New UK police speed gun can read license plates from half a mile away at night

If you cannot safely pass someone without speeding, slowing down is generally an option too.

If you're speeding to escape a homicidal maniac, challenge the ticket later.

And the only monetary aspect is not the fine, it is the also the increased insurance premiums. The latter can be much more punishing than the former.

If the two cameras are more than 1km apart, that makes your point moot.

Systems that measure your instantaneous speed will ding you for speeding up to avoid (or reduce the probability of) a collision. Time of travel as defined in GP only dings you if your average speed over many km exceeds the speed limit, a few temporary bursts of speed won't change your average speed significantly.

It is ridiculous how blaze most roads users take speeding.

And yes, most countries have a point system.

Assume you drive at 60mph and then you suddenly have to "speed up" to 80mph to avoid a situation. How long can you drive at 80mph before you're ticketed? 69 seconds.

If you're driving for 69 seconds at 20mph above limit then you're not "avoiding a situation". You are speeding.

This was a problem in 2008 when a car with steering wheel on the right systematically got caught speeding. The driver knew full well what was going on an placed a muppet in the passeger's seat. The picture is fantastic:

https://gizmodo.com/the-muppets-animal-caught-speeding-drivi...

Rental companies name the renter, which is what you describe, and it is then up to the renter to accept or name a sub-lesser; by default, the responsible party is the latest to accept, or for court to determine (but that would likely require dissenting potential drivers to file legal complaints against each other)

Occasionally, people use this to equalize penalty points in a household (say, married couples) because other than fines, there’s a point system where 3-5 nontrivial tickets in as many years will get your license suspended or revoked for a while, and other sanctions.

This practice - admitting a crime you didn’t commit - is of course illegal, and not very prevalent - but there have been a few high profile cases involving famous (and infamous) people caught doing that.

There is a catch however: while you might get out of a ticket once or twice, the authorities can order you to keep a drivers log in the car. That means, a written log of every single drive has to be kept. So that there is never any ambiguity of naming drivers going forward. And having to keep logs of all your drives going forward is something you really want to avoid.

-Same in Norway - ticket is sent to registered owner by default, if s/he contests the claim, s/he is summoned to the local police and shown the photo. If s/he claims not to know who drove the car or refuse to identify the driver, the police may investigate if it's a slow day in the office - say, call you for a formal interrogation (during which you are legally obliged to provide truthful answers or else get slapped for obstruction of justice), compare the speedcam photo to other members of your household &c.

In short, the owner of the vehicle will never be on the hook for a speeding ticket with unknown driver - but is required to assist the police in finding out who the offender is.

Two identical twins back where I grew up claimed to have gamed this system on numerous occasions - claiming they couldn't remember which brother had driven the car on the day in question.

After all, refusing to cooperate is a crime. Not remembering isn't.

They did this to me when someone ran a red light in a car I’d sold (and electronically transferred) six months prior.

I’d suspect what they did wouldn’t hold up in court if it weren’t for the fact that the San Francisco court house was engaged in this behavior.

Apparently, this scenario is so common in California that places that accept cars as donations often have a specialist to help donors deal with extortion demands over revenue tickets.

If so (and there is no inclement weather), then the speed limit is too high.

In all studies I read or heard about, speed is a huge factor for increasing injuries and deaths.

> You can be driving the speed limit and be going at an unsafe speed.

Then you are driving too fast according to the law. At least in France or Norway.

> So the speed cameras make it more likely that people will be under the speed limit. But are the roads safer?

Yes. The numbers talk for themselves whenever a new speed camera is installed in a road.

Absolutely yes. Speed contributes in two major ways when it comes to accidents, which this is all about: reaction time and energy.

Going faster means you have less time to react and handle the situation.

If you're going 100 km/h instead of 80 km/h, and something happens 100m in front of you, you have only 3.6 seconds instead of 4.5 seconds to react and deal with it. This scales with distance.

If you're going at 100 km/h instead of 80 km/h, your car has 50% more kinetic energy. This translates fairly directly into increased breaking distance.

So as speed increases you have less time to react and in addition you require more time to slow down.

Outside of the US (and perhaps a few other places, but not many), speeding tickets are not designed to be a revenue source. (They do produce revenue, of course - but are not optimized or planned for that purpose)

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/288592-eu-wants-speed-go...

1: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-Cincinnati-speed-gov...

This is actually dangerous because people need the ability to use discretion.

Suppose you're transporting a part to repair a machine which is causing a fatality every five seconds as long as it's offline. Getting there 20 seconds faster saves four lives. Do you still want a chip that prevents you from exceeding the speed limit?

> Oh wait, this wont generate revenue - so it wont work. Never mind.

This is a major reason why the US doesn't have many speed cameras either. Also why most of the speed limits are set 10-15 MPH below the ordinary speed of travel. If violations are prolific and enforcement is sporadic, they can generate fine revenue whenever they want.

If enforcement is automatic then people figure that out and do what's necessary to avoid the fine, but then you're left with an expensive boondoggle that isn't generating revenue.

It also deprives the police of the excuse they currently have to pull over cars at whim when everybody is speeding at all times, and they wouldn't be happy to lose that at all.

If it had been able to cut the engine (or, worse, apply the brakes) then that could have produced a dangerous situation.

As far as deaths go, the most common contributory causes are loss of control and failure to look properly. Exceeding speed limit was a cause in just 16% of deaths.

https://www.regtransfers.co.uk/content/common-causes-for-roa...

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

The fine is negligible if you are well off. It isn't if you aren't. If you get points (for SP-30), the increase in insurance is about £300-400. So the actual cost of the fine is closer to £400-500 which is the rent for the month.

There has already been talk of making the fine be adjusted to how much you earn.

Extracting money from drivers was one of the causes of community tension in Fergusson.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05pqskm

> Are excessive traffic fines and debtors' jails fuelling community tensions in suburban Missouri? Claire Bolderson reports on a network of ninety separate cities in St Louis County, most of which have their own courts and police forces. Critics say that their size makes them financially unviable and allege that some of them boost their incomes by fining their own citizens and locking them up when they can't pay.

NYC generally saw revenues decline after the initial installment of more cameras as drivers adjusted behavior: https://bklyner.com/revenue-camera-enforcement-nyc-sheepshea... The fine is only $50.

Are you also terrified that just anyone can read your house numbers or the address on your mailbox?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recogni...

There are a lot of automatic speed radars (at a single point), and a bit fewer average speed radars but they work over a few km at most (and don't interact with the toll).

You can. Just not in a car, because cars have license plates so not only can police identify you, anyone who can lookup a plate can. It’s non-anonymous almost by definition.

Where I live the registry is public so if I want I can ask for the owner of a license plate from the relevant authority.

The main issue is using fines as punishment, since people can affordably keep speeding if there aren't enough speed traps. The only way to solve most road problems is to forbid speeders from ever driving.

You already need a driving exam to drive, it doesn't seem crazy to now allow criminals who don't care about speed limits or safety from taking it.

- your loved ones

- the emergency services that have to clean your body off the road

- subsequent road users -- when the road is closed -- to clean your body off the road

Someone not as perfect as you won't know to back off in wet conditions.

Someone not as perfect as you won't anticipate when to brake early to accommodate the extra stopping time.

Someone not as perfect as you won't be as meticulous about vehicle maintenance.

Someone not as perfect as you doesn't have your quick reflexes.

Someone not as perfect as you doesn't apply 100% of his attention to driving, never looking at a cell phone or radio.

>that same car will stop from 100mph in less distance than the highway code requires for 70.

What car is it and with what tires? I'll be happy to look up the facts.

http://mpgforspeed.com/

And so is its "carbon footprint" 3x greater.

To answer your question: You're hurting everything that's alive on the planet.

Obviously these are optional extras on most cars, but the self braking and auto-distance-keeping could be made a legal requirement well before we see self-driving cars. I’d be all for that.

Where I am in Southern California the freeway speed limit in most places is 65 MPH. EVERYONE drives over 65 MPH on the freeways. I think you are more likely to get pulled over on the freeway if you are in the left lane actually going 65 than if you are going 75-80 in one of the middle lanes (the speed everyone else is going so it looks normal).

This just creates a situation where basically everyone is "breaking the law" and gives cops a reason to arbitrarily pull anyone over that they want.

I fully agree with you that speed limits are not about safety they are about instilling fear in citizens that at any moment you could be pulled over and harassed (even worse for colored people) and about being a source of revenue to find this tyranny

As are most limits.

I get that driving on a motorway at say 85 mph is probably not that much dangerous than the speed limit (70 mph) but 100? 120? 140?

I know about Germany, but would you say that Britain's or Slovenia's road are designed and kept to the same standard?

> 2) The easiest objection to (1) is "society has jointly decided about acceptable risk limits" but that clearly isn't true. Speed limits are simply a bad idea. A much better idea is speed constraints - roundabouts, speed bumps, chicanes [0] - i.e. actually forcing people to drive slower or else they ruin their cars.

how do you constrain speed on a motorway?

> The fact that governments default to traffic cameras etc. is proof (revealed preference) that they don't actually care about safety and people driving slowly, but what they want most is making their citizens live in fear, punishing them and extracting money from them. This is particularly obvious when there's a hidden police / traffic control on some section of the road where it's obviously safe to drive fast, but it's just technically within city limits so it has a low speed limit.

In this country (UK) there is this myth that the cameras are money making devices, when during the 2008 crisis they were turned off to save money for some constabularies, this is the same type of argument.

Roundabouts are not always a good solution, in US I kept seeing people taking them the wrong way going directly left..

Also what is your proof that cameras don't slow down traffic? Just talking about me it make me more conscious of my speed in the city to avoid getting fined. So I guess I'm the kind of people it is directed at.

I don't think any speed operation would work unless the car has been sighted, number plate read and speed detected simultaneously.

Most of the drivers that drive at extreme speeds are usually very rich (they are always driving Mercs, Range Rovers, Audis and BMWs) and don't typically give a toss about the fine or the points.

Also there are many people (usually immigrants) who drive without a valid license and insurance.

You're not responding to the point. The parent was talking about solitary drivers, and used remote parts of scotland as an example.

It's not just boy racers, but plenty of older men and women who are reckless and inpatient in their usual driving. There are people who think that their luxury cars are an excuse to break the road rules as well as the rules of common courtesy.

Despite the UK having one of the safest road networks in the world, still around 75 people die or are seriously injured per week in car accidents. For a preventable injury that is still far too high.

Speed enforcement seems to be the low hanging fruit. There’s (generally) no judgment call, readily accepted evidence, it’s politically palatable, and it’s like shooting fish in a barrel: there’s always someone you can tag.

It’s a lot harder to tag someone for driving onto the freeway at 30 mph and failing to merge properly. There’s no “merge trap” to witness it so the cop has to basically happen upon it. There’s not always clear evidence, there’s probably some judgment required too. People don’t like the idea of tickets for going “too slow”; everyone acts like it is absurd. You can’t even blame the LEO because he probably knows the ticket won’t stick. Yet this behavior is extremely dangerous and happens all the time.

* @7pm in the morning in the winter the whole area can be fogged up and it was dark. I've driven down and cycled down there when it wouldn't have been safe doing 15mph.

* Animals can be hard to see, even in good conditions. Especially the donkeys, they are grey, on a black road and the sky is normally grey in England. Many of the animals there have high-vis collars to make them more visible at night.

* It depends what section of the road. In one section of that road the visibility is excellent (when there isn't fog). In another stretch even in the summer, the visibility is weird due to much of the road being in partial shade due to the trees.

* Drivers go much faster than the 40mph limit in that area almost all the time, especially on the high visibility parts. It doesn't help that if you come off the M25/A31 you would have been going about 70mph and so doing 40mph makes it feels so slow that you can step out of the car.

* The three A-roads near are either blocked due to heavy traffic especially in the summer (infrastructure in general is a joke in Hampshire and Dorset) or they don't go where you want.

Really?

I laughed at "speedo pedos", but is it though?

One of these crimes is clearly considerably more serious than the other, and legislators agree with me. That's why in UK law minor speeding offences attract a fine and points on your license[0], but no criminal record, whereas offences of pedophilia result in prison time, a criminal record, and addition on the sexual offenders register.

The line of thinking is superficially similar, the weight of the offence isn't, and we shouldn't trivialise serious offences by drawing false equivalences with those that are considerably less serious.

[0] This is generally the case, but if you accrue too many points you can of course lose your license. Similarly, more serious speeding offences attract more serious penalties, and may even result in jail time. There are plenty of other examples but, see, e.g., https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-34744.... The level of stupidity on display here is truly monumental.

So some politicians and engineers draw a line so that 15% of the population is in violation and will change the speed limit at any point that this isn’t true (if nobody is in violation, they lower the speed limit). You can’t then cast moral judgment on that 15%. It’s intentional criminalization of the citizenry, even though it’s generally with the intent of saving lives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_in_the_United_Sta...

So what might be unacceptable "speedo pedo"ism where you live might be completely normal going 5 miles over the posted speed limit elsewhere. My personal experience is that people tend to drive at a speed they feel safe at, and don't pay that much attention to the signs.

If this is true, then you need to point the finger at so many things. Rock-climbing. Mountain biking. And it progresses, to "anything even remotely risky", where "risky is now the absolute lowest common denominator".

And of course, so many sports? Banned.

This sort of "walking on eggshells" view of life is quite disturbing to me.

If we're talking about safety, then the speed limits should be to reflect conditions, but instead what happens is we cap the limit at the lowest value considering worst conditions.

Realistically the way we deal with this is through selective enforcement, the police probably aren't going to give you a ticket for 35 in a 30 at 2am on a monday morning, but it's silly to pretend that conditions don't matter.

For example, the default speed limit in the UK on most residential roads is 30mph, but if you drive past a school at 30mph at the end of the afternoon when the kids are coming out and there are lots parked cars obscuring your view, that is still inappropriately fast for the conditions.

However, slower isn't always safer. On a motorway, the speed limit is usually 70mph, but in poor weather conditions and heavy traffic, everyone travelling at lower and similar speeds may be the safest choice. If you're the one driver insisting on unnecessarily doing 20mph when everyone else is doing a steady 40mph, you're also increasing the danger to yourself and others.

Another example is that the speed limit for heavy goods vehicles on many of our major roads was increased by 10mph in 2015, having previously been 20mph below what cars were allowed to do on the same roads. The results were notable for several reasons, among them that the actual average speed of those heavy vehicles only increased a little but the safety of the roads appears to have increased. This was attributed primarily to closing the gap in speeds between different types of vehicle and thus, among other things, reducing instances of queues behind and overtaking of the slower vehicles, both of which increase the risk of an accident.

Finally, we have the classic motorway speeding situation, where on an open road in good conditions, a competent driver with a suitable vehicle could do far more than the legal limit of 70mph with negligible increase in risk. Moreover, statistically our motorways are both our fastest roads and yet also among our safest. You could certainly print money by setting up a covert speed camera watching some stretches of motorway, but whether it is a good use of police resources if your objective is to increase road safety is a different question.

Sure but there's no free lunch here. If you trade off speed in the non-accident cases, which is by far the majority of all miles driven, then there's a cost to that.

It happens to be a really hard to measure cost so it's always completely ignored. How would you even begin to measure the cost to the nation of traffic arriving 5 minutes later? Not all 5 minute delays are equal, e.g the cost of delay to an ambulance rushing to hospital is different to the increased cost of delivering packages.

>> the reaction time available

In fairness, you could make the reaction time measurable in hours and it'd be insufficient to prevent some inattention caused road incidents.

Another problem with only looking at speed is the unintended consequence of drivers de-rating the risks. E.g. if a vehicle was limited to 5mph, this as you know is slow enough to be fairly unlikely to cause a pedestrian death even if there is an impact, it would have the un-wanted effect that some drivers would view the risks as lower and would be inclined to engage in more risky behaviours, e.g. taking their eyes off the road to turn around and argue with a child in the back seat where in 20mph traffic they might choose instead to just speak to the child.

>> So the overall probability of accidents

No that doesn't hold. We don't have more accidents on the fastest roads in the UK.

There’s more than just cell phone usage. Inattention comes in many forms and none of them is better or worse than the others.

Drivers paying more attention to the radio show they’re listening to while gently zoning out to the traffic conditions around them - this is really common on long motorway journeys.

Drivers fizzing with rage at the argument they just had before getting in the car.

Etc etc

Road traffic enforcement or reducing infant asthma in cities by moving tailpipe emissions away from populated areas?

Road traffic enforcement or ... you get the point.

Useful as a rule of thumb but it's not always true. Models are never perfect, the map is not the territory. We are constantly figuring out what our shared values are, and it's a moving target. And the body of law itself is a complex beast with its own surprising dynamics. It's part of an ecosystem. You can't wave away its complexity with such a simplistic ideal.

A given law may be 'bad' (regrettable, even draconian/immoral) when enforced in certain cases, and yet it may also be unfeasible to change that law to add those cases as exceptions. This is why the law gives judges flexibility on sentencing, for example.

EDIT: as a thought experiment, imagine that we went full cyberpunk hell-future and they started letting private equity companies put up cameras anywhere some MBA thought their cut of the ticket revenue would pay for the camera. How many speeding/stop sign/red light tickets do you think the average driver would get on their way to work? Now ask how different that is from the average driver's experience almost anywhere.

[0] https://youtu.be/TJgUiZgX5rE?t=109

A driver exceeding the speed limit by 20%, to throw out a number, isn't likely to do so as a one-off mistake unless he misses a signed change in the speed limit. If exceeding by 20% was a one-off under an unchanged speed limit, it most likely means the driver was already exceeding the speed limit by 10-15% as a matter of course. I am much more comfortable with a driver being cited in this case.

Speed cameras allowed the government to cut back on traffic policing completely, whilst still enforcing something. From memory there are something like 40k fewer police on our little island than before the financial crisis.

Now add facial recognition in mix on from CCTVs. And we are in whole new level of tracking everyone. Coming soon!

I also wonder if maybe by forcing cars to go slower we could: 1) reduce car accidents by a lot and 2) reduce current spend on emergency response by a big enough amount that could then allow to use it to cover faster response times (e.g. sending a helicopter)

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/288592-eu-wants-speed-go...