Safe Speed Forums

The ones on the A505 are deinitely gatso, and definitely have flash units inbuilt, which means they are not using Ka band doppler radar to check speed.

They also have the same marks on the road that were there when they were the old units.
The buried sensors ...

...are not pressure sensors, they are piezo-electric....it says so on the truvelo site (assuming they are not lying).

Cheap camera could multiply road speed traps within months
By David Millward, Transport Correspondent
Published: 12:01AM BST 10 Oct 2006

A new generation of speed cameras capable of calculating how fast a car has been travelling over any distance could be on the roads within months.

The Spike system differs from both the Gatso cameras which flash cars as they go past and the costly Specs devices which are normally used to judge drivers' speed over a prolonged stretch of road.

Specs (Speed Check Enforcement System) costs several hundred thousand pounds, which has deterred some safety camera partnerships.

The alternative system, which has been submitted to the Home Office for approval, costs around £20,000. It is also portable, which would allow the cameras to be shifted to newly identified accident blackspots or road works. If approved, it could lead to the number of average speed safety camera systems soaring from the 14 in operation at present.
The new camera has been produced by Pips Technology, of Eastleigh, Hants, which already supplies digital number plate recognition cameras to a number of police forces.

Andrew Howard, the head of road safety at the AA Motoring Trust, said: "The great advantage with these cameras is that you can use them for long, nasty, curly stretches of road, rather than picking up motorists at odd points.
"They are particularly good on single carriageway roads, where people tend to go too fast and drive into trees or become involved in overtaking accidents. So these cameras can cut down on a lot of this behaviour."

The weakness of the average speed cameras was when a stretch of road was long enough for people to turn off, or join, at some point between the two cameras.

Paul Smith, a campaigner against speed cameras, said: "Oh dear, at that sort of price, it will lead to a proliferation which will be horrifying.
"This will lead to people looking at their speedometers every couple of seconds, rather than looking at the road.
"It is the massively expensive cost of the Specs system that has stopped it being introduced more widely.
"Speed cameras are greatly destructive and ones which take an average are even more so."

Publishers wishing to reproduce photographs on this page should phone 44 (0) 207 538 7505 or e-mail syndication@telegraph.co.uk

(Eccles mode - ON) Mmmm....thinks! If we is so like interested in stopping peoples being like, killed an' all that! Why is it that we're spendin' £Millions sendin' 'em all to Iraq and Afghanistan to kill 'em?................'could save a fortune in Gatso's there I reckon if we didn't!......

Spike camera testing???

mb

The camera head is approved for use in fields of up to 10 V/m.(I don't really understand this, what is V/m??)

I have just had a further thought. This device points at the road at a somewhat strange angle. The old Gatso had an angle of 20 degrees to the road(?) and then performed a cosine correction function. Surely this device requires major cosine correction, given it's angle?

The device is a Gatsometer Type 24 IDC, it uses radar to enforce speed limits.

ROAD TRAFFIC

The Radar Speed Measuring Device Conditional Approval 2008

The Secretary of State, in exercise of the powers conferred on her by section 20(4) and (5) of
the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 (a) (Speeding offences etc: admissibility of certain
evidence) and having prescribed for the purposes of section 20 of that Act a device designed
or adapted for measuring by radar the speed of motor vehicles (b) hereby approves as from
3 1" March 2008 for the purpose of detection of offences specified in section 20(2)(a), (b), (c)
or (d) the type of such device known as the Gatsometer Type 24- IDC, manufactured by
Serco Enforcement Products and Services, subject to the condition that devices of that type
shall be used to obtain evidence only in connection with the enforcement of speed limits of 30
miles per hour or above.

Home Office Vernon Coaker
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State

EXPLANATORY NOTE

(This note is notpart of the Approval)

Section 20 of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 (as amended) provides for the
admissibility in evidence of records from prescribed devices in proceedings for
specified speeding offences. Such devices must be of a description prescribed by the
Secretary of State and of a type approved by her for the purpose of that section. By
the Road Traffic Offenders (Prescribed Devices) Order 1992 (S.I. 199211 209), the
Secretary of State prescribed devices designed or adapted for recording a
measurement of the speed of a motor vehicle by radar. This approval approves from
the 3 1 March 2008 the type of device known as the Gatsometer Type 24-IDC but only
for the detection of speeding offences of 30 miles per hour or above.

(a). 1988 c.53; section 20 was substituted by section 23 of the Road Traffic Act 1991
(c.40)

(b) The Road Traffic Offenders (Prescribed Devices) Order 1992 (S.I. 199211 209)

The Gatsometer Type 24IDC is a digital version of their wet-film radar camera equipment and it has an auxiliary flash unit; this I mentioned some months ago.
Zulu, you need to learn to ask the right questions if you want the right answer...the right one having been provided by me some time ago.

Media awakens to Spike camera testing
Article by: Darren Griffin - Date: 20 Apr 2010
pocketgpsworld.com Here
Both the Daily Mail and The Independent have published stories covering the Spike Speed Camera system which is currently on trial at a number of locations.

Spike is not a new system. Manufactured by Pips Technology who are based in Eastleigh near Southampton, it has already seen use as part of the London Congestion Charge scheme and works in much the same way as Speed Check Services SPECS system.

Spike consists of a camera with infra-red illuminator and the ability to read vehicle number plates (ANPR). By comparing the time taken for a vehicle to pass between two Spike cameras, the distance between which is known, allows the system to calculate a vehicles average speed between those locations.

However, Spike does not yet have the necessary approval for use as a speed measurement system and the current trials will no doubt be in place as a pre-cursor to seeking just that.

The beauty of Spike as far as those who are responsible for purchasing and installing such systems are concerned is cost. Spike is a much cheaper system than SPECS and instead of requiring expensive cabling to connect it to other cameras in a network, it relies on GSM, GPRS or WLAN instead making deployment faster, simpler and cheaper.

Quite what The Independent were thinking of when they printed "New speed cameras trap motorists from space" is anyone's guess but it sure makes for an attention grabbing headline.

For subscribers to our speed camera database you will wish to know that we are collating the locations of these cameras but they will not be published as part of the live database until they receive type approval and become active enforcement cameras. If you see them though, please do report them.

I wouldn't prevent him asking a question buthehas asked the wrong one.