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 Labour 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 tolerances 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.