Just a word of caution to those thinking of purchase of said item for reasons other than opening Garage Doors.
I read the item as only being applicable to Hand Held Speed detection devices. I would say that the majority of planned use of these HH's by Plod are by at least two officers. If Plod starts getting ERROR messages up on the device there is nothing to prevent him, in fact it is good law and accepted as such, for the two officers to be of the opinion that the target vehicle was speeding and ignore the device. This is providing they were both together. They can then sheet the offending driver and no doubt drop evidence in that the offenders vehicle was fitted with the detecting device.
DVD
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Also, could the fact that it replies to the handheld be a breach of the law that forbids interference with such equipment? My understanding is that radar detectors are legal because they receive only, they don't transmit.
On another point, I'm not sure about DVD's assertion that the officers' opinion on seeing the error message is good law - surely this flies in the face of "innocent until PROVEN guilty" (sorry for caps, don't know how to do italics).
Hmm - I wonder if this will be moved to the scamera thread.
andymc
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Let us be quite clear about these devices. If you can not prove you have a legitimate use for it, ie you have no garage, or automatic doors/lights installed at your abode (or mums or gf's etc), plod will chuck the book at you if caught.
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I think DVD is simply stating a law whereby 2 police officers can decide that a car is speeding without the need for a measuring device to corroborate the opinion. In many cases it is obvious that a car is speeding and you don't need a gadget to tell you.
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I think this is the one that was on topgear or driven - they had a car setup with all sorts of detectors and tested them. The only infallible one for handheld and 'man in a van' mobile scameras was this one. They gave the car with the detectors away via one of those 0900 phoneins. They did have a senior plod on who said that unless you really had a garage door opener, you could well get done for perverting the course of justice which carries a much stiffer fine/sentence than speeding.....
I can't see how they justify the price for a garage door opener though. You could probably get the bits from RS for 10 to 20 quid!
On reflection, I think it was Driven - VBH holding the guns ISTR.
Martin
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It was VBH. Shame they couldn't go the extra and put her in a uniform ;o)
The idea of this device was that it would return an error code on the hand-held laser and sound a warning in the car before going "passive" for a preset time. This allowed the driver to slow to the appropriate limit and the PC to re-target the now slower vehicle and get a "good" reading, so avoiding the risk of being pulled for having a jamming device.
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On reflection, I think it was Driven - VBH holding the guns ISTR.
Just to be pedantic,
Driven was on Channel 4 and the later series were hosted by Mike Brewer, Penny Mallory and Jason Plato. The series finished approx 2 yrs ago.
The prog showing the illegal laser blocker was 5th Gear, on Channel 5.
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Before replying I should point out firstly that I am not claiming any more than a layman's understanding of legislation, and secondly I have never read any of the speeding threads on this site, so forgive me if I appear a little naive/ignorant in covering already well-trodden ground.
I agree that it can seem very obvious that a car is speeding, but surely in the eyes of the law this cannot be deemed as anything other than opinion - not proof. As I understand it, the purpose of using the handheld devices is to gain actual incontrovertible proof - if the opinion of two officers was sufficient to gain a conviction of speeding, I don't understand why there would ever be a need for them to be issued with the handheld kit.
Let me draw a very simplistic comparison with another type of crime, say robbery. There's a good reason why it wouldn't be sufficient proof in court for two officers to say "We know it was Joe Bloggs that did it, both of us are of the opinion that it was him, we saw him in the vicinity of the premises and he was found to have cash on his person, ergo he was the one that nicked it." Compare this with "We saw Joe Bloggs driving a car in a 40 zone, both of us reckoned he was doing 60, ergo he's guilty of speeding." To my mind, it just doesn't add up.
andymc
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Two Officers on HHR, I regulary see HHL being used by single Offisers, in fact a recent case we handled (when we borrowed a Laser from the makers) this was by a single Officer. In fact I've
never come accross a case where there were twoOfficers involved.
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The Offence you would get reported for if you were caught using one of these would probably Obstructing a Constable in the execution of his/her duty.
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IIRC, the article in the Sunday Times did state that one person so far has been prosecuted for the exact offence mentioned above by PU.
Like RF says, unless you (or someone that you visit regularly) has a garage, then there really is no excuse for having one of these devices.
I was about to say that I'd have one of these things like a shot, but it just occurred to me that I honestly cannot remember when I last saw a traffic policeman using a HHL. It seems to be all mobile cameras round these parts, so surely this product would have limited appeal?
Cheers
Rob
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"The Offence you would get reported for if you were caught using one of these would probably Obstructing a Constable in the execution of his/her duty."
This maybe a daft question but are the mobile camera vans operated by police officers or civilian staff? Or am I getting confused with the folk who load the static speed cameras with the film?
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Ahh that case PU with the hand held.
Are you going to let us know how you didn't get on?
DVD
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