I've recieved many excuses over the years, most of them so stupid you felt like issuing a ticket anyway.

But... I swear this one is true, I stopped a taxi, the private hire type, in Worcester, he was travelling over 40 in a 30, not dangerously, early hours of the morning and I was bored!

He told me he was in a hurry to get to the petrol station as he was low on fuel.

His nationality ?.........couldnt possibly say, Killian will get me !

Also be careful about painting your car pink !, very careful, I'm not sure what they do now, but we used to play "snooker", and pink was always a devil to get !

You didnt need to process them, just pnc check them so the others could hear what colour you had !

By god, you were safe in our hands !!!!

Excellent!

I'll have to try out one of those when they finally catch up with me!

All my mates think it's a great injustice that out of all of us I'm the only one without a speeding ticket. I think of it as inevitable, eventually I will slip up and get caught.......but until then.....

I got all my points when I was 18....had 11 of the blighters . Mind you I was always driving through essex (chav central) in an escort rs turbo so what did I expect. I have since seen the error of my ways as the fuzz see me drive past an think I am a hairdresser

Maybe Nigel can answer this for me .... You are on an 'A' road that is say 5 miles long, and has 1 camera per mile of Armco.

You are travelling above the national speed limit (80 mph) ... say for arguments sake 3 of the 5 cameras (1st, 3rd and 5th) are live, and each "flashes" you.

Would you get 9 points and £180 fine automatically, or would the nice fellows notice a trend in that thay all occured in succession and on the same journey, within however many minutes of each other, and be a bit more leanient towards you?

I havent done this BTW (yet) .. Just curious.

As far as I'm aware, and I dont serve anymore (speed cameras were not in our area when I left), you would get 9 points and £180 fine.

I have heard of this happening, I've also got am IAM collegue who is a met traffic officer, who has seen an NIP ( notice of intended procescution ), from a scamera partnership ( Avon & Somerset if I remember correctly) for 31 in a 30 !

For those of you that drive vans, I have also heard of a peugeot van, the middle sized one, I think its called a partner but could be wrong, being done for 58 in a national speed limit (60 for cars, 50 for vans that have a maximum LADEN weight of 2 tons or more, and 40 for large goods).

The 40 for large goods is not often known by car drivers, so next time your behind a lorry on a single carrageway NSL, please dont get annoyed with him, as if he's doing 40 he just wants to keep his licence.

Interesting action by Avon and Somerset Parasite SP Slime.If one checks out your speedo with your GPS Angel, you will find you are underspeeding, when keeping to the posted signage.

Indicated speedo 30=27, 40 =36, 70=66, 100=96 (On track) , SO--- would have pleaded Not guilty, on a 31 in 30, even without an Angel.

NO police speedo, Camera, Vascar OR Human- can be calebrated to that degree, and have the proof to produce in court.www.Pepipoo.com would have a Field day with that, and Costs +++++.BUT--- lots of drivers just Roll over & pay up ,and pay up again when the Insurance comes in.YOU know it makes Sense.

With you all the way John, but if the camera says 31, your speedo will have been reading 34 - 35 ish, not that I condone what they have done at all, exactly the opposite.

Your road angel will of course have been saying 31, and this indicates an area of danger driving to the road angel, or any other gps speedo, if the scamera partnerships are going to start this big time.

31 is of course an illegal speed, I wouldnt be happy about it, but I'd take advice before pleading not guilty, as you are obviously guilty of exceeding the speed limit, and by pleading not guilty you may incur extra or larger penalties if ( when)  found guilty.

Now does it actually matter ? ......( 31 in a 30 )....no of course it doesnt, and thats the annoying point, do 29, have defective eyesight, a faulty car, or just not be paying attention, and your away scott free, yet potentially far more of a danger to anyone else around.

You will find the police lads and lasses will agree with that too, but the scamera lot are a law unto themselves....do gooders with power.

Nigel, how are the speed limits on larger vehicles enforced?

Surely a fixed unmanned speed camera will not know the difference between a large van and a HGV?

Back to the old ways I suppose.

Andy

Its even cleverer than that, you have to admire the technology.

Take a single carrageway "national speed limit",

60 mph for cars, 50 mph for vans with a maximum laden weight of two tons or more, 40 mph for hgv's.

Now take a gatso camera, which works on radar "scatter".

The larger vehicle scatters more radar, simple but true, so will allow them to set multiple levels.

Mistakes will occur, but these will be sorted out in the "photo" stage....hopefully.

I'm not sure about truvelos, we dont have them in this area, so I havent gotten to play with any, same applies for specs.

Mobile units, be wary of these devils......very wary.

They have real time digital video cameras, when you cross the inductive sensors, its "marks" the tape electronically if you are exceeding the pre-set limit ( and this varies wildy throughout the country).

The real sting in the tail here, is the moron in the van has a button that he can press which also marks the tape, this is how they are "doing" people who pass the talivan whilst talking on their phone, eating, drinking, sticking two fingers up etc etc, when the above mentioned moron downloads the tape, the system automatically deals with the Speed jobbies, and moron passes his own noted offences to the police, in some cases they are taking these up.

I used to display two raised digits, but tend not too these days since a bloke got done !

I have actually seen some of the pictures from local cameras, very good quality they are too.

Nigel wrote: As far as I'm aware, and I dont serve anymore (speed cameras were not in our area when I left), you would get 9 points and £180 fine.

You are indead correct Nigel.

This is one of the arguments against speed cameras. You can in theory loose your license in just one journey.

On a similar note a man passed a camera speeding on his way to work. He noticed that it didn't flash so assumed it wasn't working. Every day that week he passed the camera speeding going to and from work. The first he heard about it was when he got 30 points on his license!!  

Peter Fenwick wrote: This is one of the arguments against speed cameras. You can in theory loose your license in just one journey. On a similar note a man passed a camera speeding on his way to work. He noticed that it didn't flash so assumed it wasn't working. Every day that week he passed the camera speeding going to and from work. The first he heard about it was when he got 30 points on his license!!

There was a case similar to this near me. A woman from my town recieved 12 points in a matter of days because she was unaware of the speed limit or the presence of a camera. She claimed that she had been preoccupied on merging onto the dual carriageway and failed to notice the 50mph limit signs and so drove at approx 60mph.

Strangely, there are signs indicating the 50mph limit well before you would begin to merge and also this is coming from a 40mph zone! How she didn't notice the camera flash at her twelve times is beyone me! If she is that unobservant on the road then we are probably better off without her being on it!

Thanks for the info Nigel, most "illuminating" you might say.

As for eating going through speed cameras, I'm too busy watching the television !! (Joke)

Andy

Rhys wrote: Nigel wrote: I used to display two raised digits, but tend not too these days since a bloke got done ! ..do they teach this at the IAM?

Absolutely....if I'm your observer  

Boy do I dislike speed scamera groups.

They double our points and fine if we go not guilty and get found guilty, although my local scamera partnership deny this, it was all over the press.

We are to get two points instead of three for some offences soon, but according to the press release stuff I've seen its not actually in our favour.

It was something like this, example is a 30 limit.

Present          ;           ;           ;   new

30 - 34 = 0 points                    30 - 34 = 2 points

35 - 50 = 3 points                      35 - 39 = 3 points

over 50 = court         & nbsp;         & nbsp;    40 - 45 = 6 points

                                                 46 & over = court

I cant swear those are the exact figures, but you get the idea !

I found out recently that all the Irish registered cars being caught speeding by foreign licenced drivers will have the points kept warm for them. Our police have decided to accumulate them until the EU driving licence & points system become linked. By then it could be possible to have committed several offences over a ten year period but they will all kick in at once.

Our points system is riddles with unconstitutional elements that it would almost be laughable.

Scamera Groups?

I always thought these were run by the police ?? They always seem to be close by / or is that for protection purposes.

The scamera partnerships are most definately NOT run by the police, at best the police are just one of the partners, and to be honest they are quite often ignored by the other "partners".

The police are still free to run their own speed checks, and quite often do, normally after a spate of accidents in a particular area.

Traffic policeman are the worst type for motoring offences, but they seem very reasonable compared to the civvy horrors.

A traffic policeman in the met area, who is a member of the IAM forum, recently found out he no longer has the authority to issue parking tickets ! They are now isued by the "parking attendants" ( council people, the ones who get cars and holidays if they issue the most), and very soon these people, and the new community officers will have the powers to deal with motoring offences too.

Very interesting reading Nigel.

Thanks for the info about the morons in the mobile camera units.  My first encounter with one of them left me dreading the postman for weeks but nothing ever came and that was over 2 years ago now! I think I'm safe.....

My friend is policeman but he's not all bad as he has an E36 328i Sport Coupe and he works out of a local police station.  This local police station operate a couple of marked 530d and 530i's as traffic cars. 

He tells me all sorts of storeys.  Snooker is still a favourite pastime of the night shift!  Off duty officers getting lifts home, to football matches in the back of the traffic BMW's with the lights and sirens going etc etc.

(name of police station withheld, obviously)

Still they do a good there, patrolling a 30 mph section of dual carriageway.  I got cut up by a neddy (chav) boy racer once, you know the type, baseball cap at 45 deg to the forehead, luminous pink Fiat Punto, tinted windows, picnic table spoiler, only side lights and front fogs on at night, lowered, garish alloy wheels, thinks he's hard but actually drives a girlie car anyway round the next bend a marked Series 5 had pulled him. 

Nice one lads.

Mind you when I drove about in my last car a Vauxhall Senator 3.0i 24v policemen would wave at me when they drove past in their patrol cars.  I was filling it up one day and a policeman stopped a patrol car got out and asked me if I was selling it as he loved them as he used to have one as his patrol car. 

Did you ever use one of those beasts as your patrol car Nigel?

Andrew

Not a hope of having a senator as a patrol car for me, I had a diesel vauxhall astra, and a 3.9 litre rover v8 engined ldv crew bus ( that was fun!).

I did however come up against the frog plod whilst I was driving a 24 valve senator, poor little darlings only had bmw r80 bikes and renault 21's !

That cost the company I was working for a few quid, I didnt realise they were even trying but they couldnt catch it, and had to settle for waiting for me at the toll booth, I thought they were just being friendly when they came over to me......wrong.

This was pre-IAM days for me, but I'd have lost my ticket if the frogs had the power to do so, as it was they couldnt really touch me, rather like our lot tend to let foriegn Johnnies go.

And as for Killians lot keeping the points warm, I for one will be for it if they really do that, I've taken great delight in annoying their camera system, albiet in british registered cars, so perhaps I'm safe anyway.

I can just imagine our government rolling over and accepting that happening to us, whilst at the same time allowing Irelands lorry drivers to completely take the mick out of our system !

I think/hope it will be almost impossible for them to retrospectively get any foriegn citizens, how on earth are they going to trace them ?, and what are they going to do when they recieve "get lost" letters ?

There is a french lorry driver who killed a british coach driver, and injured some children in the coach, the frog chappie was driving on the right !

He was found guilty in a british court, and fined, he returned to france without paying the fine, and has been sticking two fingers up at the british authorities ever since, even appearing in british newspapers saying it is the fault of the british people for driving on the left.

So on that basis, I think your lot may be on a loser.