Variable speed fine

MobileSaver

DavidLintern said:

I was observing all the variable speed limits and adjusting my cruise control appropriately. Went under a limit of 50 travelling at 50, a few 100m up the road, was flashed, and looked up noticing the limit had changed to 40 on the upcoming gantry. I got a notice informing me I was going 47 in a 40. This feels completely wrong and unjust, but I'm unable to contest it,

National Highways state that cameras are not armed until at least 60 seconds after a variable limit has changed so I would respectfully suggest the most plausible explanation is both you and the OP simply missed the speed change on the current/previous gantry.

As others have said, if this was a common problem then you would have thought that loads of people would have posted on YouTube by now with dashcam proof that they were caught just seconds after a speed limit change, yet they haven't...

As an aside you can get dashcams for little more than a tenner these days which would at least have given you closure that it was a simple innocent oversight on your part.

ontheroad1970

DavidLintern said:

I came across this post after receiving a notice of intended prosecution, under VERY similar circumstances. I am surprised by the amount of cynicism against the OP. I can 100% understand the situation and sympathize. I was travelling along the M4, about to join M5 where traffic is often snarled up, I was observing all the variable speed limits and adjusting my cruise control appropriately. Went under a limit of 50 travelling at 50, a few 100m up the road, was flashed, and looked up noticing the limit had changed to 40 on the upcoming gantry. I got a notice informing me I was going 47 in a 40. This feels completely wrong and unjust, but I'm unable to contest it, unless I want to risk extra fines, court appearances and extra points. Accept inaccuracies and wrongly admit to wrong-doing. Or contest it as is your right as an innocent party, but risk massively inflated fines and penalties?

Teh system is doing what it is intended to do - managing traffic, by slowing the traffic down from 70 to 50 and then 50 to 40.  I travel the route frequently and am used to it.  Variable means that it will vary.  It does what it says on the tin.  As said upthread, the camera isn't armed for the new limit immediately - you travel almost a mile in that 60 second period at 50mph.  Time to brush up your observation skills.

drjohn67

i didn't bother responding for a while because of the cynical 'experts'.
It is amazing the amount of trust that people have in the organisations of the state despite numerous examples of incompetence.

Todays news?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c70rk80p9eqo
They could have verified/refuted my complaint from checking fines issued in the 3 minutes before mine. Hundreds of drivers overtook my vehice and the speed limit would have been visible. Many of those vehicles were visible ahead of me in the photos attached to my police notice. The police didn't bother.

I have submitted an IOPC complaint 


As far as the signage on the variable speed camera system. The cameras are on the same gantry as the sign.
A car travelling at an appropriate safe distance behind an HGV provides a viewing angle of 3.338 degrees. If 2 HGVs are ahead (as in my case) the signs are obsured across all lanes. This allows less than 5 seconds for the speed sign to become visible before the following car reaches the camera. They should have placed enforcement cameras a few hundred metres past the sign to allow appropriate time for drivers to respond. It is a design fault.

rocketrob5

This is not a personal comment, more an observation. Too many people nowadays blindly follow other traffic matching their speed and not observing properly.  In this case, if you can't see the gantries due to a HGV, back off so you can.  Other cars going the same speed as you or faster is irrelevant to your case, they likely got a NIP as well.  Seeing the limit change as you pass under (presumably 20m before, or the angle would make it hard to see), would give time to gently brake in time from 50-40 before the camera.  If a technical error, fair play for pursuing it.

drjohn67

I was backing off, but the space was continuously filled by streams of vehicles merging from right and the left! I was leaving more than the 2-second rule. 

It was irrelevant anyway, because the sign changed from 50mph to 40mph as I passed under it. The claim that the police synchronise the speed sign changes and camera activations has been demonstrated as false. They now admit to the camera going off before the sign changes.

Previously, the AA speed awareness trainer said that it was impossible. They said that the cameras could not go off early. In my case, the time of the speed sign supposedly changing (stated on my notice) was wrong by 3 minutes because I saw it change as I passed under it. Having only been visible for just 5 seconds, the sign changed in the last 1-2 seconds. I was then flashed. 

The Police now admit that there is an "anomaly between how the signs interact with the cameras".

Just like I experienced.    

drjohn67

rocketrob5 said:

This is not a personal comment, more an observation. Too many people nowadays blindly follow other traffic matching their speed and not observing properly.  In this case, if you can't see the gantries due to a HGV, back off so you can.  Other cars going the same speed as you or faster is irrelevant to your case, they likely got a NIP as well.  Seeing the limit change as you pass under (presumably 20m before, or the angle would make it hard to see), would give time to gently brake in time from 50-40 before the camera.  If a technical error, fair play for pursuing it.

Thinking distance is 15-20m. Slowing at a safe (non-emergency braking) rate will be 15-20m.

That is assuming that a driver has nothing to pay attention to other than scanning for speed signs, 10-20 seconds notice would seem reasonable time to allow drivers to adjust speed, not <5seconds. Or in my case, 1-2 seconds. 



P.S. The relevance of the cars overtaking me is just that they were travelling at speeds likely to activate the 50mph 'trigger', and not just the 40mph 'trigger' that I did.

It would have been simple for the police to review the notices served in the 2 minutes before mine to check the speed sign recorded in those images. It would have shown 50mph at a time that the system was supposedly displaying 40mph, and therefore demonstrated that the camera and sign timings were not synchronised/unreliable.

I raised this to the highways agency and the police at the time. The police ignored my communication.
If they had bothered to consider my concern raised to them, then they could have recognised the anomaly over 12 months ago. 

Seems people are too ready to dismiss.

jimjames

drjohn67 said:

The Police now admit that there is an "anomaly between how the signs interact with the cameras".

Just like I experienced.    

As soon as I saw that article this morning I thought of this thread (and possibly others) and people finally be proved correct. It's very hard if not virtually impossible to be able to dispute these fines without access to the original source records as otherwise it's your word against the system.

facade

It appears to me that the fault is that the timer that gives 10 seconds grace, and counts time since the limit changed is running way too fast. Hence the 10 second grace is a fraction of a second, and your 1-2 seconds observation has become 3 minutes.

The astonishing thing is that youtube and social media haven’t been flooded with dashcam footage showing the limit changing at the last instant and the camera flashing as the car passes underneath.

There have been a few people like yourself swearing the limit changed as they passed underneath, yet they were flashed and the photos claim the limit had been in force for a long time.

Without evidence such as dashcam footage it is virtually impossible to convince a Court that the "time since speed limit change" is massively wrong. (As it such a trivial thing to get right, it is inconceivable that it could be wrong)

victor2

drjohn67 said:

i didn't bother responding for a while because of the cynical 'experts'.
It is amazing the amount of trust that people have in the organisations of the state despite numerous examples of incompetence.

Todays news?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c70rk80p9eqo
They could have verified/refuted my complaint from checking fines issued in the 3 minutes before mine. Hundreds of drivers overtook my vehice and the speed limit would have been visible. Many of those vehicles were visible ahead of me in the photos attached to my police notice. The police didn't bother.

I have submitted an IOPC complaint 


As far as the signage on the variable speed camera system. The cameras are on the same gantry as the sign.
A car travelling at an appropriate safe distance behind an HGV provides a viewing angle of 3.338 degrees. If 2 HGVs are ahead (as in my case) the signs are obsured across all lanes. This allows less than 5 seconds for the speed sign to become visible before the following car reaches the camera. They should have placed enforcement cameras a few hundred metres past the sign to allow appropriate time for drivers to respond. It is a design fault.

If you are one of the 2,650 erroneous triggers out of "more than 6 million" over the same period, then you should expect recompense. They have clearly found a way to detect the early activations and it does of course cast doubt upon the system, no matter how tiny the percentage of errors is. 

If you are contacted as a result of this, go and buy a lottery ticket! 

This is no help to the OP, but an interesting comment in the article...

Meanwhile, police forces have stopped issuing fines from variable cameras until they have confidence in their accuracy.

jimjames

victor2 said:

Meanwhile, police forces have stopped issuing fines from variable cameras until they have confidence in their accuracy.

That would suggest to me there's more to it. If it's an isolated incident with changes of limit (2650 out of millions) then it should have no impact on issuing fines so if they're not doing any then something must be going on.