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Smile, You’re On… Speed Camera
Love them or hate them, speed cameras are to stay. Actually, I don’t think that anybody loves speed cameras. Most of us would love to do what Rowan Atkinson does in “Johnny English” – fire a missile at that thing that’s just snapped us and blow it to smithereens. And in case you’re wondering whether this writer has recently had a wee picture of their car taken at an unexpected moment and is feeling grumpy about it, I haven’t.
The idea of speed cameras around the place is a way of keeping speeds down. We all know the horror stories and the physics about high speeds and high-speed crashes. No matter how many high-tech active and passive safety devices your new car has, once you get a certain mass involved at a certain speed (sorry, make that velocity – I was listening in your class back at high school, Mr Cook), the forces involved and the law of the conservation of momentum mean that there’s going to be one heck of a bloody mess. Literally bloody. However, even knowing about what will happen if you crash at speed, some people still do it. Hence speed cameras and speed traps – if the idea of having your internal organs reduced to pile of mince doesn’t put you off heavy-footedness, possibly the idea of paying out will deter you.
One thing that can be said in favour of the unmanned (unpersonned? unstaffed?) speed cameras is that they are unbiased. If a cop is manning the radar machine and taking licence plates, there is a risk that they will be biased by the style of car being driven. Hot sports car such as a Mitsubishi Evo or a Porsche 911 whizzes past? Whip out the radar gun and see what it’s doing. Little Mini Cooper or VW Beetle whips past driven by a silver-haired lady? Ignore it – even though said Mini or Beetle is quite capable of exceeding the speed limit.
Speed cameras work on a fairly simple principle of physics – one that was taught later on in the year back in Mr Cook’s class. It’s similar to the echolocation used by bats and dolphins. The radar emits an electromagnetic signal, which bounces off the car, like that squeak by the dolphin bouncing off a fish. In a classic radar camera, the receiver on the apparatus measures the frequency that the wave comes back at, which is changed thanks to the Doppler effect (it’s blue shifted). The difference between outgoing frequency and incoming frequency tells the doohickeys inside the camera how fast the car is going and triggers the camera. The camera picks up a picture of your car and your licence plate, and you get hit in the wallet. A speed camera of the classic radar type can only pick up vehicles going in the direction of the radar, so if you’re going at right angles to it, you won’t get picked up.
Can speed cameras pick up things that aren’t cars (and vans, motorbikes, etc.)? Yes, they can. The story about the UK cops picking up a NATO fighter jet on the radar, putting said fighter jet on alert and ready to put a missile into the radar system, is just a rumour, but speed cameras can pick up other vehicles. There have been cases of urban speed cameras picking up cyclists, especially if the cyclist is a fairly fit person on a modern bike with a tailwind going down a slope.
Many people argue that speed cameras are just a way of filling up the police department’s coffers. However, they do keep speeds down, as folk have a tendency to go lightly on the accelerator if they think that there’s a speed camera in the area. There was a (true) story from New Zealand about a guy in a rural area who got fed up with the hoons speeding past his place, so he rigged up a fake speed camera involving a couple of boxes and a pumpkin in the open boot of a white stationwagon that looked like the Holden Commodores beloved by the NZ Police. The speeds of passing cars dropped considerably when this was parked on the road side.
And now it’s confession time. When this writer was a uni student, we thought it was a hoot to be a fake speed camera. This involved parking up on the side of the road in an area where speed cameras sometimes lurked after dark. Switch the lights off but when a car goes past at a reasonable clip, waggle the controls to make the headlights go on and off quickly. All our victims would see was the flash and a parked stationwagon, and we’d snigger as the brake lights flared and the tyres squealed as some poor sucker thought they’d been clocked. Bet they spend several weeks wondering when the nasty letter was going to come in the mail. I don’t know what the cops would have said if they saw us – were we contributing to road safety, cheating them out of bagging a fine or simply pulling a harmless prank that was better than some of the other things uni students got up to?
Blazingly Quick Lambo
Lamborghinis are undoubtedly quick cars, but did you also know they are amazingly quick to burn out? A guy on a test drive found out yesterday when his car caught fire and burned to the ground in just a few minutes – as you can see here. That’s over $600,000 in Australian dollars going up in flames!
New Car That Does 560mph for $499 Here!
Quite a story, eh? This is the world of remote control hobby cars. One of the leading brands has just announced a new remote controlled car that actually does a real 70mph for a sale price of $499US. Size for size that translates to 560mph. See it in action here
This is a market that we are not too familiar with, so we did a little more research. It seems that 70mph is not quite so impressive as the world record is an amazing real, (not simulated) 161mph, but this is a specially made car that cost the owner more than $4000
Apparently they had to hire a fully-fledged drag strip to test the model car and ratify the world record.
Now that’s enthusiasm for you.
There is, of course, a flourishing remote control car hobby group in Australia. Does anyone know the Australian speed record?
What's in a Number – $13.6m??
There was a time when ‘personalised plates’ meant two letters, usually your initials, followed by three or four numbers-usually your birthdate…and they were free!
How things change. Next there was a small registration fee, but the plate was yours for life, then a wider range of letters and numbers could be specified and then there were annual fees.
Now there is a huge range of choices which vary from state to state…and a huge range of fees charged by each State Roads Authority.
The best deals seem to come out of the smaller states, where in Tasmania and South Australia, for example, a once only fee can secure a wide choice of personalised plates. In the bigger states, however, they are optimising their income with an ever widening range of choices and an even wider range of pricing.
Then, of course, there is the ‘second hand’ and ‘precious plates’ market. The highest prices ever reached for an Australian plate reputably runs into hundreds of thousands of dollars for number ‘888’ (unconfirmed reports also say the NSW plate no ‘6’ has also sold for a price approaching $1m), but that pales into insignificance when compared to the World record price.
This plate sold three years ago in Abu Dhabi to a local businessman for an unbelievable $13.6m!
Now let’s return to earth and see what’s around us.
Our next door neighbour for a number of years carried the rather strange number plate PUMP FE on her Nissan. She managed the local gym. Weird, meaningless? Well, not really, when we finally worked out that “fe’ is the chemical symbol for iron.
Even more obscure was a local Toyota Corolla with the number plate, TIH5HO ,which puzzled us for ages. Until one day we saw the car- and the plate, in our rear view mirror. Then it dawned on us. The State Roads Authorities won’t permit offensive or rude plates, so it wasn’t long before they woke up and withdrew consent for this clever number. We notice, however, that some states will still permit this configuration to be purchased, which is a surprise (if you can’t work out why, have a look at the mirror image).
These are just two of the clever plates on the road, others include RU NXT (on a hearse), or RUNVS (on a Porsche). The last one we saw simply said ‘SORRY’. As it happened the car was in front of us in a traffic jam. Well, it wasn’t their fault, so what were they sorry for??
There are, of course, many more clever and funny number plates around. If you’ve seen one that is clever, or funny, let us know. Also what do you think about personalised plates? For sure they make money for the Government, but do they just satisfy an ego crave, or do they serve another role? We want to hear from you so leave a reply below.
Footnote:- If you are interested in personalised plates here is the link for your state:-
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