Puff The Magic Wagon!

iTrader: (2)

Cruisin along A14 after a trip to London, came round a long sweeping bend & saw a camera van. Accidently doing slightly in excess of the speed limit

Hit the brakes immediately I saw it and into the "safe zone" probably between 50 and 75yds beforehand.

So question is - whats the range of these things?






















(14 day wait now starts )

IanW

Depends what equipment they were using, but basically upto 1km IIRC.

mwp

i would guess up to a mile. I would imagine they "focus" at 1/4 mile.

sweeping bend on a14 from london .. is that the same a14 i drive on

- mark.

andyr

S'funny someone in the Scottish section posted similar today - I've been advised by a fairly reliable source who works alongside the police that the mobile units, ie van or behind the grille of a traffic car, have a range of 1 mile.
Depends I suppose if they picked you out or not.
With a 1 mile range then keeping a good watch on the road ahead may well not be enough to spot these units.

Puff The Magic Wagon!

iTrader: (2)

This was heading eastbound about 1.5 miles after the A11/A14 merge where it bends to the right uphill and then to the left b4 the BP station (getting refurbed). It was sitting on the verge as you started to bend left...

Suffolk van & I'd noticed the thing on a bridge near Risby earlier in the day when I'd been doing 60

I know for a fact that Suffolk "do" @ 81 although they are considering dropping it to 79 in the near future.

Wait & see I guess...



Further question Ian - are these manually targeted or automatic?

blip

Don't want to bring your day down but I'd say I was snapped by one of these *cough* 'Safety' vans at about 75m.

I thought I'd got away with it though when I got to day 12 and still nothing through the post.

Then guess what came on day 13!!

mwp

puff, you need one of these ...

Listy

Today is day 12 for me the wait goes on.........

Snakey Tw@t on the way back to the A12 from Great Yarmouth, Just before Ipswich by Pass, Bloody Van parked on the side of the road with Yellow and Orange stripes all over the rear and flashing Orange lights on top.... No Blues at all... First bit of Dual carriage way for 20 miles and they keep it at 50mph... I wouldn't mind so much but not 300 yds later you go down hill and there's a live Gatso.... B@STARDS......

You can't tell me that impersonating a road works Van is a fair cop...

If i land another 3 for this one retribution will be following.

Puff The Magic Wagon!

iTrader: (2)

Guess my reactions were good but not good enough

NIP arrived this morning - 85 in a 70

Managed to scrub estimated real 7 mph off indicated to get 85, another 4 & I'd've been OK


Oh well - shouldn't have been going so fast Empty road & cruisin' in rough convoy with a Golf GTi for the last 30 miles - guess he'd have got one too as he didn't brake!

Silly thing was that I shouldn't have been in a hurry

Back to 60-65 I guess - save fuel

simo

james

why not try & fight it? there are a few good wedsites offering advise. Biggest problem for them is if everybody rebeled against nips the system would probulary crash.

cheers simon

SiDHEaD

Sorry to hear that mate.

There *may* be something to get let off on.. you never know.

Andy

hedgehog

Bad luck.

I am tempted to encourage you to fight it as you can plead guilty at any point in the process and just before the "heavy" court bits. HOWEVER one thing I will say is that they are currently very annoyed about people fighting their little money grabbing scheme. Some police forces are just giving in on all the unsigned forms they get, keeping things simple for themselves and just letting everyone off, others are fighting back. Both of these are reactions to the fact that their system is under a bit of strain.

As you will be aware magistrates are, in effect, lay people and so have no knowledge of the law. With this in mind fighting an NIP on a point of law rarely works well as the person making the decision doesn't actually know any points of law :-)

There are other routes than the unsigned form but be aware that if you are convicted of failing to supply the name of the driver then this attracts an MS90 endorsement on your license. Insurance companies view this in a very dim light indeed and it is likely to attract a considerable hike in premium.

So, while I would encourage everyone to fight this means of extortion in every way open to them you do need to be aware of your own circumstances and the likely consequences. Idris Francis has a very important appeal coming up about 20th January and the results of that should clarify and highlight some of the loopholes available to us.

jaf01uk

If he was parked on a corner you could try questioning the siting of the van as they could actually cause an accident if someone panic braked mid bend, there is legislation laid down regarding this,

Flat 4x4

Listy

There is no such thing as a fair cop anymore - that's the point !

The Welsh and Northants van are mainly plain white with no lights and some side 'we are making your roads safe and fluffy' logos only. Some of the Welsh vans are just plain blue with no markings at all.

The two fixed Gatsos that were in Bletchley (nr Milton Keynes) were garotted a couple of months ago and it looks like the council have given up as the mounting point ofone has now been concreted over. Unless they are going to buy a van...

hedgehog

Unfortunately even if the van was sited illegally this is no defence. Most laws contain a get out clause, such as that quoted below, which says that those "enforcing the law" can do whatever they like. This get out clause applies even if they are just thieves harassing people going about their normal business:

(3) Subsection (1) does not apply to a course of conduct if the person who pursued it shows-

(a) that it was pursued for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime,
(b) that it was pursued under any enactment or rule of law or to comply with any condition or requirement imposed by any person under any enactment, or
(c) that in the particular circumstances the pursuit of the course of conduct was reasonable

Puff The Magic Wagon!

iTrader: (2)

I'm not going to contest it - I was certainly exceeding the speed limit by more than they clocked just before - my fault. I'll take the hit & the 3 points which will be the only (touch wood/silicon) the only ones I've currently got.

My only rant is that they should target villages around where I live a bit more - especially around school times, rather than the A14/A11. They certainly would never have clocked me then but would get loads of others

dsmith

Unlucky Puff. There are bits of the A14 I can sympathise with using vans on - Haughly bends (no arguments when they put gatsos there) and perhaps the Roughham bends - but between A11 and Risby its as good a piece of tarmac as you could hope for . The suggestion that 85 is "dangerous" is just laughable.

Suffolk police used to be commendably sensible on the use of cameras but it appears not even they can fight the national priorities for ever.

My major complaint now is the point I got done (A140 just before A14) a few years back is now (imho) more dangerous at night than it used to be. Cresting the hill with full beam on you're presented with so many highly reflective signs with "Slow", "CAmera", "Danger", "Juntion" etc etc on that between being blinded by them and looking for the damn gatso - you cant even see cars at the junction that is supposed to be so dangerous - previously clear sight lines are now hopelessly crowded.

Deano

Flat 4x4

I wonder what would happen to the accident rates if everyone stuck rigidly to the speed limit everywhere ?

There must surely be some IMPARTIAL stats on this somewhere ?

My guess is that it would make a marginal difference offset against all the other accidents then caused by lack of concentration, falling asleep at the wheel etc etc etc.

If we did I reckon that the authorities would argue for more speed cameras because they obviously worked a bit, and even lower speed limits would mean safer roads and scraping up some more revenue.

jaf01uk

Could have a look at this site, lots of info on there,
Association of British Drivers

Missile Man

I recently found some stats on our county council's website which said that only 11% of all injury-accidents were in fact due to excessive speed.

The majority of accidents were attributed to driver error.

Not quite the same story as we hear from the police!!

I also know from personal experience and investigation that the police label routes as "high priority" for speed checks due to their accident history. This enables them to justify the use of mobile cameras amongst other things.

But my research showed that the actual speed limit enforcement was (and presumably still is) being carried out at times when traffic was light and free-flowing, hence they caught more people. And, surprise surprise, this did NOT coincide with the time of day when the police's own figures showed that accidents were most likely to happen, quite the opposite.....

Now I don't condone speeding, especially not excessive speed for the conditions, but I do sympathise with anyone who has received a ticket when the police have followed "debatable tactics".

Brit_in_Japan

The only thing you can say for certain is that if you have an accident at a higher speed - whatever the cause - then you're going to have a bigger accident.

So it is argued that by reducing average speeds you will have fewer big accidents, so fewer deaths and serious injuries.

But the evidence does not show clearly that this is the case. When the US used to have a blanket 55mph speed limits they also had higher accident rates than the UK. The greater accident rate meant they also had a higher death rate too, i.e. it more than offset the reduced average speed.

Speed is a factor in accidents, but not significantly. But if you do have an accident at a higher speed, you are less likely to walk away from it.

Leslie

The American 55 MPH limit was the worst speed to cruise at for safety anyway. I have had to endure droning on at this speed for miles on interstate highways and it just sends you into a state of very poor concentration. When something goes wrong in this situation, the driver reaction was so poor because of the 55 limit that further worse accidents were provoked. I have seen this happen and it is frightening. This was also apparent in this country during the overall 50 MPH speed limit imposed during the fuel crisis all those years ago.


I always found that around 70 MPH was a good speed generally because the attention span is increased enormously and drivers have much sharper reactions. Much faster speeds may well be more dangerous overall because of our crowded roads.

Sorry you got caught Puff.

Les

[Edited by Leslie - 11/17/2003 11:01:37 AM]

Floyd

iTrader: (9)

Puff

Have you requested the pics yet, if you have, do they show you decreasing speed? You may be able to plead that you were momentarily speeding to overtake and that you were slowing down immediately afterwards when you were caught. You obviously obey the speed limit normaly but you had to increase speed to overtake safely as you were hassled by the Golf?

Read the speed trap bible, don't sign the NIP confession etc etc.

F