Love them or hate them, speed cameras are to stay. Actually, I don\u2019t think that anybody loves speed cameras. Most of us would love to do what Rowan Atkinson does in \u201cJohnny English\u201d \u2013 fire a missile at that thing that\u2019s just snapped us and blow it to smithereens. And in case you\u2019re 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\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\nThe 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 \u2013 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\u2019s 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 \u2013 if the idea of having your internal organs reduced to pile of mince doesn\u2019t put you off heavy-footedness, possibly the idea of paying out will deter you.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n Love them or hate them, speed cameras are to stay. Actually, I don\u2019t think that anybody loves speed cameras. Most of us would love to do what Rowan Atkinson does in \u201cJohnny English\u201d \u2013 fire a missile at that thing that\u2019s just snapped us and blow it to smithereens. And in case you\u2019re wondering whether […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1646"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12348,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1646\/revisions\/12348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nOne 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<\/a> or a Porsche 911<\/a> whizzes past? Whip out the radar gun and see what it\u2019s doing. Little Mini Cooper<\/a> or VW Beetle<\/a> whips past driven by a silver-haired lady? Ignore it \u2013 even though said Mini or Beetle is quite capable of exceeding the speed limit.<\/p>\n
\nSpeed cameras work on a fairly simple principle of physics \u2013 one that was taught later on in the year back in Mr Cook\u2019s class. It\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019re going at right angles to it, you won\u2019t get picked up.<\/p>\n
\nCan speed cameras pick up things that aren\u2019t 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.
\nMany people argue that speed cameras are just a way of filling up the police department\u2019s coffers. However, they do keep speeds down, as folk have a tendency to go lightly on the accelerator if they think that there\u2019s 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<\/a> beloved by the NZ Police. The speeds of passing cars dropped considerably when this was parked on the road side.<\/p>\n
\nAnd now it\u2019s 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\u2019d snigger as the brake lights flared and the tyres squealed as some poor sucker thought they\u2019d been clocked. Bet they spend several weeks wondering when the nasty letter was going to come in the mail. I don\u2019t know what the cops would have said if they saw us \u2013 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? http:\/\/credit-n.ru\/offers-credit-card\/ren-drive-365-credit-card.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"