Safe Speed Forums

Here's an idea i thought i would bounce off a few people. Cameras could be fitted to civilian cars, picked at random, which would simply record the road in front of the car. This footage could then be analysed by trained people, not taking up valuable police time and any offenders seen could be prosecuted. If on the film someone is seen driving whilst on a phone then theres no excuse or "sorry but the camera was not calibrated properly" etc etc. If dangerous driving is witnessed then again the footage could be used to prosecute. In more extreme cases where accidents are caught on film then this could add valuable evidence in the prosecution of guilty parties and a greater understanding of the moments leading up to the incident. As long as the system was not abused such as prosecuting someone who forgot to indicate once for example then i cannot see any problems. With modern technology in cameras, the digital age would enable a very small camera to be fitted almost unseen. Any costs would be off set from time saved investigating incidents and fines from the guilty parties.
Any ideas gratefully recieved.

Sorry I think that is a horrible idea. Not more cameras! What we need are more police back on the roads.

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Shooting is good for you and too good for some people.

I think that it suffers from one of the many inadequacies of the existing camera system - lack of immediacy.

Receiving a NIP a couple of weeks after the alleged offence isn't going to make the offender anything other than annoyed at the "Big Brother" approach. It's certainly not going to give them the pause for thought and reflection that would come from being pulled up, there and then, by a police car.

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"Politicians are the same the world over... We build bridges where there aren't any rivers." - Nikita Kruschev

Would you be happy to be the first in line to have the camera fitted?

Call you a pilot scheme.

Would you be happy with your every move caught on camera and scrutinised?

Come on guys - go easy. This is a new user and this is brainstorming. Even if you don't like the idea 'head on' perhaps we can find another angle on it.

Mr Flex, please just ignore them and feel free to contribute ideas, and in this section, even wild ideas SHOULD BE welcomed by all.

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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

The main thing I would be wary of is who is going to enforce the rule that this system is not to abused, i.e. if the police do NIP you for forgetting to indicate once who is going to stop them?

This is something I’ve been mulling on for a while now. I think it’s potentially a great idea; it has the ability to root out the genuinely dangerous drivers (speeding or not).

A fully-fledged multi camera, removable hard drive, recording system would cost less than 1k to produce and install, almost insignificant when compared to the cost of a speed camera. Imagine the coverage that could be achieved if the money for 5000 speed cameras was instead put into such a scheme. There is around 250000 miles of road in the UK, that would mean up to 1 mobile camera unit per mile! Of course, not every driver will be driving 24 hours a day, but it still means there is a good chance of a dangerous action being captured. Habitual offenders will eventually be caught.

Upon seeing something dangerous, all the driver need to is press a button that will place a ‘marker’ on the video stream. Then at the end of the week, just connect the hard drive to a PC with a fast internet connection with appropriate software to upload the video stream near the markers. The Police would only need view suspected offences, confirm them (eliminating the reliance of the driver’s perception of what is dangerous) and take further action if necessary, using the video as evidence for all to see when in court. I don’t think privacy concerns would be a problem given that the rest of the video stream will be discarded.

This scheme can’t replace trafpol of course; some drivers need to be removed form the road immediately, others will have false plates to avoid being tracked down.

Given the frequent poor manoeuvres and judgements I see on the road everyday, I would happily have one of these fitted to my car and hundreds of thousands of others. This has got to be better than the system we have today - mind you, any system would be better than the one we have today


Thoughts?

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

Regarding my previous ideas, i welcome any critisism and i agree that the system would be quite open to abuse. One point raised i do disagree with is getting more police on the roads. Although more are needed, we would need huge numbers to fully patrol the roads. If this was done we would get the usual response that the police should be catching real criminals not preying on innocent motorists!!!
At the end of the day the only deterent with serious crimes on the roads and the streets is proper sentencing at thecourts. We are constantly told in the media of people who despite having no licence, no MOT, no insurance, several driving bans and a string of driving offenses and then get off with a couple of hundred quid fine a shake of the judges finger and maybe another pointless ban. You could put a police car on every street and police down every road, but unless there is a real deterant then its pointless. Just watch any programme such as Booze Britain, Street crime etc etc and see just how much you can get away with these days and just be let off with either a caution or a small fine.
P.S Big brother has never bothered me as i have nothing to hide. It may be cheesy sounding and no doubt a bit simplistic but with the kind of people around these days then film away as far as i'm concerned.

There's another problem with this idea that I've just remembered: the camera doesn't capture everything that's going on.

There was an episode of some TV sitcom where a woman was taken to court because a police officer claimed she pulled out in front of another car, causing it to swerve. She denied the accusation, but she was shown the tape from a CCTV camera that appeared to show her guilt. Later, however, she got hold of a tape from another camera that showed the wider scene: when she pulled out, it was clear, and the car that had to swerve actually did an illegal U-turn after she had pulled out and almost rammed her off the road.

Malcolm in the Middle

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Less Kodak, more Kojak.
In times of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

Sorry I don't get it. A US TV sitcom I've never seen? Care to explain?

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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

Yes, which is what Zamzara described; it's a little like the Simpsons. That is such a funny show

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0212671/

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

Ahhh - I see - it referred to the post above. Doh!

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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

The idea of cameras in cars does seem to be a little impractical to me. I don't want to be negative and crush fresh ideas but I hate the big brother thing.

Could you make it compulsary? If not it would only work where installed. Who would have access to the film? Anybody or just the authorities? How do you prove it hasn't been tampered with? Where do you mount it on a car that shows what is going on in the whole picture? How do you prove who was driving from the back of their head? Would you allow use of the film from your camera if you ran into the back of somebody?

Cameras don't, as somebody pointed out cover the whole scene. What if it appeared that it was actually you that was doing something wrong?

And the biggest fear is abuse of the system. Like being able to fine people from camera evidence without them being able to defend themselves.

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Shooting is good for you and too good for some people.

It took me a while to get around to answering this.
I’ve tried to answer each question I think is relevant.


I don’t think so. 4 cameras with a HD based recorder sounds normal to me, it’ll be just a modern mobile CCTV system but without the monitors.


As I already said, any irrelevant video would be discarded at the first stage. Drive safely and you’ll have nothing to fear.


I wouldn’t make it compulsory, instead I would offer tax breaks on fuel used for those who adopt the system; hence the higher mileage drivers (those offering the greatest camera coverage) would be tempted to put up with such a system.


The video could be encrypted such that only the authorities could view the video, but this isn’t really necessary being as the video is taken from public roads where anyone can view directly what is being recorded; privacy concerns are a non starter.


It’s difficult to prove the authenticity of just 1 picture. However, this is video so it’s likely the relevant part of an event will be captured in hundreds of consecutive frames, at different angles and perhaps even across several cameras; events on such a system are practically impossible to convincingly forge.


My suggestion would be to use 4 cameras (each at x1 zoom) – bow, stern, port and starboard. I would also be tempted to suggest another front camera zoomed in to clearly capture events further up the road.


As per today’s rear facing systems - you can’t, but at least the VRM would be captured, enabling tracking of the offender (as per S172).


Probably not As I indicated previously, the driver of the camera car will deicide what parts of the video stream would be ‘marked’ for viewing.


I’m sure all will become evident when the whole scene is captured by multiple cameras. Other side of coin: such a system will be invaluable when defending yourself against someone you claim to have hit you.


If the video forms the basis of prosecution, then the defendant will have prior access to this evidence 7 days before the trial otherwise it will be rendered inadmissible - in much the same way when asking for the video for speeding offences determined by Lidar - and the cases get mysteriously dropped


I think you missed the subtle trick here: speeds of vehicles cannot be proven, hence ending the reliance of a number to promote road safety. It’ll be clear in the video if a car is being driven at a dangerously excessive speed.

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

Gosh I'll have to have a think about all that. Really I suppose I am starting to have a distrust of authority and the way they handle evidence. I really would like to believe that if I am innocent then I will have nothing to fear but.........?

And isn't what we are talking about here just apportioning blame rather than it having any affect on road safety?

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Shooting is good for you and too good for some people.

Well this is brainstorming


I don’t think so, why do you say that? The focus of this idea is achieving a good probability for detection of dangerous manoeuvres.

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

Well, I suppose I was really thinking that cameras would just be used to say who was to blame for the accident afterwards, like the black box in an aircraft. If all you learn from the camera is that somebody swerved in front of somebody else that is just down to bad driving and perhaps you are able to say who caused the accident.

If you are suggesting that the presence of cameras in cars will stop people driving badly because they might be on film, then I don't think it will work. The bad driving that causes accidents may be an instantaneous thing, a split seconds misjudgement.

I would rather see prevention rather than evidence after the act.

If you are implying that just bad driving should be recorded and prosecuted then whose decision is it as to what constitutes bad driving or are you suggesting that all film should be viewed.

I tend towards the thought that cost would far out weigh the benefits.

The more I think about it the more questions it seems to raise, like:

Who would pay for hardware? Who would pay for the army of people to interpret the film? Who decides where the cameras are fitted? Who is responsible for their maintenance? How do you ensure they are all working all of the time and what do you do if one stops replace it immediately or at the next convenient service? What happens to them or their hard drive in a crash? How long will it take the hackers to provide a service of some sort to make you innocent?

Interesting subject but the Orwellian aspect frightens me.

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Shooting is good for you and too good for some people.

And another thing. Will the cameras be running all the time or just when you think there will be an accident? What size hard drive do you need to store 100miles of driving or do you expect it to be up-loaded to a central database in which case you will need extra communications equipment.

Who is going to watch all this or are you only going to store the last few minutes before the accident and record over all the previous?

Isn't it getting motorists to spy on other motorists?

What about when the bloke behind you overtakes. He thinks he has performed the perfect manouvre, you think he has cut you up. You were on the speed limit so he must've been speeding. Do you use the film to get him prosecuted for speeding and driving dangerously?

Will there be sound as well? I would hate anybody to hear what I have to say about some of my fellow motorists.

I hope all this explains my concerns about such a system and forgive me if I seem to be a little anxious.

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Shooting is good for you and too good for some people.

Forgiveness isn’t needed - this is brainstorming. The idea might be good, or total carp

A huge post follows……
(I've formatted it in the usual manner for clarity, I hope it's not OTT)




This method would be used to detect any instance of bad/dangerous driving; it’s not just for accident investigation.


My bold.
I really doubt that. This is mostly about driver attitude. The 2 worst (near death) driving examples I have ever seen were quite clearly deliberate actions (without malice but really f***ing stupid nevertheless). OK, you may also get some idiots who has a bad habit of not noticing things like stop lights, surely you want these drivers caught and re-educated (or removed from the road) as soon as possible?


So would I. The camera idea is merely to help ensure the right attitude (and skill level) is maintained, this will go someway to providing a deterrent (a form of prevention), as well the evidence serving as a great example to others.


Only the highlighted sections ‘marked’ by the driver need be reviewed (by Police officers who are experts in the field, the case sent to court if necessary), otherwise those officers may as well be out patrolling the roads (this being a much more expensive option). Note, I don’t envisage that this method replaces any real trafpol, a real-time presence is still necessary to act when required.


Do you know how much GATSO/Lidar/SPECS equipment (and maintenance) currently cost?
TiVo is far from expensive, neither are CCD cameras, so the system could be inexpensive……


We could make proper use of the camera partnerships, which were supposedly meant to be non-profit! Fines for dangerous driving can be substantially upscaled accordingly. I would happily fine the three drivers £10k each for the two incidents I mentioned above, more than enough to recoup one-off hardware and operating costs.


Dunno, haven’t thought about that.


I think these are minor details. We may as well make the camera partnerships work for their money.


You win some, you lose some.


I’m live in hope that hackers will bring down the SPECS network
The hard drive could always be delivered (and exchanged) at the Police station for review if necessary.


The system would be permanently recording (while vehicle is in use)………


Effectively the latter but leaving the ‘marked’ sections untouched (just like a PC file system which overwrites unwanted files as new data is stored).


100 miles at an average of 40mph = 2.5 hours. A good DVD quality video stream will need 8GB for 2.5 hours, so for 4 video streams a hard drive size of 32GB is needed; that’s tiny by modern standards.


A USB connection, some software and a relatively secure internet connection will do the trick. Uploading the relevant snippets of digital video is really easy; you can trust me on that


Yes, much like a neighbour ringing the police when they notice a burglary in progress.


The speed can’t be proven, unless a (routinely) calibrated speedo was hooked up to the system. This will substantially increase the cost of the hardware (hopefully beyond practical levels).


I doubt that would matter, but BluTac on the microphone will solve that!


That’s enough for now!

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