messiah

Went through a speed trap on Friday which was a Scammera van but an Astra with a sole copper in it and then a another in a lay-by a few hundred meters up the road.

I was in a line of traffic doing approx the 30mph limit - my question is this - If anyone was going to done for speeding in this situation would they have been stopped by the second copper or would they be issued with an NIP by post?

The position of the trap annoyed me somewhat as it was not placed with road safety in mind IMHO - it was situated at the exit of a village, and not as motorists enter it.

Foxmod

wait the 14 days mate, I got i NIP in just 2 as to the location, they do it to meet targets IMHO

Dave

hedgehog

Is there any possibility this was an ANPR trap rather than a speed trap? They check numberplates against a computer and then a copper, sitting further up the road, pulls over any cars that are flagged as dodgy. With a police car sitting up the road this sounds like the most likely possibility but perhaps what you saw was a scamera van and they were just changing shifts or having a donut eating competition?

Because the scam is all about cash (the coppers on the vans make between £5000 and £7000 per year in overtime for their efforts it is reported) and because of the time it takes to pull people over etc. actually stopping someone negates the high speed money making potential of the camera system. So my guess is that if it were a scamera van then they would not have been pulling people over but would send out NIPs in the post in the usual manner.

On a positive note, if you were done, it is possible that the NIP is now illegal under European law and there will be a test case on 9th August to introduce this concept to the UK legal system. Go over to the pepipoo site and check out the information on this as Mika is driving this angle quite hard and even has a letter for people to send to the Chief Constable should they get an NIP in the post. The letter basically points out that it is illegal and asks what he would like done with it.

messiah

Just read a mistake in my original post - meant to say it was NOT a scammera van but an Astra. DOH!

there was a van at the position further up the road but it was just a regular police van - I got the impression that a small camera in the window of the Astra (no-one wassat behind it "aiming" at anything in particular) was checking tax discs, but I would have thought that they would more than likely do that at the beginning of the month rather than at the end (Friday was 30th?)

The checking reg plate's actio does sound the most obvious - I thought that speed guns usually had to be targetted on the car for seconds.

hedgehog

The older radar guns needed about 3 seconds to get a speed reading. The laser systems need about 0.3 seconds to get a reading, hence why a laser detector is not a lot of use.

The ANPR system reads number plates and checks the details with a central computer in an attempt to detect a range of possible crimes, not just expired tax.