Safe Speed Forums

They already exist.

The trafficmaster blue polls do just that.


The software they use "edits" the data so it cannot be used by the police but the principal of the system is that it tracks traffic through the road network to work out traffic flows and identify jams. A good idea but how much would it take for the government to put the hard word on them to give them access to un-edited data.

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Speed camera policy Kills

So they think that any prospective criminal hasn't already grasped the concept of cloning then?


Are the old bill planning to follow the footsteps of traffic wardens and start issuing FPN's even when no offence has been comitted then?


I wonder how many of those (according to the database) "2 million uninsured" vehicles are actually covered by a traders policy or similar.

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What makes you think I'm drunk officer, have I got a fat bird with me?

And, od course, cameras in every home in the land as well.

The Police State has truly arrived.

Every one of us is now considered to be a criminal by our 'wonderful' police

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Good manners maketh a good motorist

A I said the last time this subject came up.

Most CCTV cameras in Bradford are linked to ANPR.

It doesn't seem to have had much impact on the crime rate.

This is a pay-per-mile road pricing system being installed by stealth.

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

And it's not just the police. See this:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... altop.html

I remember my parents generation saying things like "What is the world coming to." Now I find myself saying it.

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

We really seriously need to vote this sick control freak government out of office before it is too late. They are the ones allowing our increasingly unfriendly police to do this.( what is the real agenda here). Again the police are trying to justify this extra surveillance with the lame excuse that it is only trying to catch untaxed and uninsured drivers. Bit like Bliar - nobody believes them anymore.

ANPR cameras aren't police governed, they are Highways Agency stuff.

They aren't used for speed enforcement, although they can be used to collect data about average journey times - the M42 Active Traffic Management project is best example of this, where ANPR's are being used to try and help congestion issues etc. On the whole, ANPR when used as a law enforcement tool, will be for picking up, stolen, untaxed, uninsured vehicles, with a copper further down the road to pick up the offending vehicle - I've personally no problem whatsoever with these types of motorist being punished.

Where ANPR is being introduced, you will also have spotted HATO's - Highways Agency Traffic Officers (NOT police, and no police powers of arrest) patrolling - their sole role is to make things safer, and more congestion free for everyone, as the HATO's and ANPRs will relay info to control centres which will set signals on the motorway gantries - this should improve things for the motorist, and leave the police to actual police work!

http://www.highways.gov.uk/knowledge/tc ... s/east.pdf


The only real problem with ANPR is that the presence of Highway Agency ANPR cameras *doesn't* mean there aren't any police speed cameras around too!

The Council Tax is the one real and contentious issue which could finally put this shabby gov't out of office. Remember the Poll Tax which caused thatcher so much trouble, this is B'liar's equivalent.
Already he's losing the votes of the OAP's and his imprisoning of increasing numbers of them for failing to pay over the inflation rate for Council Tax will lose him millions of votes from this category of voter. Now add the re-valuation of every home and the impact of this on the average home owner who is already struggling to pay all the other stealth taxes.
Now add the drivers punished in the current 'war' on the average driver, not on the dangerous driver, and see what little support still exists for B'liar.
Always think, the voters didn't vote for B'liar' lot, they just didn't vote for the 'other lot'. If the 'other lot' have a new and aggressive leader, IMHO they can't lose.

You’re right about the Council Tax. They even want to come into your houses now and take photographs of your bedrooms etc, the thing that worries me is that they still have a few years left to make things even worse than what they already are.

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

The way they are going on they'll have to let the burglars and muggers and paedophiles out of the nick to make way for the disqualified drivers, then, in turn, let them out to make way for the pensioners who refuse to pay their council tax increases.
It'll all end in tears - for B'liar's lot.

There's a huge Slashdot thread triggered by this story:

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/15/2159244

Any Slashdot users here fancy giving Safe Speed a plug? It's quite a while since we had a Slashdot plug and it always brings traffic.

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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

Yeah. I just want to scream: I am not a number. I am a free man.



That's quite possible. I don't otherwise see the sense in cameras every 400m.
I don't agree with The Register's view that it must be for speed enforcement.
I'm seeing frequent signs that the authorities have had enough of speed
enforcement.

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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

One scary thing about this large amount of data concerns the unfortunate coincidences that it will contain.

Suppose you just happen to have been in the vicinity of two bank robberies? Out pops the expert who says it's a million to one against it being chance. Well yes it is, but there are millions of records...

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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

Hopefully, "expert" evidence based on calculation of odds etc should be totally out of trend these days: The Sally Field case is a fine example of why.... Prof Sir Roy Meadows (I think?!) bungled his sums and came up with a set of odds that made it look as though she'd *definitely* murdered both her sons.....actually the *real* odds were vastly reduced, so she's now a free woman, and Meadows is struck off the GMC..... I think with that and a few other dodgy cases, (ie the lip reading expert witness) they'd be unlikely to convict based on odds alone - you'd need other evidence for it to stick.

I *do* think though that criminals are just as bright as the rest of us - the realisation that ANPR is with us will probably yield a lot more false or stolen plates for vehicles on crime related journeys. Point in case, not long back my mother got a call from Merseyside police about her car being involved in a robbery. As it happens she was in Malta at the time - but her car was in Liv airport car park... no damage, but the plates had been pinched and put on a similar car.

Most of us voluntarily carry tracking devices in the form of mobile phones anyway. A work collegue argued that they would need to retain the data to reduce the chance of mistaking a cloned plate for the real plate as it should show up in a sudden change of habits. You would need time to establish what the genuine person's habits were. He is partly right but I think 2 years is too long. I bet it is deliberately too long so people halve it down to 1 year which is what they wanted in the first place. Political games and all that.

Personally I think they're just being nosy. Their whole stance on terrorism depends on no other atrocities happening. If any happen with all this monitoring in place then they're up to their necks as it was the only real justification. The Daily Wail will make mincemeat of them.

the real odds have nothing to do with it. Even if the chances are one in (a very very big number) that still means it's possible - and the more events, the greater the chance of it happening. The problem is that when someone with too many degrees starts talking that the average person in the jury stops thinking and believes what is being said.

This topic is also being discussed here: http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4793

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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 real point of this story which was missed was the fact the appeal court decided Meadows had expressed a private opinion in court, as fact, which from what I saw of the transcripts was patently obvious - yet the presiding judge, prosecuting counsel and defending counsel at the original trial let it by without comment at the time!

The fact the police are using "gadgets" to do a lot of policing for them is to my mind driven by the severe cutbacks they face.
It might be different elsewhere, but in Cumbria police numbers and budgets are determined by a government formula based on the number of population.
In Summer and busy weekends, the resident population is swelled many times, with NO corresponding financial or physical increases!
The police do their best to plan shifts accordingly, but the net result is that at night in winter, there is often only a pair of policemen monitoring an area from Coniston to Grasmere to Windermere and to Grange over Sands - thats one hell of a beat! Lots of unattended 2nd (holiday) homes get burgled, and only decent intelligence and police legwork catch the culprits - not gadgets!!!

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