Safe Speed Forums

Here is a link to multimap and a location in Plympton, Plymouth where they've just installed a brand new SID (the site is near the white buildings on the Ridgeway about one third down and horizontally centred). It's one of those that light up with the speed limit (same symbol as used in variable speed limits) if you're over the limit.

Some time ago, the road used to be a 40 zone, but the powers that be have reduced the limit to 30. A couple of days ago, I drove down that road when a car in front of me set the SID off, which lit up with the 40-limit sign.

So, what's the limit on that road? Given that the SID uses the same sign as a variable speed limit, does it make the road a 40-zone if you can get the SID to light?

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Will

Maybe, but if you got the SID to light, surely that means you were exceeding the 30 limit that was in place before the sign?

OTOH, if you took it to court, it would prove you innocent of the offence of exceeding the speed limit at $camera_location and you'd be beyond the 14 day threshold for a NIP for speeding before the sign.

<basingwerk>Why don't you try it and report back to us after the hearing?</basingwerk>

What if a vehicle ahead of you sets it off whilst you're trundling along at 30? Or what if, as is the case with so many of these things once they've been installed and left to fend for themselves without the slightest bit of TLC, the calibration on the speed sensor gets screwed up and starts triggering the SID when vehicles go by at lower speeds?

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Chris

I suspect that they ordered the thing while the limit was still 40 and then have set it to go off above 30. The car in front of me that set the thing off was probably doing less than 35. The sign, when illuminated, is a red circle around a yellow 40 - exactly the same as the variable speed limits on the M25. AFAICT, an illuminating matrix that displays a red circle around a yellow number has the same meaning as a standard lollipop. So if the thing illuminates, I suspect that it would increase the speed limit.

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Will

The thing that does amuse me, have a look at the thing closely. I bet it has LEDs installed such that it can display or

Some muppet probably forgot to set a jumper somewhere.


As for the speed limit change, I still want to know if the VSL signs are legal, since they do not have the correct colour background or text.

TSRGD 2002, Item 58(3):

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Chris

Even if the sign is not legally enforcable it would make a hell of an excuse to be exceding 30! Encitement, or whatever...

Wait...

"Encitement to commit an offence" is an offence, isn't it? Are another council guilty of that again?

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Andrew.

But the construction of those signs prevents no such thing. They'd just have to use a few more LEDs and light up the background bits instead of the number.

While we're at it, can we have the red and white LEDs running off the same phase so that the number doesn't appear to dance around inside the circle in your rear view mirrors.

In my limited legal knowledge I would say that it depends where you got clocked. Obviously if it was before the sign then the presence of the sign is irrelevant.

Travelling past the sign, any subsequent speed limit would supersede it anyway. How long after the SID was the next speed-limit sign?

Remember an interesting one when my parents were listening to the 'police messages' once (they weren't logging locations or anything, which is illegal). They were trying to manually switch off a sign on the M1 which was reading '100mph'.

This is a built up area with a default limit of 30. So when they reduced the limit from 40 to 30 all they did was remove the 40 entry signs and repeaters. There is no other speed limit signage until you leave the 30 zone over a mile further down the road.

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Will

Try this link with Local Live

http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2& ... ne=4256882

I drove past there today and the sun was shining brightly enough so that I could see that there are LEDs for both and - so it looks like Lum is right, and some numpty's got a jumper on the wrong pins

That said, I wasn't going fast enough to set it off, so I don't know whether it's still showing the wrong number.

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Will

Ah, but then it wouldn't be the same kind of sign, would it. Of course you could construct a sign which had the ability to display black on white, but the way the existing VSL/SID signs are constructed means they can't. And I don't think this bit of TSRGD was intended to be interpreted as "you must not build an electronic sign incapable of showing the traditional colours if it's in any way technically possible to make it capable of doing so", since we've always had the technology to build electronic signs which would display the same colours as their ink-on-metal equivalents - wouldn't it be pointless to specifically include permission for something which could never actually occur?




Do you wear glasses, by any chance? If I'm not looking through the central part of my lenses at these signs, I see an offset between the white and red, which gets progressively larger the nearer my line of sight gets to the edge of the lens. At distance the offset is great enough to place the numbers entirely outside of the circle...


...however, I get the same effect with colours everywhere else - TVs and monitors, books and magazines etc. - so it's definitely not something caused by the design of the signs. I suspect it's simple dispersion caused by the combination of lens material and shape - I've only noticed it since I started using high index lenses cut to fit smaller thinner frames, on my older uber-geeky specs with thick lenses covering almost half my face (I look back at old photos and think, ye gods, did I really go out in public with those things on my face...) it wasn't something I was ever aware of.

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Chris