Funkii Munkii

Anyone know what these little blighters are for, I have noticed them between Watford and Heathrow and as yet none of them have been wired up, the cable is looped and hanging below, sooner or later they'll be active and it would be good to know what they're for.

Cheers

Dave

Buttyawayfromhome

I've noticed the traffic master blue sensors have been replaced with green ones near me. Perhaps these are the same?

Nick

Chrisgr31

My understaing, which could be wrong, is that the Green ones are similar t the blue ones, but instead of being owned by TrafficMaster are owned by the Highways agency.

Bearing in mind TrafficMaster is meant to be able to trace your car all over the country this could be seriously bad news!

lozzaloz

Chrisgr31 is correct.

The blue ones are TrafficMaster measuring traffic flow. The green ones are the government ones. The govt have been very cost-effective here - instead of asking to use the existing data from TM they have decided to install another identical network for their own research now. In the same positions mostly from what I can see.

Bearing in mind that TM are Home Office Approved etc it all seems like a very wise use for all the monies raised by those speeding fines.

Funkii Munkii

So are they revenue earners, they certainly dont look capable of taking digi pics of your car at Jct 19 and then noticing it only took me 17 minutes to get to Jct 14 at 05.00 and issuing me with a fat fine and a handful of points for my trouble, purely observation then, we hope

Thanks for the replies

Chrisgr31

Well my understanding is that the TrafficMaster ones have the ability to read your number plate. Therefore Trafficmaster know that your car passed one of their sensors at 9am. It will also know that your car passes one of their sensors 180 miles away 2 hours later. That means you have done 180 miles in 2 hours, hence an aerage speed of 90mph. Apparently the data used by TrafficMaster does not store the information, and alledgedly does not take your full numberplate and therefore will not be used to prosecute you for speeding. However it does enable them to monitor traffic speed over a distance.

TrafficMaster relies on mtorists buying its data to avoid traffic jams, and for route guidance, so is unlikely to sell the same data to the government for law enforcement.

However the Highways Agency are a government department, and of course the government want to stop speeding, and introduce tolls. So I would believe that a cynic might suggest that the green sensors could potentially be trialling for nationwide tolls and or speeding fines.

Buttyawayfromhome

Oh ****!
My TM is going straight in the bin otherwise they'll know what speeds I "may" be doing.

Shame as it is a really useful, if heavy, piece of kit.

Nick

Chrisgr31

I wouldn't be so keen to throw the bit of kit in the bin, as you don't need their kit or be one of their subscribers for them to know your average speed.

My understanding was that they would log any, or every(!?), car passing one of their sensors. By logging that car(s) journeys they can see what average traffic speed is etc. The cars they log may, or may not, be subscribers