Safe Speed Forums

This was an article in the sun, got my salt handy.
But what if?

"

Cops get one-mile car cam



POLICE have unveiled the “Rolls-Royce” of speed cameras which nick drivers almost a MILE away.

The hand-held Unipar device bounces laser beams off cars at a range of up to 5,000ft.

It records the speed inside two-fifths of a second.

Northumbria Police are using several of the £2,500 cameras at accident blackspots in the North East.

An official said: “We hope it will lead to a reduction in casualties.”

or was that - "this could increase our financial position??"

Anyone heard any similar stories??

Police & civilian camera operators are supposed to only target vehicles which "in their expert opinion, are exceeding the speed limit".

I imagine this assessment would be difficult to make on a car or bike that's 1 mile away!

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“For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.” - H. L. Mencken

Ahhh, but its fine as long as the vehicle from which its being used is visible from ,what is it, 60m away?

And besides, Camera van operators are already so good at hiding out behind bridges, bushes etc, do they really need this (probably expensive) technology anyway?

The camera part of the device would have to have one heck of a zoom lens.

_________________
“For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.” - H. L. Mencken

Hand-held, with a range of 1 mile??? I know you can get some pretty good stabilisation systems for handhelds, but I really doubt they'd be sufficiently effective so as to allow the laser to be held steady on the number plate for long enough to get a valid reading. Even tripod/vehicle mounted, the slightest of vibrations from passing vehicles or wind blowing against the camera casing or the host vehicle could cause the aim to be knocked off.

It's entirely possible for the laser part of the device to operate over a mile, but I suspect the actual operational range of the entire system is somewhat less than this... Bit of scaremongering by the local SCP, perhaps?

Twister - hence the remark about salt -as in with a pinch -i thought that too - plus how about beam width -would need to be totally parallel to just get one car at that distance.
My thought were SCP scare tactics - but someone might know better

For some reason I turned the salt comment into an image of you holding a few crumpled pages from the Sun, filled with freshly cooked chips...


...silly me, the safety mafia did away with using newspaper for chips ages ago, but ah the memories live on




It'd need to be pretty tight, though I've seen some fairly cheap (relatively speaking!) industrial lasers advertised with beam divergence down to 0.15mrad, which would give a beam width of around 25cm at 1 mile - narrower than the beam width of the LTI 20-20 at the upper end of its operational range... Whether you'd be able to build such a laser into a handheld scamera and keep the total cost down to the £2500 figure quoted is another matter, but it appears technically feasible at least.