New UK police speed gun can read license plates from half a mile away at night
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Re: New UK police speed gun can read license plates from half a mile away at night
#2The less visibility police personally have on the car they're doing the reading on (e.g. half-mile away & at night), the less they're capable of introducing human bias (e.g. profiling) into who they scan and who they don't.
Seems like a win-win for enforcing the law and doing so equally on everyone.
Re: New UK police speed gun can read license plates from half a mile away at night
#3I'm curious about the context of the $13,000 price tag. Is this a slight upcharge? Or an order of magnitude?
I'm what the Brits might call a "keen motorist", but as someone who considers speed enforcement a necessary evil, there's a world of difference between paying a bit more for much better tech, versus way more. If this costs 4x what a normal radar gun costs, one must ask "what is the problem we're solving", and is it worth the money? Are there renegades out there going double the speed limit, then magically slowing to below the limit 1/2mi from a radar gun, somehow?
I'm certainly happier with the idea of an officer-operated speed camera than one parked by the side of the road with no discretion whatsoever.
Of course, there are plenty of people who rightfully point out that discretion can mean discrimination.
Re: New UK police speed gun can read license plates from half a mile away at night
#4I find it odd that there is so much emphasis on enforcement of speed limits. Studies have shown that speed limits above and below the prevailing speed of most drivers is a much higher risk factor that raw speed. And then there are other behaviors such as using a cell phone and driving that may be criminalized, but do not seem to receive such fervent enforcement.
Re: New UK police speed gun can read license plates from half a mile away at night
#5I find it odd that there is so much emphasis on enforcement of speed limits. Studies have shown that speed limits above and below the prevailing speed of most drivers is a much higher risk factor that raw speed. And then there are other behaviors such as using a cell phone and driving that may be criminalized, but do not seem to receive such fervent enforcement.
It is simple: speeding tickets are a revenue stream.
Re: New UK police speed gun can read license plates from half a mile away at night
#6No info about the tech in this article, but from the video I guess it's just a very long telephoto lens? No fancy letter-detection radar algorithms or anything like that?
Re: New UK police speed gun can read license plates from half a mile away at night
#7Eventually cameras from orbit will be able to read license plates in real time and detect all speeding vehicles.
Re: New UK police speed gun can read license plates from half a mile away at night
#8I find it odd that there is so much emphasis on enforcement of speed limits. Studies have shown that speed limits above and below the prevailing speed of most drivers is a much higher risk factor that raw speed. And then there are other behaviors such as using a cell phone and driving that may be criminalized, but do not seem to receive such fervent enforcement.
Some of it is due to how easily speed can be measured but you're over-simplifying what the studies actually show. Speed is what turns minor accidents into major ones, especially for people who aren't themselves in cars[1] so while it's true that for avoiding vehicular collisions the most important factor is going around the same speed as the rest of the vehicles there's still a significant difference in injury/death rates for anything which isn't a protected highway. As a parent, I think about this a lot when I see people going 45+ MPH (>80% death rate) in the 20mph zone in front of the closest playground where a kid was killed a while back by someone who couldn't stop in time. An aggravating factor here is that drivers now are often quite distracted by touchscreen controls and phones so the window for slowing down to avoid hitting someone is even less favorable.
1. https://one.nhtsa.gov/people/injury/research/pub/hs809012.ht...
Re: New UK police speed gun can read license plates from half a mile away at night
#9James May must be really happy now. This means the "rozzers" have solved all the existing crimes and are now focusing on petty things like this. James must have gotten his telly back too!
Re: New UK police speed gun can read license plates from half a mile away at night
#10I find it odd that there is so much emphasis on enforcement of speed limits. Studies have shown that speed limits above and below the prevailing speed of most drivers is a much higher risk factor that raw speed. And then there are other behaviors such as using a cell phone and driving that may be criminalized, but do not seem to receive such fervent enforcement.
It is simple: speeding tickets are a revenue stream.
People who break the law like to say this but I've never lived anywhere where, if that were true, the city wasn't inexplicably leaving tons of money on the table. Usually it's a token effort at addressing safety issues caused by poor road design and an excuse officers like to use to stop someone when they want to search their car.
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.