speed camera detectors

flyingscotno1

Mids_Costcutter wrote: »

Who are these 'unqualified' people revising speed limits?

From my experience elected Councillors who are only trying to placate locals who have no history or understanding of how traffic works.

Just because there is a 30 sign does not mean traffic will do it, even if you put up hundreds of huge signs, flashing warnings etc- if it feels too slow people will speed up and the only way to slow folk down is to change the road layout. I have a road near my work- 30mph limit and I have never done, or seen people do 30 in the middle bit of it. It has no pavements, crash barriers and underpasses nor any development within 30m of it. Stick on 40 at least- the bits at either end should be 30 but extending it to the whole road was madness. I've been in cars from colleagues who go along that bit at 40-50 even passing police cars who don't bat an eyelid. Madness.

Only the other day our local paper had an article about residents pressure group who were annoyed one of the 2 local Councillors in the area rejected a set of traffic lights replacing 2 mini roundabouts. They are wanting less traffic along this road and slower speeds (not that I've ever found speed a problem). They launched into a tirade about it, disgraceful, our other Councillor supported it and so on...

Of course when they interviewed the Councillor who rejected it she mentioned what they had failed to- that a report from professional engineers outside the council had stated it would do little to slow traffic down, was very expensive, would cause delays and dangerous queuing and increase noise and pollution.

For the OP- do these things actually work. I'd fancy that the GPS warnings you get for speed cams that are fixed are alright but useless- you usually see them in advance. Camera vans and police are more difficult but again sometimes I think they'll get you before you react. I use speed guns for surveying traffic speeds at work and it is so obvious that happens- hit them at 36 and you see the readout drop 34- 31- 29 - 29mph.... Too late most times.

pompeyrich

choppy-c wrote: »

Thanks to all - 1 question can the gps based systems detect the camera van parked up or lone ossifer hiding behind a tree ?
Also do snooper type systems pickup all cameras as well as say roadangel (updated)

Cheers

GPS systems rely purely on the location of known cameras and known hiding places. I use gpsworlds database on my Garmin sat nav. The only slight niggles, with the gps world version vs the originalGarmin version and probably dedicated gps camera finders, are it is non directional, that is, it will warn you of cameras on the opposite side of the road, which aren't going to get you travelling the other way and as there are so many hiding places you get a warning for just about every bridge over a Motorway or main road, which can create the cry wolf syndrome.

Laser guns can work up to a mile away, so any alarm from a laser detector is probably going to be too late and the beam is quite narrow and aimed at the number plate area it might not even be detected at all.

vaio

choppy-c wrote: »

........I am of course confident that the new government will be photographing & recording our movments less & generally returning our civil liberties & freedoms so of course it wont be needed !

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

tomstickland

Mids_Costcutter wrote: »

Who are these 'unqualified' people revising speed limits?

I've been reading accounts from Bournemouth where i local councillors are demanding that a road in their area have a lower limit "because other areas already have it". They have no interest in looking at the research into limits matching risks on roads.

The A38 in Somerset has a 2 mile straight in open countryside with a 30 limit. Apparently the work of the local council. A work colleague who lived nearby said that it was happening a lot - councillors with no knowledge other than "speed kills" were working to lower limits on various roads.

vikingaero

I saw a programme a while back where a group of people were invited to guesstimate the speed of various vehicles. Cars doing up to 30mph were often assessed as travelling up to 45-50mph. The higher speed figures were often given on the local roads to where the group lived.

Mids_Costcutter

tomstickland wrote: »

I've been reading accounts from Bournemouth where i local councillors are demanding that a road in their area have a lower limit "because other areas already have it". They have no interest in looking at the research into limits matching risks on roads.

The A38 in Somerset has a 2 mile straight in open countryside with a 30 limit. Apparently the work of the local council. A work colleague who lived nearby said that it was happening a lot - councillors with no knowledge other than "speed kills" were working to lower limits on various roads.

And of course limits should also take into account the design and function of a road. Incredible that councillors in Bournemouth would really make a decision on such a dubious basis. As Flyingscotno1 highlights most councillors should and will take professional advice. If they don't then they should have some explaining to do! Oh dear indeed.

Arfa__

I've installed some software on my satnav called POIWarner, which has a subscription to the https://www.poihandler.com database of cameras. I have a Becker satnav, but I'm pretty sure POIWarner can be installed on many brands of SatNav. Once installed, you just select which databases of speed cams you want (types, speeds, countries etc). It just uses the GPS in the the SatNav to work out how close you are to a camera, how fast, what direction your are going. Beeps when you're close, tells you off if you're going too quick for a camera etc. And it displays a little icon on the screen too, showing if its a fixed, average, common mobile spot, or traffic light camera.
Not all cameras in the database have a direction on them, so it does sometimes warn you about cameras on other side of road. Also since, its purely on proximity, it occasionally beeps about a camera on a neighbouring road.
Not bad over all, €15 for the POIWarner soft, and about €12 for the database subscription each year.

You can also use the soft to get lists of other POI, which maybe handy if you want an up to date list of Fish'n'Chip shops close to your current position!

I was under the impression the use of anything that can detect speed cam radar/laser was illegal over here. And that only stuff with a pre-defined database of camera locations was legal.

Also bear in mind, even databases of cameras are illegal in some European countries! POIWarner has an 'emergency' button, to quickly wipe itself off your satnav, in case you get stopped...