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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

#211

Post by mhh__ »

tobylane wrote: post #87
jp0d wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hahaha.. Thank you. James May is a legend. Even though he is friends with two petrol heads, he owns a Tesla and a Toyota Mirai. He has an open mind towards futuristic technologies. I like watching anything by James May. Seems like a good bloke. For some reason he doesn't like the French! :D

I think all three of them have owned electric cars for a while. They’re all futuristic in some way.

If we were worth that much money we'd probably own some too. James May alone is worth quite a few millions

I do still like the show, but it is profoundly worse now that they fly around in a helicopter.

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

#212

Post by frobozz »

simplesleeper wrote: post #94
gorgoiler wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s strange to see you advocate for 35mph. In many parts of Southern England I saw 20mph become the norm. It makes a lot of sense in terms of road safety as well as noise, and makes little to no difference to journey times.

30mph changing to 20mph makes a huge difference to journey time... And london drivers hate it to the point most of them ignore it.

As if you can drive faster than 15mph in London without smashing into the car in front.

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

#213

Post by whoooooo123 »

Drunk_Engineer wrote: post #85
bArray wrote: post #77

> To the inevitable dismay of U.K. street racers who > primarily partake in their favorite illegal motorsport > after hours, the TruCam II also features night mode > whereas the first TruCam, which has already reportedly > been in use for the past six years, only worked during the > daytime. I think this really comes down to the letter of the law vs the spirit of it. To the spirit of the law, i.e. saving third-party…

In the US, there are 38,000 persons killed each year in car accidents -- and yet there are still those who think we do too much enforcement.

Maybe more enforcement isn't the solution? Traffic stops are far more common in the US than the UK, but the US has far higher road deaths, even when you adjust for the fact that Americans spend more time travelling by road. Maybe the cause of America's excess road deaths is something else?

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

#214

Post by tonyedgecombe »

scott_w wrote: post #104
megablast wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It shouldn’t matter. Owner is liable until proven otherwise.

To the people downvoting this: this is the U.K. law in this area. If you weren’t the driver, you must tell the police who was driving. If you don’t, you’re the one who gets the speeding ticket.

There was a case in the UK recently where a cyclist was knocked off their bike. Both the owner of the car and their partner claimed the other was driving and in the end they got away with it.

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

#215

Post by barrkel »

NLips wrote: post #168
01100011 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's stupid for one reason. As an engineer I often considered 10% tolerance to be sufficient. I think enforcing speed limits to anything greater than 10% is just silly. I often drift +/- more than 10% of my intended speed. It's just human nature. I pay more attention to potential dangers and obstacles, and less on whether I am within a % of the speed limit, and I really hope other drivers do as well.

Ignoring whether it’s “human nature” to vary by that much, the remedy is simple: in a 60mph limit (the clue is in the name), target 54. +/-10% is now 48.6-59.4, instead of 54-66. It’s within the speed limit, and a smaller absolute speed differential between lowest and highest speed. Similar arguments have been made against average speed cameras on UK motorways - “I’ll have to be entirely focused on the speedo the who…

Interestingly, you'll fail your UK motorcycle test if you don't largely treat the speed limit as a target.

If you stick at 40mph or thereabouts going into a 50mph zone, the examiner may think you haven't seen the speed limit change. More importantly, if you don't keep up a good pace on a clear country road with good visibility where the speed limit is 60mph, they won't have confidence in your riding at higher speeds, and they know - as all bikers know - that you will almost certainly spend a good chunk of your riding career at higher speeds on country roads.

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

#216

Post by tonyedgecombe »

leetcrew wrote: post #67
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?

from an engineering perspective, it is hard to design a car that can safely travel at 60 mph and accelerate to that speed in a timely fashion without giving it the ability to go much faster. a car with a drag-limited top speed of 60 mph would become a road hazard any time it merged onto a freeway. it's possible to program a car to cut the throttle when it hits a certain speed, but most people take a dim view of havin…

Interestingly a lot of the EV's coming onto the market have strong acceleration but a quite low top speed.

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

#217

Post by b112 »

jl6 wrote: post #175
bArray wrote: post #77

> To the inevitable dismay of U.K. street racers who > primarily partake in their favorite illegal motorsport > after hours, the TruCam II also features night mode > whereas the first TruCam, which has already reportedly > been in use for the past six years, only worked during the > daytime. I think this really comes down to the letter of the law vs the spirit of it. To the spirit of the law, i.e. saving third-party…

Sorry, you’re totally wrong. The spirit of the law is not just to save third party lives. When you cause an accident, you drain society’s emergency response resources (and increase the premiums of those in your insurance pool). 35mph vs 30mph is a terrible example - this is the scenario where pedestrians and cyclists are most likely to be around. 75mph vs 70mph would have been a better example. Driving at night is mo…

The "when you do $x, you drain society's emergency resources" is, IMO, an absurd argument.

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.

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

#218

Post by b112 »

grumple wrote: post #192
jl6 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, you’re totally wrong. The spirit of the law is not just to save third party lives. When you cause an accident, you drain society’s emergency response resources (and increase the premiums of those in your insurance pool). 35mph vs 30mph is a terrible example - this is the scenario where pedestrians and cyclists are most likely to be around. 75mph vs 70mph would have been a better example. Driving at night is mo…

A few points on this: society doesn’t make speed limits, municipal administrators (and sometimes small town police themselves) do. The speed limits are often set by observation, and they intentionally leave a large number of drivers over that limit (they say this is for safety, but it seems to also be for revenue generation). Look up 85th percentile speed. So some politicians and engineers draw a line so that 15% of…

They are also set for other reasons, like "Bob complained a lot, because of the noise of cars", and the limit gets reduced.

Or "this road was quiet 20+ years ago", but the city has grown, and now it is a major throughfare, so "Local residents campaigned to get a low speed limit", so that alternate routes are preferable.

Both of the above have happened in my locale.

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

#219

Post by _ph_ »

Scoundreller wrote: post #23
ISL wrote: post #17

I once saw speed cameras as "un-sporting" until travelling elsewhere in the world where they are commonplace. In those countries, it seems like everyone just drives the speed limit. If the point of speed enforcement is to, you know, ensure that everyone is going the speed limit or slower, they're awesome. Norway's system of timed speed cameras are particularly wonderful -- they simply photograph a car and then photog…

> but if you're loaning your car out to someone who speeds, at least some of the culpability falls on you. Not in Germany it doesn’t. Only the actual driver can be found guilty of speeding, even by speed-camera. I understand they’ll take pictures of the front of the vehicle and check against who’s lives at the registered address. Not sure if it’s an infraction for the registered owner to refuse to identify the likely…

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 people having access to that car, this can be true. As a consequence, sometimes people get off their ticket.

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.

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

#220

Post by speedgoose »

overscore wrote: post #154
speedgoose wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Driving fast doesn't necessarily mean unsafe. 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 num…

Do the numbers speak for themselves? In Ireland, at least, speed cameras are generally placed at compliance black spots, not accident black spots. Speed cameras on extremely safe motorways here have never been shown to reduce accidents, only to reduce speeding.

Sorry I don't feel like arguing or this topic anymore, excessive speed and safety.
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