I shall "take steps" to ensure that a momentary lapse of attention does not lead to a NIP again.

Saint

 

Bel Euro 550 wil sort you out ( SPECS cameras aside) Try ebay for second hand ones.

What road in Abz were you on ?

Calum

 

Am I entitled to ask for the evidence?
The response varies from force to force. Some will apparently let ypu see it. Some, however, will only let you see it after you have declined the fixed penalty and they are going to take you to court. This makes it harder for you, of course; you have to make the decision before you see the evidence.

All is not lost, however, a loophole has recently come to light; http://icnorthwales.icnetwork.co.uk/...l&siteid=50142. And the law, http://www.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts1988..._8.htm#mdiv172.
So, send the form back, with the driver's details but don't sign it. The only possible fly in the ointment is that I am not certain that because the form is unsigned, it is inadmissable as evidence in Scotland. However it looks very promising.

A_E

 

As you say not sure that this applies to Scotland.

 

Are you not entitled to see video evidence under the Data Protection Act 2000?

 

Ask for the evidence FFS !!!

If you share the car with other drivers, and it is remotely possible that you were not driving at 'this particular time' then they need to help you identify the culprit, the video or photos may identify the driver.

 

Check this out, from the Bell site:

"Watching the Detectives"
By Andrew English -
Motoring correspondent for the Daily Telegraph - UK.


As the police rake in increasing amounts of cash from speed fines, Andrew English wonders whether they're as keen on saving lives as they claim to be, and looks at the pros and cons of high-tech devices that warn drivers of the traps..

THE last time I wrote about speed, the Motoring desk received a very heavy postbag indeed. So I approach the subject again with considerable caution.

In the UK, Gatso speed cameras have been a blessing and a curse for the authorities. Estimates of last year's total fine revenue from the UK's 3,000 speed cameras are in excess of £180 million, but purchasing and maintaining cameras, plus the administrative costs of issuing the tickets, is taking its toll on police budgets.

As a result, the police have successfully called for a higher fixed-penalty speeding fine, part of which (after tickets issued have exceeded the previous year's total) will go to the constabulary in question. The new system is being tested this year.

Suddenly, it is in the interests of the police to deploy more speed cameras and to make more use of those they have. The Thames Valley force is currently studying exactly what it costs to issue a speed ticket, the hidden agenda being that senior coppers would like to see £40 fixed-penalty notice become a £100 fine. This could happen if they can make a convincing case that speed tickets cost nearly as much as they generate. Warwickshire Police, who are adopting dozens more speed cameras and employing extra officers and civilian staff to process the extra fines they will produce, call their strategy, with a revealing candour, "a business plan".

At the same time, speed limits are generally being lowered, as is the speed at which a ticket is issued. In some forces' areas, cameras are set at less than the Association of Chief Police Officers' guideline figure of the speed limit plus 10 per cent and 2mph.

These actions are justified with two simple arguments. The first, and most convincing, is that all speeding is against the law. It was Scotland Yard commissioner Paul Manning who blustered that Britain's 30 million drivers should be fined if they are caught at just 1mph above the limit, although he subsequently engaged in some fabulously undignified mud-slinging with the Mail on Sunday, which claimed to have caught him travelling in his official car at 43mph in a 40mph area.

The trouble with this point of view is that when speed limits and the speed ticket threshold are continually being revised downwards, it becomes much easier and more lucrative to catch motorists. And if the lower speed limits are seen as ludicrous by a significant majority of drivers, then the law falls into disrepute and is ignored.

The second argument is that "speed kills", and that to question the actions of the police or government advisers is therefore to condone last year's 3,421 road deaths.

Difficult to get past this one; like all good propaganda, the slogan appears to offer a simple explanation and a solution for a complex problem and has therefore been widely accepted. In fact, although studies differ slightly as to the effect of speed on road accidents, most (with the notable exception of the unelected and hectoring government adviser Robert Gifford) agree that excessive speed is a major factor in only between seven and 15 per cent of accidents. In fact, it is poor judgement (which may include inappropriate speed) that is the major factor. The plain truth is that if drivers were educated in the fundamental principle of matching speed to vision - or, as our safe driving expert Paul Ripley puts it, always being able to stop safely well within the distance you can see to be clear ahead - speeding would no longer be a hazard. In fact, there would be very few road accidents of any description.

It is also arguable that the justification for the "speed kills" slogan is a wilfully emotive combination of two related statistics: more than 6,000 children are "killed or seriously injured" on British roads each year, and it is said that lower speeds would reduce this awful death toll. However, without being in any way complacent or diminishing the tragedy of individual cases, the detailed statistics give a rather different impression: of the 43,445 children hurt in road traffic accidents in 1998, 5,873 were seriously injured but just 207 were killed, of whom 1,151 and 64 respectively were in cars at the time.

The idea that a crackdown on speeding is intended to save lives is seriously undermined by the siting of speed cameras and most police speed traps, which, far from being placed around schools, playgrounds and accident blackspots, as might be expected if speeding were so very dangerous, are generally placed on long, wide stretches of road where a high number of motorists can be expected to exceed the limit. In addition, far from being used as an obvious deterrent to reduce traffic speeds, cameras are painted a dull grey and are often hidden behind other road furniture. There is also considerable evidence to show that speed cameras don't do much to reduce accidents or speeding, but that they do increase feelings of persecution among people who previously were inclined to be pro-police, and even lead to an increase in the number of accidents in surrounding streets that don't have cameras.

I consider the police have been less than honest about the introduction of speed cameras. When I interviewed London's top traffic policeman in the early Nineties, the uniformed Kevin Delaney was the calm voice of authority. No, he said, Gatso cameras were not being introduced to get at motorists, but were a safety device that would be used in areas where speed was a crucial safety issue, such as near schools.

Ten years on, Delaney works for the RAC Foundation, and says he feels "bitterly let down by the way Gatsos have been introduced. It wasn't what I or any of my colleagues saw as the aim of the experiment when we signed up to it."

Delaney reckons that once the principle of allowing the police to keep a proportion of the speeding fines has been allowed, there will be a conflict of interest, where money becomes a factor. "It doesn't surprise me in the slightest," he said of the ratcheting down of the threshold speeds, or the recent order for 2,000 extra speed cameras for use in and around the London M25 orbital Motorway.

I asked Delaney what he would say if I told him I'd been using a radar detector recently. "I wouldn't have a problem with that," he said, "provided you'd been using it responsibly."

And that's exactly what I have been doing after receiving a number of letters inquiring whether radar detectors were worth their price (quite high, as it turned out).

Two years ago a judge ruled that the use of a radar detector was legal in the UK, as the use of one could not strictly be described as the interception of police wireless transmissions within the Wireless and Telegraphy Act.

I last tested a radar detector around 10 years ago; it was rubbish. It could detect every mobile phone, garage door opener, bank machine and microwave oven within a 10-mile radius and, as a consequence, it never stopped crying wolf. After a week of pointless ear bashing, I wrapped it up and sent it back.

But time and technology march on. The Beltronics 990 International costs a whopping £400, although as importer Glyn Worsley of Complimentary Technology pointed out, it did achieve outstanding results in separate independent tests run by Auto Express and Evo magazines. What the tests showed was that if you paid attention and were fast on the brakes, you could avoid a speeding ticket from hand-held radar and laser cameras, as well as fixed and portable Gatso cameras.

I was still sceptical, so Worsley sent three Bel units for test. All the units come with a choice of three fixing alternatives (Velcro, rubber suckers or a sun-visor clip), two power leads (coiled or straight) and a cigar lighter power plug. Operation is a simple matter of plugging in the unit and turning the ignition key. An electronic voice and a series of squawks and rings accompanies the start-up sequence, then all is quiet (hopefully) with either "Highway" or "City" on the LED display.

(Site Comment - We are an official resaler for the Bel units supplied by Complimentary Technology, here in the U.K. and they provide the shipping of the units. See above.)

Beltronics claims the unit is undetectable in use and that it can be upgraded with new software should the forces of law and order alter frequencies or invent an all-new method of detection.

And that really is about it. The Bel sits on the dash and (mostly) warns about speed cameras and lasers - in other words, it does exactly what it says on the box. It tells you which M25 gantries have live cameras and it could (if the authorities chose to employ laser beacons) warn you of school crossing patrols or of service vehicles blocking the hard shoulder on motorways.

It does cry wolf occasionally; it is convinced there's a laser-toting cow in a field near the A3 in Surrey and it goes mad at petrol stations. It also engenders a degree of paranoia in the driver, to the extent that far from whizzing around everywhere at illegal speeds, I've actually slowed down over the past weeks. Part of the reason is that you can't always stand on the brakes and cruise gently past a speed camera; if there's following traffic, a vehicle about to move into your lane or whatever, you can only safely reduce speed by lifting off the throttle. If you are going too fast, that won't be enough to stop the camera flashing and the arrival of a ticket in the post.

Nor will a radar/laser detector protect you from any kind of time/distance speed trap, such as VASCAR or the new Speed Police Enforcement Camera Systems (SPECS), which times cars over a known distance using digitised images of their registration plates. So the detector will not save your licence and can never be a substitute for good observation and appropriate control of your speed.

Speeding is neither big nor clever, and inappropriate speed in the wrong place puts lives at risk. If you killed or injured someone while driving irresponsibly, you would regret it every day for the rest of your life; for that reason alone, I am reluctant wholly to recommend a radar detector. On the other hand, it can give you the vital early warning of a hazard that the police in just about every other European country seem to think is part and parcel of the installation of speed cameras, frequently painted in bright colours to enhance their deterrent effect and slow traffic at accident blackspots. That's something the British police seem to have forgotten in their dash for cash.

 

As you say not sure that this applies to Scotland.
The point being that since you have to send the form back anyway, there is no reason to sign it. Asking to see the evidence does not relieve you of the requirement to provide the driver's details, or to do it within 28 days. The Road Traffic Act link I provided does apply in Scotland. The possible dubiety that I was referring to is as to the status of the unsigned form.

 

Just got a NIP for doing 50 in a 40, on a dual carrageway in Neasden. We have no recollection of any "Safety Camera Enforcement" van whilst we were in the car. It was about 1900, and loads of cars cruising along in long lines doing between 50-60 is the NORM.


Thanks




[Edited by The Saint - 4/7/2003 7:43:22 PM]