Motorway Speed Limit Cameras

[Ciaran2903]

I was on the motorway today with my dad today (because it was only the second time i have been on a motorway) and he said he cruises at around 79 and told me not to break 75, he was wondering at what speed will the cameras on the motorway give you a ticket?

 

Personally i would not speed too much on a motorway because of the unmarked police cars.

 

Anyone have any theories about the cameras? Anyone got a ticket for speeding on the motorway, and what speed?

 

Thanks,

[a1whitey]

77 isnt it, 10% extra of the speed limit?

[Ciaran2903]

I read, just after i posted, that unmarked police cars only pull you over if your going over 85mph and that the speed camera limits are changed every day and go as low as 79mph. i havent a clue.

 

Just best not too speed in my opinion!

[ham's c4vts]

Having found that the speedo on the c4 is accurate(using tomtom one sat nav picking up 7 satalites) i would stick to 70 mph as its a true reading, my mates rover zr speedo says 70 mph when the same sat nav reads 63 mph.

Wozza will also back this up, at the end of the day its up to you mate

[Ciaran2903]

it's not for my, personally i think the worst place to speed is the motorway. My dad wanted to know. Probablly sounds like a bunch of cr*p though, its just with me obsessed with cars and obsessed with driving (a very nice car) would i risk my license? NO!

[mattb75]

There used to be a guideline that you could drive upto 10% of the stated speed limit plus 2 or 3 mph (can't remember which). so,

 

Posted speed ... Possible max speed

 

30mph ... 35-36mph

40mph ... 46-47mph

50mph ... 57-58mph

60mph ... 68-69mph

70mph ... 79-80mph

 

I drive around 250miles a day for work - most of which is on the motorway and have noticed that since the Highways Agency patrol's started you see less and less marked police cars on the motorway. This is because the Highways Agency vehicles have been deliberately marked up to look like a police patrol vehicle until you are very close up - so the effect of decreasing the motorway speed to the limit has been achieved at no expense of the local police force.

 

The safest way to avoid a ticket is simply not to speed - the realities of the modern motor vehicle mean that you probably will end up speeding at some point - particularly on 'rep roads' such as the M40. Key things to remember are :-

 

* Don't speed through roadworks - most major route roadworks now (think M6 by Birmingham, M1 by Luton, M25 by Enfield) have average speed cameras to ensure they catch more people - use the C4 speed limiter to keep you legal :lol:

 

* Look for extra aerials on 'normal' cars - most mobile phones no longer require a seperate aerial - so the only people who have need for the 'hedgehog' look are the Police.

 

* Speed limits displayed on central reservation signs or the normal overhead gantries are advisory only - you can excess them without penalty (upto the 70mph max of course <_< ). The only enforceable speed limits are ones shown with a red circle around them (i.e. Roadwork signs, M25/M40 variable speed sections).

 

At the end of the day drive at a speed which feels safe for you, the car and the surroundings - if you are going to speed, respect the other road users who don't want to - but conversely don't try and slow other cars down who are speeding by sitting in the middle or outside lanes at 69mph when you can move over to the inside lane.

 

Good luck and safe driving

[wozza]

C4 speedo is very accurate its either perfect or 1mph out but it can then be perfect a few second later without you changing speed. My old clio used to read over a fair bit had 115 on the dials on my clio with gps reading 103. C4 has had gps and the actual clocks within 1mph at over 120mph. So Yes its rather accurate.

 

Generaly rule for cameras is 10% +2 MPH.

 

If you do get a ticket though www.pepipoo.com is the best site to go to for help with it.

 

Most people wont do you until you getting to the 90mph mark though its a waste of there time to pull someone over if there doing 75 - 80 as speedo's over and under read so they have to make sure there getting people who are actually speeding.

 

And to be honest not many motorways have gatso's on them anyways. And you can look up where they all are on the internet including where mobile sites are. I tend to cruise between 60 - 90 on the motorway. Just depends though dont worry about going over the speedlimit a bit on the motorway though if your only over a few mph it will not matter its more trouble for the police to pull you and they incure more charges and it would only be the fine and 3 points anyways unless your doing over 100mph they can not take your license away on the motorway and they have to provide evidence that you were above the speedlimit. Then theres certain loopholes that benefit the motorist.

 

Like double yellow lines if they do not have a finishing line at the end you can park on them you get a ticket you take a picture of the end of the line take it into the police station they have to cancel the ticket. Laws work both ways if they dont stick to them by the letter we are within our right to refuse to pay up and we can treat it as we want. In some cases due to road signs changing and them not having properly set out signs the speedlimits of that road are them overriden as such and in a 40 zone they still cant do you if your doing 80. As long as you know what the laws are for what signs etc you can in a way chose certain ones to ignore and break as a result since the police broke them by placing inaccurate signs etc.

 

But with driving common sense is more important than anything else study's have proven the safest drivers on the roads are actually generally those that drive slightly above the limits.

[Igloo_Vindaloo]

I would always advise against speeding.

 

But particularly on the section of the M4 J14-18 through Wiltshire, where cameras calculate your average speed through this section. If it is more than 79mph, you get a £60 fine and 3pt on your license. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-...1565657,00.html

 

Having seen how many accidents this has reduced ( http://www.safetycameraswiltshire.co.uk/pub.asp ) - and probably saved a couple of people's lives in the year it has been operating, I am sure this will spread to other parts of the country. And no bad thing. Just think of all the accidents, fuel and CO2 we would save if no-one drove at more than 70mph...

[wozza]

If you want to speed take the car on a track day its far more fun anyways just have to do a few mods before you do it to get the best from it such as sorting the standard brakes out new fast road pads and some better fluid etc would help that way you can get the feel for the car at speed with minimal danger to everyone including yourself and have much more fun doing it goign fast in a straight line is boring.

 

Why when i went to the FCS i took a more scenic route was so much more fun going through all the nice country roads.

[Stuey]

one of my best friends is a traffic cop, someone earlier mentioned that unmarked cars wont bother pulling someone for doing 75-80 as a general rule that is true. As for the statement about unmarked cars not stopping people for 80 odd...rubbish. if you look it from a revenew earner then the unmarked cars will pull in a lot more and 99.9% of people will never know they are being followed by one so will carry on doing the speed they where doing in the first place.

[Ciaran2903]

like i said before, this is for my dad and not me.

 

My driving instructor said i should take my car out to a track day. Would love to do it some day!

[wozza]

Had a friend who was a traffic cop he said they didnt really do anything until they get to the 90ish mark. AS 80 - 85mph just isnt thatt fast and the vast majority of cars generally tend to go along at that speed anyway. He said they would not pull someone for that because there will always be someone that comes screaming past them over the 100 mark which is worth pulling compared to a few people doing 80 - 85.

 

Think the biggest scare i ever got was doing 90 in the outside lane and then i heard the sirens looked behind me literally right on my arse was this cop car thought i was getting pulled i moved over and he just shot off.

 

The only thign that pisses me off on the motorway is people that hog the middle lane if im in the left lane and there just cruising in the middle lane at 55 it really winds me up when the left lane is clear i usually flash my lights at them go past but really does annoy me.

 

Anyone seen that thing the police were gonna do though pace drivers in the fast lane? So basically breakign the highway code by having someone stick to 70 in the fastlane. Just gonna be even more unsafe with everyone undertaking etc it wont stop speeders it'll just make them more pissed off.

[Stuey]

never seen anything like that...

 

When my friend was doing his high speed training/test he was saying some off the things you are asked to do are incredibly mad, such as overtaking on a crest and stuff like that. As he in Derbyshire there can be long country road blasts to south Sheffield and such so part of the training is to do a long (about 60 miles) B road session where they take your avergae speed to pass you have to average 70mph or higher. I have done the route in his Focus ST and my average was about 47mph and that fecking hard work, mentally and pysically challenging.

 

We may give the rozzers some stick for pulling people over for nothing but after doing that you have to give them credit for driving ability...

[mattb75]

Slightly off topic I know - but in the same vein!

 

Does anyone know how much lane coverage the SPECS average speed cameras have on the motorways?

 

The reason for the question is that I drive through two set's each day (M6 and M1) and on the M6 set there is one camera which is 'covering' all three lanes at the moment.

 

Aside from the alignment (which is pointing slightly upwards) I can't believe 1 camera has the field of vision to cover 3 lanes of traffic. What also makes me question it, is that when the DVLA do there vehicle checks on the motorway they position one fixed camera over each lane - why do that when the SPECS - spec cameras can in theory cover all three.

 

Any Camera engineer's out there?!?

[Stuey]

the specs cameras are a bit to clever for their own good. They use the same technology as the ANPR cameras in cop cars so I would imagine that they can pick up all 3 lanes at once. without to much hassle.

[lupin]

Somehow, I've never had a speeding ticket (in thirty seven years of driving) so I've no personal axe to grind, but am I alone in getting concerned about the sheer level of police camera surveillance as people go about their lawful daily lives? Just commuting into London by public transport it's been estimated that most people are photographed or filmed about fifty times a day. We've seen a never-ending increase in the number of speed cameras, congestion cameras, traffic-light cameras, etc. filming us continually on the roads, and soon we're all apparently to have satellite tracking devices implanted in our cars for road pricing so that our every move can be tracked and recorded. On top of that, the latest generation of speed cameras actually takes a photograph of the driver's face. They're even talking about having miniature speed cameras built into "cat's eyes" all the way along the road. The Russian KGB or East German Stasi could only have dreamed of this level of intrusion into people's everyday lives. Particularly worrying is that the information may be retained almost indefinitely, even if no traffic offence was recorded. If I hear one more police chief bleating on along the lines of "if you haven't committed an offence then you've got nothing to fear ", I think I'll explode. People just don't want to feel that they're being constantly monitored and recorded - it just amazes me that there isn't more of a public backlash against all this surveillence masquerading under the guise of traffic management!

[mattb75]

Totally agree lupin - There used to be a website called notsoaccurate.com which was put together by a guy called David Elgar. He was a retired engineer who knew a bit about electronics and proved that the timings on a GATSO camera photo could be set with a gap of more than 0.5 seconds between each exposure but the timings were shown on the photos as still being 0.5 seconds apart. This effectively meant you could be driving at 30 in a 30mph zone but be flashed by the camera and the photo 'evidence' used to prove you were driving at 36-37mph if the timing was 0.1 seconds longer (forgive my maths - it's an example :o )

 

Anyway, the guy was done for speeding and did the usual non-disclosure of details process, and then did his investigations on the camera in question, he found a catalogue of problems with the location, road markings and timings and basically brought a prosecution back against the safety camera partnership. They tried to drop the speeding charge - which he refused to let them. He was then threatened in his home by the police (and captured the moments on camera) and his website has now disappeared - does make you wonder what the 'establishment' are doing to dampen down the media and any public resistance to their survelliance doesn't it?

[lupin]

Mattb,

Thanks for the info. I managed to find a website carrying some more information, but unfortunately it hasn't been updated as to the eventual outcome of Mr. Edgar's court case.

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/notso.html

There's a speed camera near where I live that has flashed me on two occasions when my speed has been significantly below the 40 mph limit (35-36mph) - I'm only too aware of this site , so I always monitor my speed as I go past it. I've no reason to believe that my speedometer is grossly inaccurate, so it's a bit worrying. I didn't receive a summons on either occasion, however.

[wozza]

Never been caught by one myself but have got people caught by them.

 

Some idiot was right up my arse basically driving like an idiot cutting me up etc so at a traffic light i gave it some stick up to around 40ish then let off as i know right round the bend is a camera i got to watch the guy go through it at what i would reckon is nearly 60mph. He didnt look too pleased when i pulled up next to him at the next traffic light.

 

But serves him right had he not been driving like an idiot he would not have upset me he would not have been speeding and he also would have got just as far not doing silly speeds down the road as i pulled up to him at every light sticking to the limits.

 

The cameras are just annoying though some of them such as ones put on corners and down hills are just not needed. Sometimes you cant help going a little too fast thorugh certain areas which is why some of those cameras are just there ot make money. I would not mind if they were there for safety but some are obviously just there for money making.