup i'm happy GPS offsets drift relatively slowly, say over several minutes, enough to grab a log of one route option. For a more complex network of roads i expect they'd be logging over several hours, so stitching the data together may not be totally trivial. Unless they're going to run one calibration run for every entry/exit combination for a more complex system would soon mount up.
Not sure why they need to spec a GPS, I'd have thought a calibrated survey vehicle was just as easy and would provide a better paper trail.
I'd be even happier if i knew the approved GPS system was DGPS based, even better with a fixed base station at one of the entry/exit points.



The articles are only 2 x a few pages so not in great depth.
The redspeed system refers to the ANPR data being transferred with "two seperate GPS time stamps for added accuracy".

I'm not clear where the processing takes place in specs, the impression i get is at the camera end or at least roadside where "each camera unit is a remote node, communicating back to a central server using wired or wireless telecommunications".

The redspeed article gives a clear structure with a laser triggered image capture, to a "remote image detector" to do the ANPR, sending the data & timestamps to a "front office decision making unit where the information is held pending the vehicle leaving the monitored zone".

(and to counter the next question, if no data or match is found the information is deleted)