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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

#311

Post by MaxBarraclough »

forest_dweller wrote: post #166
dazc wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Beyond that, if you don't want to get a fine, don't speed.' Seems odd to me that Govt's struggle to raise revenue via normal taxes when they have a large pool of stupid people they could raise extra money from? Maybe making a regualr speeding fine a life changing amount rather than the negligable sum it is now would improve people's behaviour, raise some much needed revenue and save a few lives too?

> Maybe making a regualr speeding fine a life changing amount rather than the negligable sum it is now would improve people's behaviour, raise some much needed revenue and save a few lives too 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 mont…

Accumulating enough points results in suspension of your licence, it's not only about insurance costs.

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

#312

Post by krapp »

lillecarl wrote: post #276
krapp wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What privacy implications? The government already knows who you are, they processed your vehicle registration and issued that license plate specifically to make your vehicle publicly identifiable. Are you also terrified that just anyone can read your house numbers or the address on your mailbox?

The problem is automated and centralised surveillance. The government can aggregate this data and build movement patterns on all citizens. They might not do it, but they could. And once something to exert power is possible, It'll be done eventually.

Governments arguably have a public safety interest in aggregating traffic data and being able to identify potential criminal suspects by vehicle. Yes, they could abuse that in some nebulous Orwellian future, but data collection and analysis isn't evil in and of itself.

Also, this is public data. Anyone sitting behind you in traffic has your license plate number, your employer and anyone you schedule appointments with can predict your behavior to a degree. Your movements were never that private to begin with.

If you want to be afraid of someone, be afraid of businesses, and what they can know based on analyzing customer data.

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

#313

Post by Reason077 »

iso947 wrote: post #256
IshKebab wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Average speed cameras are very rare outside roadworks though.

Woodhead Pass and A14 come to mind. Tower bridge too. And the A9. Cat and fiddle. Only time I got caught speeding in 20+ years was an avcam at the bottom corner of the m60 near Stockport. Perhaps not as common as gatsos but not very rare.

In 10+ years of driving in the UK, the only time I got caught speeding was in France! Oh, and once in New Zealand. I see signs for the the UK average speed cameras all over the place, but I guess they're tuned to only trigger for vehicles that are significantly exceeding the limit?

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

#314

Post by lotsofpulp »

lillecarl wrote: post #276
krapp wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What privacy implications? The government already knows who you are, they processed your vehicle registration and issued that license plate specifically to make your vehicle publicly identifiable. Are you also terrified that just anyone can read your house numbers or the address on your mailbox?

The problem is automated and centralised surveillance. The government can aggregate this data and build movement patterns on all citizens. They might not do it, but they could. And once something to exert power is possible, It'll be done eventually.

They already have access to everyone’s movement patterns via mobile networks and mobile devices.

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

#315

Post by Tade0 »

rconti wrote: post #3

I'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…

Those things often pay for themselves.

There's a so-called "superradar" at one of the most busy intersections in Warsaw. It cost ~$65k and brought ~$200k in revenue in three weeks.

It's much safer now there, but the radar is still raking in considerable revenue.

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

#316

Post by alkonaut »

sjwright wrote: post #72
ehnto wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My state in Australia have heavy, heavy fines, even compared to the rest of Aus. It doesn't reduce the amount of poor driving but speeding at least is unambiguous. There is no grey area. If the speed limit is 60kmph then you will get booked for exceeding it by 5kmph, and the only reason you get that 5kmph leeway is to account for camera calibration and some grace for speedometer calibration. They would ping you at 61…

In Victoria they’ll ping you for going 62 km/h in a 60 zone.

Then they have already subtracted their margin of error, which is definitely above 2km/h.

More likely they saw e.g 66km/h in a speed gun with 4km/h error, so they know you did at least 62, and can book you stating 62. But most likely you were doing 66 or even 70 then.

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

#317

Post by PopeDotNinja »

alkonaut wrote: post #301
_ph_ wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

German here. Indeed only the driver of a car is punished for speeding. The burdon is on the officials to determine the driver. But they will send an official inquiry to the car owner to name the driver of the car, if the identification is not obvious by a photo. There are cases where no one gets the ticket, because the driver is not named by the car owner, sometimes for very valid reason. With a larger group of peopl…

Sweden: it’s not possible to charge an owner for a crime, only the driver. It’s also not a crime to not name the driver. If a speed camera photo is blurry or dark (like in a place with darkness most of the year) the case is as far as I know closed and no inquiry is made. If I realize too late that I’m going to speed past a traffic cam then I usually just hold my hand up near the wind screen to cover my face and the r…

I wonder how COVID-19 inspired mask wearing has impacted the identifying of drivers.

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

#318

Post by alvah »

7952 wrote: post #285
iso947 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the U.K. excess speed is the 10th most common cause of accidents, way below “driver didn’t look properly”, which was 9 times as common. 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/u…

I wonder if speeding is correlated with those other causes of accidents. It may not always be the cause of accidents but is evidence of bad judgement and easy to detect. In an ideal world we could also catch people who fail to check their blind spot, or get distracted automatically. Also, it does make the environment less hospitable for pedestrians and cyclists which is a good enough reason alone.

"(exceeding the one-size-fits all speed limit) is evidence of bad judgement"

This is not as self-evident as you assert. Do you have anything to back up your claim?

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

#319

Post by alkonaut »

ta1234567890 wrote: post #41

What doesn't make sense to me is why can most cars go so much faster than any speed limits? Why not just have the manufacturers build slower cars, or at least limit them somehow. Then make it ilegal for people to tamper with their cars to make them faster. Is there any other reason than playing this game in which law enforcement/governments get to make additional money through tickets?

If it could be made 100% reliable I’d be happy to have a car restricted to (say) 30% over the limit. That would reduce crazy people doing 90km/h in 30 zones etc.

But it wouldn’t be perfect, more likely it would occasionally pick up the 30 zone on the parallel street and limit my speed to 40 in the 90 road. No thanks. I don’t think it’s a solvable problem in the short term.

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

#320

Post by alkonaut »

dabbledash wrote: post #304
alkonaut wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe people should be able to move around in public without being identified and tracked by the police. 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.

But I think one of the things we see with technology and privacy is that there’s a real difference between things that you can do, but they require manual human action and are therefor costly, and things that are done effortlessly and constantly. We’ve always had license plates, but we haven’t always had a government record of where every car has travelled. We will soon, I’m sure. And right now it’s true you can most…

We get this problem all the time. The registry of cars was “public” so anyone could call and ask for the details or a car (e.g whether it had debt or parking fines or whether the guy trying to sell it was actually the owner). Then with the arrival of the internet, should this information be available at everyone’s fingertips? Should it be possible to web search it or was the phone call a good “rate limiter” and prevented abuse? It was actually decided it was, and it’s now call/text only. The discussion about everything being logged is why I like the GDPR. It’s the long term mass gathering of data that should be addressed.
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