Safe Speed Forums

I've just friven through the minefield of speed cameras that is the jourmey from Worcestershire to Cornwall today. I am afraid I may have been caught out yet again (the third time in a row whilst trying extremely hard to keep within the limits!!)

However I am not certain of the camera that might have been used. They are on a long stretch of roadworks taking place between Bristol and Somerset on the M5. I was travelling southbound at the time. Someone wouldn't let me into a different lane that I needed to get into to avoid ending up in some other part of the country, so I had to accelerate slightly to get past them in order to change lanes. Lo and behold those bloody road markings appear and I have to slam on the brakes. Only I think it was too late. My sat nav registered 44mph around halfway along the speed camera markings.

Now what I want to know is, are these cameras genuine or fake? I didn't see the 'flash of death' h in my rear window. Also, lookng at all ther other cameras (there are quite a lot of them along these roadworks), I thought they looked rather fake. They also bare no resemblence at all to any other speed cameras I have seen in the country, nor on any of the speed camera websites. Are they a new type? They didn't have a round lens.

If you took the grey rectangular part of a standard gatso and placed another one above it, that is what the front of these cameras looked like. They were also much smaller than a normal Gatso. Smaller in fact to my eye than a Truvalo. They were placed to take photos of the rear of vehicles.

Anyone else seen these cameras on this section of motorway?

I have just been looking around for speed camera types. The cameras I saw on the M5 looked very similar to Monitron Speedcurb cameras. Although the rear design and part that sunshades the front of it looked slightly different. Also I didn't notice any of those embedded lines in the road.

I am tearing my hair out now wondering whether or not I have been caught! Its doubly annoying because of the care I was taking throughout the journey to keep to speed limits. With the exception of the idiot who wouldn't let me change lanes thereby forcing me to go slightly faster.

You should be ok if you didn't see a flash - why they are using GATSO style cameras to enforce motorways is beyond comprehension - rear end pile up almost guaranteed.

The problem is that these seem to be the new digital Monitron cameras that do not have a flash.

Hi Simon,

They do flash, there's a pair of Monitron cameras not 5 minutes away from me (in an inapproriate place I might add - 30mph road, 3 lanes uber-wide clear road.)

I've seen a number of cars get flashed both day and night by them.

I think you will be ok personally - on motorways they usually don't set the trigger speeds to the lowest ACPO threshold - they're usually set to 50 in a 40 or something similar, so if you were doing about 44 when you passed the radar then you're already well under ACPO prosecution guidelines (it would be 46mph for a 40 limit.)

Cheers,
Martin

I am presuming that this is what you will have seen:

Yes, it looked similar to that. Although if my memory serves corrected there wasn't so much of a 'hood' above the front. Although I could be wrong.

The odd thing is that there were speed camera lines in the road by the positions of these cameras. But I am led to believe that they used pressure pads in the road and nt the usual method of detecting speed. It would seem like a lot of effort to put these pressure lines in the road for roadworks.

The Cameras will Be there until June 2006 with the speed limits reduced to 40 & 50 MPH.
http://www.safecam.org.uk

_________________
RoADA Member -GOLD 2008
If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.

Great. So I get caught for speeding while trying my hardest to obey the speed limit, but temporerily get forced to accelerate slightly becuase of a selfish idiot who won't let me into the correct lane. Further down the road after the roadworks someone else starts undertaking and going through gaps in the traffic by the skin of their teeth and nobody stops them. Great country we live in

I suppose now I'll have to go on a course wheereby somebody preaches to me about safe driving. Will they force the inconsiderate idiot who wouldn't let me into the right lane to take the course as well seeing as it was him that contributed considerably to the mistake? I believe that comes under the banner of safe and considerate driving too.

You are right SimonW, and I'm not trying to belittle your complaint one bit, but.... If you found yourself in the situation where you were stuck in the wrong lane and about to leave the motorway and were therefore forced to accellerate hard to get into the correct lane, you need to take a look at your anticipation. I know that it's not always possible, but there are usually alternatives to being forced to accelerate.

_________________
Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

Well, as far as I remember it it was a case of the roadworks cones diverting people into the lane that they needed. The anticipation I don't think would have made any difference. I was aware of the need to change lanes and I was trying to do so. The problem was the selfish so and so who wouldn't let me in. There was a line of cars stacked up behind him too. If I had waited for a gap in those cars I would already have ended up on the wrong road.

When I accelerated I did not go up to stupid speeds. Probably only around 50mph. The speed camera lines appeared before I had the chance to slow back down safely to 40mph. The situation as I read it left me no alternative hut to take the action that I did.

Like I said, by no means am I saying that your actions were dangerous - in the same situation I might have done the same. It'd be bloody unlucky of you got nicked because of it.

_________________
Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

there's a similar thing here which I find unbelievably dangerous. Speed limit drops from 70 to 50, there's a busy slip road feeding in on the left which you need to merge into to exit at the next junction, and what do they put bang in the middle? Yep, a Gatso.

Oh you should see the on-slip at junc. 18 westbound on the M4. Tempo 40 limit in a contraflow so teh traffic is on the hard shoulder. Sliproad joins from high up so if you're on the hard shoulder (effectively L1) you can't see if there's anything on the slip until you're almost on top of it, and guess what's on the apex of the slip?

_________________
Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.