Safe Speed Forums

Thinking about it, it must have been an older style camera with a flash. As the flash would bounce off the reflective paint and make the paint in the car appear white.

As part of my job, I have taken photos of police cars (when parked up on police guard duty at murder scenes ) and the flash does make them look white.

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I'm assuming that the car is white.

At night the only light would be coming from the camera flash. If this is a Truvelo then it should have a magenta filter, which basically means only red & blue get through. So no green should be reflected off of any surface so "white" should look magenta.

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Andrew.

You do get colour photographs from the type of infra-red used there.
The camera would be a ccd imager...which is sensitive at the infrared end of the spectrum, so it would have a filter fitted to remove the infrared.....since it is being used with an infrared flash (white flash, fitted filter, but still visible light emitted). With the ir filter removed from the imager the remaining colours would be degraded. Also, with ir photography, the area reflecting most light shows up as lighter than the other areas....hair, whatever colour, shows up as white if the visible light is filtered out.
I used to own a sony nightshot video recorder and spent literally weeks working with it....the nightshot ability came from the manual removal of the ir filter fitted to the imager, but when using it in daylight in nightshot mode the colours were all wrong....reds came out orange, greens came out either blue or orange....weird !
As an aside, if I fitted the nightshot with a 840nm filter (only IR admittance) and operated in the nightshot mode IN DAYLIGHT, the camera would see through flimsy white clothes, such as shirts/blouses/dresses....the forerunner of terrahertz photography ?

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing

This is really the point here. If the police wish to enforce these type of offences on the public then they must be seen to comply also. Unlike speeding past a camera to a serious emergency, there is no excuse for deliberate stupidity.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

Nope, thats not it at all.
When we (on this forum) hear of incidents where drivers have been caught doing something inadvisable behind the wheel of a car, someone will invariably come along and point out that this activity is not necesasarily dangerous per-se. If we could collect up all of the analyses of these different incidents we could, by a process of reductio ad absurdium, conclude that nothing we do whilst we are supposed to be driving is actually dangerous. And yet, it would be absurd to try and claim that nobody ever did anything dangerous on the roads anywhere ever wouldn't it?
Sorites paradox - when does 'not dangerous' become 'dangerous'? And, more importantly, what do we actually mean by 'dangerous'? (new thread worthy perhaps?).
In this sense the common belief is not that we act at maximum capacity at all. The common belief is, quite rightly IMHO, that actions during which a driver disconnects him/herself from the normal controls of their vehicle, have the potential to go horribly wrong; i.e. there is potential danger and therefore the action i s 'dangerous'. Hitting even a small pothole whilst taking ones hands off the wheel has potential to send one dramatically off course.
Thus, the use of the term 'dangerous' to describe such an act is quite appropriate because it adequately communicates to the driving public the potential that such an act has to go wrong. And just because nothing did go wrong does not mean it wasn't dangerous, it is well known in the field of Health and Safety that accidents occur, not because one person takes one big risk on one occaision, but because loads of people repeatedly take loads of little risks on loads of occaisons.

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Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

Engines don't just blow up. Holes don't just suddenly open up in front of us. And tyres, as far as I know, don't suddenly explode. There has to be underlying reasons for these things to happen and they will have taken time to develop.
We may not always be aware of the build-up cause, but neither do we drive such that we're always prepared for them to happen.

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It's tricky doing nothing - you never know when you're finished

Grumpy Old Biker, his engine blew up. Literally, there was an explosion which threw him off his bike. (The nitrous oxide feed system failed in a rather catastrophic way.)



Now, that's just not true.

Whilst doing some research on a rather dry and academic subject I came across an unrelated story. In Hanley, Staffordshire, a man was walking along a pavement, singing the hymn "Nearer My God To Thee."

In the midst of his singing an abandoned mineshaft opened up under him and he fell to his death.

There have been many stories of cars falling into holes that have opened without warning.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_New_Y ... _explosion

Now, as far as the driver of the tow truck was concerned the hole really did "just open up".

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That's a well made point, but I don't think that's 'it' either.

Everything we do is be about handling 'risk' - not necessarily 'danger'. Risk is everywhere and we need to manage and control that riisk.

When we drive, risk is always present and safe driving is an exercise in active risk management So, it's about levels of risk - not whether it's safe or dangerous.

I have no sympathy for this Officer. He acted like a fool and has further damaged the reputation of the Police Force. My point is - did he take the risk beyond a manageable level? I don't think he did.

The reason I feel annoyed with this particular case is how, as a nation, we are conditioned to condem anyone simply because they 'break the rules'. Ignoring the fact that this was a Police Officer, we are condeming him because he removed his hands from the wheel for about 2 seconds (guess). Most of us have done the same. I have ridden my bike with no-hands. I often ride with one hand only but I will never accept that I have done so when it was too risky to do so.

I hate anecdotes but hey, this may illustrate my point.

For years, on my daily commute, I ride through a small village and there's always a taxi parked on double yellow lines with his hazards flashing. And for years he's really annoyed me. Quite simply, he's breaking the law and therefore he's a bad person.

About 6 months ago I started to analyse the situation...

Was he causing an obstruction? No.
Was he causing any risk to other road users? No.
Was he causing any inconvienience to anyone? No.

So what was he doing that had gotten me so upset? Answer: he was parked on 2 strips of yellow paint!
Was that wrong? Yeah, of course it was technically but who decided to paint them there in the first place, and why?

I had been defending an inappropriate decision to paint yellow lines - and I'm not about to defend an inappropriate judgement that it's always too dangerous to remove my hands from the wheel for 2 seconds.

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It's tricky doing nothing - you never know when you're finished

Well yes and no. I don't think we're a million miles away from saying the same thing though.
My overall point is this. Yes, it might be true that taking ones hands off the wheel does not in itself create immediate danger but, as a road safety message, it is a useless piece of information. We want drivers to manage risk of course, but we don't them to do anything that unecessarily augments the base level of risk do we?
If a police officer were to spot someone driving with their hands of the wheel then I would expect them to take some sort of action. Not because they are breaking the rules, but because they are demonstrating a poor attitude towards driving and are unreasonably raising the base level of risk and elevating the level of 'danger'. Whether or not it was immediately 'dangerous' becomes an irrelevant question of semantics; we don't want them to do it and we want to discourage others from doing it.

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Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

Well, anyone can 'snip' a post....

This is what I actually wrote-



I think both your examples prove my statement to be true. The cause of the holes had been developing for decades.

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It's tricky doing nothing - you never know when you're finished

We all know what you posted, so do not worry. But it is forum practice not to quote all of a post. It saves bandwidth and therefore is more cost-effective.

It does not matter how long the steam pipe had been corroding. It did not matter how long the mineshaft had been collapsing, and in a more recent example it did not matter how long the water main had been at risk of fracture.

To the person who had their vehicle jetted with scalding steam, to the person who fell down the hole, to the person who was on a bridge that collapsed, or who suddenly ran into a hole that appeared in front of their car... the event is something they had no prior knowledge of. An event unexpected by them.

What if -for example- a stray dog or a sleepwalking child had dashed across the road just as the officer had both his hands off the wheel, his mind off his driving and his eyes off the road?

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www.thatsnews.org.uk / www.thatsnews.blogspot.com / http://thatsmotoring.blogspot.com/

That can be said for anything in life, and if people where to think like that they wouldn’t do much in life, would they?

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

Eh? You are crossing over two concepts here.
It is one thing to be afraid of ones own shadow and not take any risks in life at all; it is another to foolishly augment the risk level by doing something stupid. Loads of people parachute jump and accept the risk involved; few will ignore the safety measures and, say, take their hands off the guides as they are landing.

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Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

Hang on...
If that's our message, why have we been bleating on for years that exceeding a Speed Limit does not automatically mean we are driving with an unacceptable level of risk? Any increase in Speed increases Risk
And I will accept that removing ones hands from the wheel for a couple of seconds may increase risk.

Are you confusing something that looks bad with something that is bad?

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It's tricky doing nothing - you never know when you're finished

You appear to argue the very same as me.

Again, this is what I wrote-



Maybe your attempts to save bandwidth have created the opposite effect.

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It's tricky doing nothing - you never know when you're finished

I'm sorry, but that's the sort of emotive statement I would expect from the DfT - or any other misguided, speed centric, authority.

As I (failed) to explain before, things like that do not 'Just Happen'. This driver will have had some sort of observation and anticipation skills and will have logged that information away before he played silly buggers.

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It's tricky doing nothing - you never know when you're finished

I'd say Grumpy's said it all for me .

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

No, I'm not in any confusion. Speed is an analogue paramter, risk doesn't suddenly increase just because you step over the limit. Taking ones hands off the wheel does immediately increase risk.
But look, supposing we agree that you are right, taking ones hands off the wheel isn't necessarily dangerous? Of what possible use could this information be in the wider context of road safety? Because thats the angle I'm looking at this from, and in that sense so far as I can see its an utterly worthless observation!

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Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

G.O.B., the reason I used the two examples above is because stray dogs DO roam about at night, and brats DO sleepwalk and are often found a mile or two from home, still asleep. And it was not an emotive statement.

You can quibble all you like. But anyone who takes their hands from the wheel, their eyes off the road and their mind from the task in hand (arriving at their destination safely) is not in control of the vehicle at that point.

Raising dubious arguments to defend your position does not wash.

Drivers are not psychic. They cannot have foreknowledge of every event that is going to happen. What they can do to mitigate against the unexpected happening is to keep focused on the task at hand, which is arriving at their destination safely.

The police officer was not doing that. And FYI, speed is not necessarily a factor, here.

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Probably none.

But maybe no useful message is better than a false message.

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It's tricky doing nothing - you never know when you're finished