Sideswiped By HGV

Weird_Nev

Clearly no-one in this thread has any experience of dealing with CCTV evidence.

If you can explain how to get a registration from a vehicle occupying 40x40 pixels of a 640x480 image, in low light, badly compressed through outdated codecs, then every Police Force in the land would be grateful to know.

Image enhancement.
:rofl:

Pc_Crash

Oldfatgrumpy wrote: »

If they get the reg number from what common sense suggests is the same vehicle further down the road, they descend on it rapidly with the forensic gear, there will be some paint transfer surely?

I'm afraid that's not likely to happen. It's low priority to police and in any event, matching cross contamination is not quite as easy as it sounds.


This will be left to the OP's insurer and in all likelihood, police will have nothing further to do with it unless further information comes to light.

Crabman

Weird_Nev wrote: »

Clearly no-one in this thread has any experience of dealing with CCTV evidence.

If you can explain how to get a registration from a vehicle occupying 40x40 pixels of a 640x480 image, in low light, badly compressed through outdated codecs, then every Police Force in the land would be grateful to know.

Image enhancement.
:rofl:

Private parking companies have been using ANPR cameras to actively store high quality images of vehicles entering and leaving private car parks for many years. Some photos even show the driver of the vehicle.

The technology already exists. Given how crucial the motorway network is to criminal activities it's a wonder that the CCTV and ANPR ("ring of steel") systems seen in some cities haven't already been rolled out.

Weird_Nev

ANPR works by focusing on a very small area of the image. I've seen it in action. It also isn't as infallible as you might like to think. Unless you know precisely when the incident occurred, even if you had a row of ANPR cameras a mile away in each direciton, you'd end up with what? A list of LGV numberplates. How many go past a camera in a minute or five on the motorway?

You can't have both things: You need a wide field camera to see traffic incidents and general flow of traffic, and an incredibly high quality CCTV system that can focus in on number plates. Even given decent camera, weather conditions, foliage, lgihting dirty numberplates, can all obstruct the image.

Honestly, I've used these systems for Criminal Investigations in Central London - probably the highest density of public and private CCTV in the UK. The list of things you don't get is far longer than the list of things you do.

Although people like to say we live in a surveillance state, we really don't. It is impracticable to cover every inch of the motorway network with high quality CCTV.

The data a private parking company might capture is trival - perhaps a few hundred 1Mb images a day (and in my experience of private parking firms, even very well resourced ones, they still have crap CCTV cameras and yield 50Kb grainy images like any other system). An Integrated CCTV system storing high-def footage on a motorway would churn terabytes of data. No-one will pay for it, and it's unnecessary.