Safe Speed Forums

I'm watching 'Bike Cops' on Men and Motors and they are performing speed checks on the road near a village. From the footage they appear to be watching the oncoming vehicles and then targetting them using the gun. So far, so good. However, the program showed plenty of this but no drivers being stopped at all. So the question is this - does this show that:

a) the cops are rubbish at estimating the speed of vehicles since no-one they measured with the gun was speeding
b) the cops were targeting almost everything that moved regardless of whether or not the vehicle, in their expert opinion, was speeding
c) the program makers didn't want to show anyone being stopped (this seems unlikely to me, particularly since the cops have just noted that it was a 'quiet' day)

I'd say that's most likely. Although maybe for what it was used for in the programme, they didn't need/want to show people being stopped?

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-mike[F]
Caught in the rush of the crowd, lost in a wall of sound..

Well they were happy to show someone being pursued and then stopped for flashing their lights at the approaching cars. Cops threatened him with obstruction.

I agree with you that the answer is probably b. Perhaps I should have created a poll?

Surely the driver was just obeying the highway code, flashing his headlamps to alert other drivers to a hazard ahead!?

On a side-note, drove past someone doing this today, but then passed no talivan! Pretty sure he was trying to say that though, as he was flashing each car giving a 'thumbs down' signal. Ah well. The opportunity hasn't really arisen for me to flash people when the vans are around - not particularly sure if I would do it or not!

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-mike[F]
Caught in the rush of the crowd, lost in a wall of sound..

Expect so. I thought they weren't supposed to use their toys for fishing, but only to confirm their judgement that a particular vehicle is speeding. Or has that set of goalposts been moved as well?

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

Yeah. The thing that really annoyed me was that there were 2 cops, standing about 3 metres apart, both with radar or laser looking up the same road. The first was talking about the role of the Bike plod, why they were there, dangers of speeding etc while the 2nd guy looked up the road, periodically using the gun to target vehicles (that's what it looked like on film, I suppose he could have been targetting anything as you could only see him in the shot). Perhaps he was just posing in a catalogue-stylee?

At no stage did the 2nd guy appear to signal that anyone was to be stopped. This appears to square back to my previous point about them saying that it had been a 'quiet' day, suggesting that the number of vehicles they recorded as speeding was very small.

How does this operation square back to the whole "observe vehicle, observe excess speed, take reading to confirm prior opinion, stop vehicle" scenario they are supposed to be following? Either the guy with the camera is completely useless at estimating speed, in which case he ain't no expert, or he's just targetting anything that moves, in which case he is deffo in breach of the ACPO guidelines.

Quick, put out a news flash. SPEED TRAP MAY NOT HAVE BEEN OPERATED IN ACCORDANCE WITH OFFICIAL GUIDELINES!

I think that the cops are scared of bikers !

I say this as where I used to live was on an approach road to the Knockhill racing track and whenever there was an important meeting on there was never a cop or a speed gun to be seen when these racing enthusiasts - especially the bikers - broke every speed limit they could see making the effort to get to Knockhill on time or home for a curry.

After great pressure from the locals via the Community Councils on the extremely busy and black-spotted A977 the coppers finally set up a speed camera site just before the turn-off to the Knockhill road. It was seen ONCE and once only - during my time there - and on a weekend of touring race-cars but I have NEVER seen a speedtrap put down on any of the days that bike-racing was on and it was mainly bikers that were making the trip to Knockhill.

This makes me suspect that when they are laying speed traps they do it during the morning and evening traffic when ordinary folk are going to and coming from work. They seem afraid of setting traps for speed enthusiasts. How fair is THAT ?

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Regards

Papaumau

http://www.rip-off.co.uk/index1.htm
http://www.network54.com/hide/forum/100558

Well, the cops were bikers, hence the name of the programme so I'm not sure they are cowering in fear every time they see a vehicle with only 2 wheels
As far as targetting 'speed enthusiasts' is concerned, have a look at this story http://www.motorcyclenews.com/news/deta ... 94&navID=1 It appears that the Strathclyde force are out today as part of a 'Safety Initiative' targetting bikers on the way to Northern Ireland to watch the NW200. 8 bikes and 5 cars? Seems like overkill to me, but what do I know? D&G force also appear to be in on the act.

Sorry Mrs M.....

I cannae get your link to work !

( mind you it could be becuse of my webfilter programme, as I have been having problems with some sites switching off if I don't allow them to advertise and chuck data-miners into my computer from their webpages.)

Anyway.....

I find that not just in Strathclyde but in many of the forces in Scotland in particular we get what is know as "targetted" resources where we will see a certain crime demographic being overwhelmed by police-presence. I think that a lot of this is pure public relations where the cops think that the public are going to be impressed by the attention that is being paid to this part-time item. I don't think that the police authorities realise that we are NOT conned by these "swamping" of certain problems when we are full-well aware that they are going to be moved to another "target" next week.

I call it simple robbing Peter to pay Paul !

What do YOU call it ?

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Regards

Papaumau

http://www.rip-off.co.uk/index1.htm
http://www.network54.com/hide/forum/100558

Ok, in case anyone else can't see the story, from Motorcycle News:

'Scottish police are out in force this weekend to catch riders on their way to the North West 200 Irish road races.

Strathclyde police have set up a road check on the A77 at Girvan, on the route to the Stranraer ferry terminal, specifically to catch those of us heading for the ferry to Northern Ireland.

As many as eight police bikes and five police cars have been spotted stopping bikes.

A Strathclyde police spokesman said: "With the North West 200 races taking place in Northern Ireland this weekend we knew there would be an increased number of bikes on the road so we are taking the opportunity to promote safer riding as part of the on-going A77 safety initiative."

Dumfries & Galloway police are also operating a high visibility operation on the A75 and A7, which they say is 'intended to increase the safety of motorcyclists'.'

Since I'm not there I'm not sure what they are actually doing. Are they stopping suspicious-looking vehicles and checking them out or are they just stopping random bikes and looking for minor violations to charge the riders with? e.g dark visors, small plates etc. TBH, if they really wanted to do something to promote safer riding they would have been better setting up a roadshow or something at the ferry port and chatting to the bikers there in a more neutral environment. IMO, schemes like BikeSafe are far more effective at improving safety than just stopping folks who happen to be on the way to the ferry

On your other point, I don't think this method of policing is at all unusual. Casting my mind back to the increase in knife-related violence in Glasgow city centre a few years ago I recall that the police presence was vastly increased at pub chucking out time for about a month. I think there were cops on virtually every street corner, but there was no way they could maintain that presence. I suppose it's all a matter of priorities. I'd just like to know why stopping these bikers appears to be such a high priority. Is it because the footy is finished for the year so they've nothing else to do?

Good Grief Big Boy!

Exactly what we are saying! The generally law abiding motorist is being targetted by these darned scams!

That is what we are lathered up about!

What's the big deal at being able to estimate speed?

All the cop has to do is to time the vehicle between 2 objects before making the measurement.
On a site just mark up 2 objects, measure the distance between and time the vehicle. If going between the 2 objects in less than a certain time, pull trigger, job done.

Its hardly rocket science folks and what magistrate would throw that one out????

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It's Champion Man

The point is that the officer is only supposed to use the gun AFTER he has made a determination that the vehicle is exceeding the limit. If he is 'gunning' every vehicle on the road he is either rubbish at estimating speed in which case he shouldn't be operating a speed trap; or he is deliberately ignoring the ACPO guidelines, in which case he shouldn't be operating a speed trap.

Since they did not appear to have caught many speeding motorists, despite targetting them with the gun at a rate of approx 3-4 per minute (guess based on viewing the programme) what does that tell you about how the trap was being run? That was the original question I asked.

Understand now?

As I understand it, the requirement for a "prior opinion" as primary evidence is to counter the inevitable fallibility of any method of speed measurement. However it's calibrated the radar gun (or whatever) might give an erroneous reading at any point, and the legal way to cover this possibility is that it is only used to corroborate the expert judgement of the operator, who has already estimated the speed of the vehicle with a reasonable degree of accuracy. If both methods agree then the evidence is good enough to support a prosecution, if they don't (or only one method is employed) then it's not.

So if only (say) one out of ten cars targetted by the operator is actually speeding, then it would be fair to say that either his judgement of which approaching vehicles are speeding is hopelessly inaccurate, or he is making no attempt to make a judgement of their speed.

Thus his evidence of speeding cannot be relied on, and so the sole piece of evidence put forward is the reading of the speed trap. I am not a lawyer, but I believe this in itself is not sufficient evidence for a prosecution, for the reasons outlined above.

The example of mentally timing vehicles between two points would I imagine be a perfectly acceptable way of forming a prior judgement of vehicle speed. This would be clearly demonstrated by a very high "hit-rate" of speed trap measurements, as the Officer would then only be targetting vehicles that were clearly speeding.

But this was not the case in the example given.

Chap on M60 somewhere between Ashton and Middleton regularly zaps regardless of speed. How do I know? Because he has zapped me every time I pass by! On each occasion I have spied the little fella perched on his bridge and on each occasion I have been driving Papaumouth-style at 66mph in L1 He even did it to WildCat travelling behind me at same point! My kid sister got it around the Trafford Centre in the other direction! The one who professes to be Speeder? If Only!!! (Live in LanCASH£re hills) has been zapped at the Didsbury exit. Again below 70mph! He did not get any one of us as we were all driving nice and sedately anyway!

Looks like they are looking to meet some prescribed target - so they will zap anything that moves!