On Sunday we were driving along the A43 towards Northampton when we came across a bright blue camera thing pointing straight at us. It looked brand new, was painted a nice shade of dark blue, was a typical Gatso, and was on the left side of the road and there were no markings on the road. At this point the road is a real mess due to the construction of the dual cariageway and the new road is also on the left. However, the new road is nowhere near finished so I doubt the camera is there in anticipation of completion.
What could it be?
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RAC Roadmaster camera.
Completely innocent.
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Dave - I thought it was something like that but it looked EXACTLY like a Gatso -big and square, orifices on the front face and no corresponding unit pointing in the opposite direction. Also, it was quite low down, all the traffic masters I have seen so far are high up, at street light height. This was more insidious than a traffic master.
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Traffic masters are low down. Specs or Truvelo are high up , as tall as streetlights.
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Sorry Robin, if I'd read your post more carefully I'd have seen you said it looked exactly like a standard revenue raiser.
Interesting that there were no road markings. I've heard some cameras have their calibration etched on the lens.
Anyway, I'm clueless on this one...
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Sounds like a Truvelo camera to me. Loads of them in Northants. They use 4 black wires in the road, about a foot apart, which detect the car. They are difficult to see as you're going along. To verify the speed, the cameras are actually looking at 3 white lines very close together, which are in front of the black lines.
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Todd
Interesting - I've not spotted the road markings used with these cameras. As you say, this system requires wires in the road so it's more difficult to install than a normal roadside camera. Is this why they are planned with new roads?
Regards
John
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Not so diffcult to install. Just a diamond saw and a bit of pitch to cover the cables.
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Robin
Sounds like one of the new breed of forward facing cameras. No flash, no road markings, so it seems any prosecution is down to camera calibration. Therefore, probably suits road work areas.
Given the current state of the A43 it would be difficult to speed, but I suspect it's installed to cover for temporary speed limits during construction work.
If it's there in anticipation of the new road one wonders how that's compatible with the intention of using cameras at accident black spots. After all, if the road's not built how do the authorities know it's going to be an accident black spot? Is it badly designed? Surely not!
Regards
john
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As Todd says, almost certainly a Truvelo camera. It is made by a South African arms manufacturer, so if you exceed the speed limit, it will shoot you in the head (this feature is currently disabled pending Home Office approval).
www.truvelo.co.za will provide you with amazingly little information on the technology inside these blue boxes.
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If I remember correctly there are approximately 3-4 of these Truvelo cameras between the M1 and the M40 on the A43. The one that you have described sounds like the one near the Green Tree pub, they are as already pointed out the new pnes that face toward you and don't flash.
Has anyone been prosecuted by one of these yet?
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Tom.
Any prosecutions? Thousands!
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I think that these cameras work just by timing the presence of your car, by weight on the wheels, across the four wires buried in the road. They catch loads of people in Great Barford on A428 East of Bedford and they don't produce a visible flash ,cos they are facing you and that would a safety hazard. What they might do is produce an identifiable picture of the driver. In this case you will not be able to use the "Senior Police Officer in the North East" dodge of saying that you didn't know who was driving your own private car when it was caught speeding.
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Sorry, nowt to do with weight.
Cables are buried in the road surface and a current is passed through them. This is known as an inductive loop. They are often buried in new road surfaces and newly surfaced road passing through my fields has about 6 loops in a stretch of about 300 yards. Wonder what for !!!!!
Loop detectors operate on the principle of inductance, the property of a wire or circuit element to "induce" currents in isolated but adjacent metal (such as the lump of steel in a car engine or body). One or more turns of insulated wire are buried in a shallow cutout in the roadway, a cable runs from a roadside box to the controller, and an electronics unit located in the controller cabinet checks the inductance.
The wire loop is excited with a signal and functions as an inductive element in conjunction with the electronics unit. When a vehicle stops on or passes over the loop, its inductance is decreased. This is detected by the electronics. and sends a pulse to the controller, indicating the presence or passage of a vehicle.
For most conventional installations, when the inductance or frequency changes a preset threshold in the actuate detector electronics, this indicates that a vehicle has been detected.
Time taken to pass between two loops over a known distance gives the speed of the vehicle.
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Nice to see that when we get fined it is not even by a British made machine!!
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This sounds a ripe candidate for avoidance action. Saw a war documentary programme the other night about an electric current being passed around ships to fool magnetic mines. Maybe we should all drive around with an electro magnet under the car?
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My advice is is you can possibly avoid the county stay well out of Northants. The people responsible for these cameras will even lie to justify their use as the ABD proved in the past. If Northants is going to persecute motorists, then the motorists answer is to keep out of the county. Certainly avoid spending any money there. And yes, I know Silverstone is in Northants.
HJ
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What is needed is a device which sets them off regardless of the speed of the vehicle.
By the time the authorities have processed two or three hundred false alarms for one true reading they will surely give up on cost-benefit grounds.
Any amateur inventors out there?
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[quote]
Not so diffcult to install. Just a diamond saw and a bit of pitch to cover the cables.
[/quote]
Not so difficult to uninstall, either. Just a diamond saw, or a bit of pitch to cover the lense.
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