Smile, you’re on sat-cam

Posted 20th Apr 2010 by David Hobbs at aol

You might think you’re pretty sussed when it comes to your local speed cameras but unless you’re dialled into NASA things might just start getting a little trickier.

New hi-tech camera devices that are linked to each other and draw on satellite technology to track average speed over long distance have been secretly trialled in the UK.

Known as SpeedSpike, the cameras combine number plate recognition with global positioning systems and can monitor thousands of vehicles at the same time.

Cameras can ‘talk’ to each other if a vehicle appears to have travelled too far in a particular amount of time. The average speed system is already a familiar sight on motorways these days and it’s believed that transport bosses want to adapt it for non-motorway usage.

Two futher trials are currently in place – drivers in Southwark and on the A374 in Cornwall be warned – and came under fire when their operation and the hitherto secret trials were revealed in a Parliamentary report .

Local Cornwall MP Geoffrey Cox was not impressed and questioned the amount of surveillance the UK is subjected to: “We will get to a point where it becomes routine and it should never be a matter of routine that the state spies on its citizens.”

And in case you were wondering, UK drivers have been hit with around 16 million drving tickets since 1997, raising nearly £1billion. Nice work if you can get it.

From BBC:
The boss of a speed camera firm has been banned from driving for six months after admitting speeding at more than 100mph on a 70mph road in Suffolk.

Tom Riall, 49, is a chief executive of Serco, which has provided more than 5,000 speed cameras in the UK.

He appeared at Sudbury Magistrates’ Court and pleaded guilty to driving at 102.9mph on the A14 on 4 January, 2009.

Riall was fined £300, banned from driving for six months and had six points added to his licence.

Riall, from Ufton Nervet, near Reading, was caught speeding in his blue Volvo by a police patrol car on the eastbound dual carriageway just before 1300 BST, the court heard.

Outside court, he said: “I accept the decision of the court. I recognise that speeding is not acceptable.

“I very much regret what happened and I have made a full apology to the court.”

On Serco’s website it states the company prides itself on providing “robust evidence” of drivers’ speeding.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/suffolk/8035511.stm

A court is due to rule on a legal test case which could pave the way for an avalanche of challenges to speed camera convictions from millions of motorists.

Lawyers are arguing at Manchester Crown Court that all devices authorised since 1992 are illegal because the law introducing them on to British roads had been wrongly implemented by successive home secretaries.

A successful appeal on the constitutional principle may lead to drivers demanding repayment of an estimated £600 million in fines imposed and the annulment of penalty points and bans.

Retired computer engineer Aitken Brotherston, 61, of Lymm, Cheshire, has brought the case on appeal against his conviction for driving 52mph in a 40mph zone.

cheers
alex