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NEWS: Radar detector, police speeding
fine and laser jammer news 2003.
Beat the system
From The Sunday Times
By Rupert Steiner
October 31, 2003
Keep it clean: former police officer Glyn Worsley
believes that speed trap detectors, far from encouraging
speeding, promote safer driving and reduce accidents
A speed trap detector can make you a better driver as
well as save in fines.
The Mercedes SLK ambled through the narrow Lancashire
roads, its limiter set to the legal limit of 30mph, a
tail of cars behind. At the first opportunity most
drivers roared past, some giving the finger, others
hurling four-letter abuse, their venom aimed squarely at
the motorist who had delayed their weekly race to work.
Yet the man cruising in the sports car was neither
old-age pensioner nor lost German tourist. It was Glyn
Worsley, 43, a former Greater Manchester police officer
who has spent much of his life protecting the public
from just such road menaces.
Now retired from the police, he helps drivers to keep
their licences clean. Worsley works for the Bolton-based
firm Comtech, where he sells the Beltronics range of
radar detectors that warn drivers when they are
approaching one of Britain's 4,500 radar-triggered Gatso
speed cameras. Such scanning devices were outlawed under
the Wireless Telegraphy Act 1949, but a judgment by the
Queen's Bench divisional court in January 1998 found
that the act did not preclude their use.
The former policeman believes that speed limits should
be raised, that speed cameras do not stop bad driving,
and that seven out of 10 motorists break the law by
speeding every day.
"I conducted a rough experiment driving from my home in
Golborne the eight miles to Bolton at 30mph on the
nose," he says. "I wanted to see how the other drivers
behaved.
"By keeping to the speed limit you actually provoke and
annoy other drivers. People pulled alongside and stuck
two fingers up. By sticking to the speed limit I found I
was causing road rage, so I was doing more harm than
good."
Worsley says it encouraged people to take risks when
they would not normally overtake, making decisions based
on anger. The case for radar detectors is that they make
you constantly aware of your speed.
Driving fast, it is argued, is not a bad thing in the
right place. By selling detectors Worsley feels he is
making people more responsible. A speed detector, he
says, makes you aware about speeding in the same way
that a burglar alarm makes you more aware about
security.
Comtech is a research and development company that makes
a variety of remote transmitting devices for industry,
including real-time stock counts for vending machines.
Worsley, who at one stage had nine points on his driving
licence, has been a sales manager for the past four
years.
His licence is now clean and he never drives without one
of the £349 scanners. "I think it is terrible the way
the government is attacking people for speeding. They
really are cannon fodder. It's easy pickings. It's just
about money and not safety.
"Speed doesn't kill people, it's bad driving. The Gatso
cameras don't see bad driving, they don't stop someone
driving around in a deathtrap. They will get the Porsche
owner who is driving down a motorway at 100mph at 2am in
a car capable of handling that speed, even though he is
less likely to hurt anyone. If you look at roads in this
country they could support higher speed limits."
In fact some studies claim that the number of accidents
rose at sites with Gatso cameras because of drivers
braking sharply when they saw them. Worsley says this is
why detectors are so useful.
A Mori survey discovered Comtech's typical customers
were not boy racers but a large number of women in their
mid-forties. Many bought the device to help them to stay
within the speed limits. Cocooned in their car they find
they lose the ability to judge their speed accurately.
Worsley says: "Every time you hear a beep [from the
scanner] you keep an eye on your speed and stay more
alert. It acts as a constant reminder. My oldest
customer is 80 — if some little old guy in a flat hat is
still capable of picking up speeding tickets, everyone
is.
"When you have a law that so many normally law-abiding
people break, there has to be something wrong. I have
been able to wear two hats. The only solution is the
expensive one and that's putting more police officers on
the roads who can make more accurate judgments than the
cameras. However, even that is not perfect. The problem
is that police tend not to charge other officers or
pretty women, speed cameras do."
Speed traps: what you need to know
• There are 4,500 speed cameras in Britain but only one
in eight contains film. This does not stop them flashing
but does mean you will be unlucky to receive a ticket.
Nottinghamshire, for example, has two sets of digital
devices that measure your average speed between two set
points. The detectors will not alert you to these
devices
• You can pass a speed camera at over the speed limit
without triggering a flash, but the margin over the
limit at which the cameras are set to flash varies. The
minimum is 10% plus 2mph over the stated limit
• If police are becoming inundated with paperwork they
will increase the speed at which you can safely pass
cameras to decrease their workload
• The detectors work by flashing if you are approaching
a speed camera or are being targeted by a hand-held
speed gun. You can set in advance the distance at which
the detector will flash, from 500 yards to half a mile
Ex-cop sells speed
camera detector
From Manchester News
By Unknown
October 30, 2003
For 10 years, Glyn Worsley was a constable with Greater
Manchester Police.
Now he sells a hi-tech machine that warns drivers of
speed cameras ahead.
But, according to 44-year-old Glyn, the radar detectors
which bleep when motorists approach a radar-triggered
speed camera do not simply help people avoid the dreaded
three points and £60 fine while treating the roads as a
race track.
Instead Glyn, who admits he used to drive too fast on
the roads himself, says they make motorists safer,
slower and more responsible.
Glyn works for Bolton-based firm Cometech, which sells
the radar detectors.
At first he was completely against the device, which is
powered by the car battery and plugs into the cigarette
lighter.
But after trying it out he realised that he was actually
driving more slowly and safely as a result of
anticipating the beep of the machine. He said: "At first
I had my police head on and was completely against the
idea of the detectors.
"But my partner, who often commented that I drove too
fast, pointed out that I was generally driving slower as
a result of having the machine on."
Now he says he won't go anywhere without one and insists
his customers are respectable people, not boy racers
desperate to avoid the law.
He also believes that it is reckless driving rather than
going a little over the current limit which is the main
cause of accidents and fatalities.
He said: "One of my customers is 80, and about 40 per
cent are women. There has to be something wrong when
about seven out of 10 normally law-abiding people will
admit to speeding."
The use of the £349 scanners was outlawed by the
Wireless and Telegraphy Act of 1949, but a Queen's Bench
divisional court judgement in January, 1998, found that
the Act did not preclude their use.
More haste, less safe
on the roads
From 6pr.com.au
By Paul Murray
October 25, 2003
The last time I looked, speeding wasn't one of the Seven
Deadly Sins.
But the way it is treated in WA these days, you'd think
it had been specifically proscribed in the Ten
Commandments.
We're brainwashed by the slogan Speed Kills. The problem
is that it's a lie.
The facts speak for themselves. Last year, the WA police
speed-checked drivers 19.5 million times and made 3.22
million pinches for exceeding the limit.
The road toll last year was around 240. If speed killed
- as we're constantly told - the road toll would be a
lot higher given the amount of speeding going on.
Speed, of itself, doesn't kill. If it did, we would be
required to stay perfectly still at all times.
Next week, a British academic will fly in from Bath Spa
University College in England to debunk the Speed Kills
myth for the Sydney-based Centre for Independent
Studies.
Sociologist Dr Alan Buckingham says the strategy is
flawed and based on what he calls "flaky" evidence.
In fact, he argues that speed cameras merely punish the
best, safest drivers.
"The net result of years of speed cameras in Britain and
Australia is that road speeds have not slowed
significantly, the downward trend in serious accidents
and fatalities has been almost totally lost, hundreds of
thousands of the safest drivers are convicted each year
and the goodwill between law-abiding citizens and the
police is evaporating," he says.
Dr Buckingham says our road safety strategies don't
acknowledge the distinction between speed, speeding and
excessive speed.
He argues that excessive speed is the important element
- speed inappropriate for the conditions.
"Speeding generally refers to exceeding the posted speed
limit, and bears no relationship to the current
conditions," Dr Buckingham argues.
"While all speeding implies speed, it does not
necessarily imply excessive speed. Few would claim that
driving 10kmh above the speed limit on an empty motorway
in good conditions constitutes driving with excessive
speed."
Dr Buckingham says the British Transport Research
Laboratory had established speed is responsible for just
7.3 per cent of accidents, not the 30 per cent quoted by
Speed Kills proponents.
But speed remains the major focus of road safety
campaigns.
"When we come to the analysis of the relationship
between 'speeding' (rather than 'speed' or 'excessive
speed') and accidents, the evidence in Britain and
Australia is remarkably thin on the ground," he says.
"Indeed, US research on speeding has established that
those who speed moderately tend to be the safest
drivers. It is those who travel well above and well
below the posted speed limit who are the biggest risk."
That research showed the accident involvement rate for
drivers travelling on streets and highways in urban
areas was by far the highest for the slowest 5 per cent
of traffic.
Roadside speed cameras don't catch these dangerous slow
drivers.
What sort of law enforcement is that? And we're told
this is a road safety initiative. So, what has been the
result of the Speed Kills strategy in Australia?
"Fatal crashes in NSW halved between 1980 and 1991, when
speed cameras were introduced," Dr Buckingham finds.
"Since then the decline has faltered, with a drop of
just 3 per cent since 1993 despite the implementation of
double demerit points in 1997 and fixed speed cameras in
1999.
"Even less convincing is the case of WA which has
experienced a drop of 20 per cent since speed cameras
were introduced in 1988 compared with a fall of 40 per
cent over the same period for Australia as a whole."
The failure of speed cameras to reduce serious road
accidents is not a quirk of British or Australian data.
"Similar findings led the government of British Columbia
in Canada to scrap their cameras, Dr Buckingham says.
"Data from the British Columbia Coroner's Office on
vehicle-related fatalities showed speed cameras did not
save lives.
"A 2000 report, entitled Safe Roads, Safe Communities,
stated that the program had no discernible impact on
speed or on the fatal accident rate. It also noted that
most accidents happen at slower speeds, with two-thirds
of all crashes occurring at speeds below the posted
limit."
Dr Buckingham warns that millions of motorists are being
convicted each year for driving behaviour which is
perfectly safe.
"It is likely that motorists will come to view the
police's actions as cynical, vindictive and unfair," he
says.
He says the issue of speeding highlights a familiar
story of failed state intervention: The government moves
to improve the well-being of a group of people.
Simplistic theories of causation are assumed.
But when evidence emerges to suggest that the policies
are not working, they aren't dropped, but instead more
extreme policies are designed.
So, given the evidence he presents of the failure of
speed cameras, does Dr Buckingham think they should be
scrapped? No. But he says cameras should be used only to
catch the excessive speeders.
In other words, the police should push out the
tolerances on the cameras, not reduce them. That can
only be seen as revenue raising from safe drivers.
"Speed in itself does not kill, but inappropriate speed
can kill," Dr Buckingham says. "What causes
inappropriate speed is part of a wider issue of poor
driving. Poor drivers can be those who simply do not
care about other road users, they can be the inattentive
or they can be the inexperienced.
"Many of these drivers, just like safe drivers, may
speed but they are also likely to behave in other ways
that causes accidents.
"Since speed cameras are unable to distinguish between
poor drivers and safe drivers, most speed cameras should
be removed and a return made to tried and tested methods
of law enforcement."
Focus on speed blurs a
fatal truth
From smh.com.au
By Miranda Devine
October 16, 2003
There's a misguided reliance on deterrence by camera
instead of making the highways safer, writes Miranda
Devine.
There have been so many fatal accidents on the Pacific
Highway near Neil Saines's home in Ballina in the past
year that he has taken to keeping a record on a piece of
paper near his phone. The sounds of ambulance and
fire-engine sirens send a chill up his spine, and he
says they have become increasingly common in the 13
years he has lived in the pretty town an hour from the
Queensland border.
These are his notes for one month: on July 4 a
23-year-old man killed in a single-car crash; July 6,
three teenagers were killed in a head-on collision with
a semi-trailer; July 7, a 17-year-old girl was killed in
a head-on; July 23, five cars were incinerated after a
head-on, killing two people and seriously injuring six.
Ballina sits in the middle of one of the most dangerous
stretches of highway in NSW. The Pacific Highway, the
main route between Sydney and Brisbane, is a two-lane
Third-World goat track for much of this northern
section, despite promises of a 12-kilometre bypass
around Ballina and seven years into a 10-year $2.8
million federal-state upgrade.
This excuse for a highway runs on a meandering route
through the centre of Ballina, taking drivers from one
end of town to the other, and back again, in a big
U-turn that requires you to negotiate five roundabouts
and a little two-lane wooden bridge.
The strain of ever-growing traffic volumes became much
worse last August when the road was opened to the
extra-long B-double trucks, which are deserting the
federally-funded inland New England Highway for the
shorter coastal route. Saines, aged 66 and
vice-president of the Ballina Bypass Action Group (BBAG),
says an extra 2000 vehicles rumble through Ballina every
day, mostly big trucks.
As a result, the town's roundabouts are battered, their
retaining walls smashed, their little gardens overrun as
truck drivers valiantly try to manoeuvre 25-metre-long,
nine-axle vehicles into right-hand turns. The power pole
alongside one roundabout has had "half the side scraped
off".
Saines says the NSW Government has been promising a
bypass by 1998, then 2004, then 2006, then 2010. Now
BBAG has been told there is no set completion date
because of what the Roads and Traffic Authority says are
"engineering and environmental challenges" on the
surrounding wetlands. With funding to expire in 2006,
the RTA is saying the project needs federal funding to
be completed, despite the fact it is a state highway.
Despite the reluctance to spend money on roads to make
them safe, there is no such foot-dragging from the State
Government when it comes to ripping revenue out of
motorists in the name of safety.
The NSW Roads Minister, Carl Scully, dumped as transport
minister after wasting a reported $385 million on lemons
such as the Millennium train and the near-empty
Liverpool-Parramatta bus transitway, has turned his
sights to speed cameras as a cure-all. NSW already has
110 fixed speed cameras, which rake in more than $40
million a year. Now Scully wants 20 per cent more,
claiming research by ARRB Transport Research proves
conclusively they save lives.
But in an article in this month's Policy magazine (www.cis.org.au),
a British sociologist, Alan Buckingham, says the
opposite, citing research which shows speed cameras do
nothing to reduce accidents, and may cause them. His
research predictably caused howls of outrage yesterday,
with the RTA describing it as "seriously flawed" and
saying road deaths had been reduced significantly at 28
speed camera sites.
But Buckingham says governments in Britain and NSW lump
together accidents and label them "speed-related". The
RTA says 30 per cent of fatal accidents involve speed.
Yet Buckingham found they had included in the definition
such causes as "trucks jack-knifing", "fatigue" and
alcohol". As he points out, any accident can be labelled
speed-related since "objects cannot collide if they are
not moving".
It is "excessive speed for the conditions" which
Buckingham says is dangerous. He says it is those
drivers who travel at well above or well below the limit
who are dangerous. The safest drivers are those who
travel at the 85th percentile of the traffic's
prevailing speed on any given road, which may be over
the speed limit. He concludes speed cameras therefore
are catching the safest drivers but not the most
dangerous slowpokes.
In Canada, the Government of British Columbia scrapped
speed cameras when they found they had had "no
discernible impact on speed or the fatal accident rate".
The data for the efficacy of speed cameras in NSW is not
encouraging. Fatal crashes in NSW halved between 1980
and 1991, which is when speed cameras were introduced,
writes Buckingham. "Since then, the decline has faltered
with a drop of just 3 per cent since 1993, despite the
implementation of double demerit points in 1997 and
fixed speed cameras in 1999." The double-demerit scheme
which operates over Christmas and other holiday periods
is shown by Buckingham to have had "no effect" on road
fatalities. Speed cameras may even cause accidents
because journey times are increased, causing drivers to
become frustrated; drivers may divert to less safe
routes to avoid cameras; and cameras can distract driver
attention, and cause sudden braking.
The danger of increased reliance by government on speed
cameras, says Buckingham, is that "by regularly
convicting large numbers of law-abiding people [and]
alienating those on whose goodwill the police often rely
... respect for the law will lessen."
Speed cameras also let governments off the hook on
safety. They can blame motorists for driving too fast
instead of building proper dual carriageways that allow
margin for inevitable human error. People will always
make mistakes but a moment's inattention or
miscalculation shouldn't be fatal.
Monday is the anniversary of the Grafton bus crash, in
which 20 people died in a head-on collision between a
coach and a semi-trailer on the Pacific Highway.
Fourteen years later, the road is still killing people.
Just last Sunday, retired couple Bernard and Maureen
Mellare died in a three-car head-on crash eight
kilometres north of Taree, on a section of the Pacific
Highway that is being upgraded and where the speed limit
is just 80kmh.
Email reveals 2500
speed camera locations
From Online News
By Nassim Khadem
July 31, 2003
A widely-circulated email revealing 2500 secret
locations used for speed cameras across Victoria has
embarrassed Richmond Football Club and dismayed police.
The chain-email, forwarded to hundreds of people
yesterday and today, tells readers the position of
locations used for radar and speed traps across the
state.
The spreadsheet attached to the email lists thousands of
speed camera locations that are correct up until January
24, 2002. "Sites not appearing on this list, cannot be
worked," the document says.
Who exactly started the email chain and leaked the
confidential Victoria Police list remains uncertain.
Radio 3AW yesterday suggested the email was circulated
by someone from the Richmond Football Club which is
sponsored by the Transport Accident Commission.
Club chief executive Ian Campbell denied the leaked
email had affected the club's relationship with the TAC,
but said the club would talk to the TAC about the
incident.
A Richmond spokesperson, when contacted this morning,
confirmed the email had been sent to the club. "It was
an email that was sent here and obviously someone had
done the wrong thing (and passed it on)," they said.
The club said it was conducting internal investigations
to find the identity of the mystery person who forwarded
the email.
The text accompanying the email says: "Take a look guys,
be careful. These are mainly positions for radar traps
and those revenue raisers (sic) with the box attached to
the front bumper bars."
Victoria Police said they would not investigate the
leaking of the document.
"Police are aware of the various lists circulating
purporting to be lists of speed camera sites in
Victoria," superintendent Peter Keogh said.
"Police have viewed some of the lists which appear to be
out of date."
TAC spokesperson De-Arnne Schmidt said the incident
would not affect the TAC's sponsorship of Richmond
Football Club.
"We don't intend to make any changes to the public
education programs we are committed to. The focus on ...
the Wipe off Five campaign will continue," she said.
Asked if the information in the email would affect
safety on the roads, Ms Schmidt said: "The fact of the
matter is that the list is not one hundred per cent
accurate. You will need to talk to police about that. If
that's the case, then I wouldn't be able to comment on
that."
Road-safety funds
From WA News.com.au
By Andre Fourie
May 07, 2003
I refer to the drip-feeding of Budget details by the
Labor Government (report, 6/5) and I was thinking how
good it would be if Dr Gallop could announce an
injection of funds into the road-safety campaign to
combat the carnage on our roads. Giving 100 per cent of
revenue raised by speed cameras, as promised before the
last election, would be a good starting point.
I am sure nobody would mind the Minister for Police and
even the Police Commissioner standing behind Dr Gallop
nodding their heads while he announces that they will at
least try to do something positive, other than buying
more Multanovas.
ANDRE FOURIE, Lesmurdie.
State scoops $10m in speeding windfall
From The West Australian Front Page
By Ben Harvey and Amanda Banks
April 24, 2003
Tougher use of speed cameras and the new 50kmh law
delivered an estimated $10 million boost to Treasury
coffers last financial year.
The extra money, uncovered through Freedom of
Information laws, has raised questions over the
effectiveness of Multanovas as a road safety tool and
fuelled concerns they are used as revenue raisers.
The Treasury windfall was revealed in an internal State
Government email which outlined an unexpected $3.4
million payment to the Road Trauma Trust Fund in
2001-02.
The RTTF, which pays for road safety programs in WA,
gets a third of all red light and Multanova revenue,
indicating an extra $10 million would have been
generated by the changes.
In the internal email, a road safety finance officer
explained the increase.
"Revenue from fines was $3,421,436 over budget," the
officer wrote. "This was due primarily to the
implementation of 50kmh, changes in camera tolerance
rates (both of which resulted in an infringement level
considerably higher than expected)."
In March 2001, police announced Multanova tolerance
levels would be dropped but refused to say by how much.
Nine months later the 50kmh limit came in.
Multanova and red light camera revenues for 2002-03 are
down on the previous years, with Office of Road Safety
executive director Iain Cameron expecting $11 million in
2002-03 - indicating a total of about $35 million.
Police said this meant fewer people were speeding. They
blamed this year's rocketing road toll on factors other
than speeding.
This year's road toll so far is 30 per cent higher than
at the same time in 2002.
Shadow road safety minister Katie Hodson-Thomas said
authorities were too focused on Multanovas.
"They are certainly not stopping deaths on the road,
which begs the question: Why are we using them as much
as we do?" she said.
The decision to toughen Multanova tolerance levels
without defining the new thresholds caused an outcry in
2001 after it was revealed car speedometers could be out
by 10 per cent.
A recent national survey revealed 75 per cent of
respondents assumed limits were enforced with some
tolerance.
Half thought there was at least 5kmh leeway in 60kmh
zones, 39 per cent believed tolerance extended to at
least 10kmh in 100kmh zones and 78 per cent thought 5kmh
or less leeway should be given in 60kmh zones.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau survey, done in
May, also showed WA drivers were more likely to be
booked for speeding than motorists in the Eastern States
and were less likely to support increased use of speed
cameras.
Macca plans rough road
for Multanovas
From The West Australian
By Torrance Mendez
April 01, 2003
Everyone knows the camera never lies.
But Welshpool businessman Peter McLernon believes
Multanova speed cameras are behind a catalogue of lies.
He wants to champion a group - Citizens Against Misuse
of Multanovas - to get to the truth of the roadside
machines and their effect on curbing the road toll.
It's Macca's hunch that most Multanova cameras ping
motorists speeding 5kmh to 10kmh above the limit and
that there are few crashes where speed 5kmh to 10kmh
above the limit is an issue. "In other words, the
Multanova has no bearing on the crash rate or the death
toll," Macca says.
Last year, Multanovas and red light cameras brought in
$46 million - a $10 million increase owing to the
introduction of tighter tolerences for speeding and, to
a lesser degree, targeting the new 50kmh backstreets
speed limit.
Macca supports the popular belief that the speed cameras
are little more than revenue raisers blighting the good
progress of honest men and women.
"I often wonder how many people have lost their jobs
subsequent to losing their driving licences, how many
people are suffering real financial difficulty as a
result of fines and how many citizens have been lumped
with a record stemming from camera infringement," Macca
says.
CAMM aims to gather worldwide statistics on use of
Multanovas, speeding and motor vehicles crashes,
disseminate information to members and lobby for
abolition or change.
It's a tough call, Macca.
"With a society based on speed and efficiency that
allows drivers to own vehicles that are capable of
speeds often exceeding 200kmh, it is a fact that
speeding will never be eliminated," he told IC.
"If the Government was dinkum about reducing the number
of deaths we'd all have electric cars speed-limited to
50kmh with one-metre thick bumpers."
Macca says no organisation has opposed successive
government policy on Multanovas. His will be the first.
God speed.
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