Old unmarked vans to be converted to covert speed cameras

[Nexus]

Last thought to share on the "margin" aspect - the processing that your brain is doing in maintaining a knowledge of where in the margin you are is a distraction itself. I am certain it would be far better to have accuracy and small enough margins that no such processing takes place and I would expect this to have huge benefits across the board in terms of how drivers pay attention and think while they are driving.

It is grossly dysfunctional to present intentionally inaccurate instrumentation and then demand accurate behaviour from users of those instruments. 1Km is 1Km, and hour is an hour. Not 900M or 55 minutes.

The intent behind this is obviously benign one would expect, but I wonder if it has been considered how these intentional inaccuracies weigh in the psychology of drivers and what the outcomes in terms of behaviour ultimately are.

A danger example for speedo accuracy and enforcement is one I encountered 18 months or so ago : 100 zone. Pass well hidden signed camera doing about 107-109 indicated on the stock tyres, an actual speed of no more than 99-101.
Spotting the sign, I check my speedo, and although I know the speedo is inaccurate, the brain processes the inaccurate info from the speedo and has me on the brakes to 100 (indicated) - "margin" processing discarded - vehicle following too close behind promptly stands on the horn, hits brakes and wonders why the ****wit in front of him just broke to 90Km/h all of a sudden.

[kmh001]

One of obstacles to improving road safety is that the research itself doesn’t drive the agenda, the government does. That's why no progress is being made and why dubious statistics are being thrown around to hoodwink the public into tolerating revenue raising activities at the expense of road safety action.

Remember the TV add where Prof Ian Johnson talked about stopping distances while two cars passed him in slow motion with one colliding because it was doing 5kmh more than the other? That add was a perfect example of the government attempting to buy legitimacy for their speed enforcement strategy by paying an expert to agree with them.

I disagreed with that add and its implications. It was a distortion of the reality of any situation involving stopping distances that conveniently left out most the facts in order to imply we would all be safe if we complied with the speed limit. And I'm not the only person to disagree with it, I was at a safety conference last year where Prof Johnson gave a presentation about that add and he was embarrassed to find that after seeing the add, a lot of the audience disagreed with it also.

I’m not knocking Prof Johnson or MUARC (Monash University Accident Research Centre). They do a lot of good work for the benefit of the community. But most people don’t realize they are a commercial organisation and the research projects they undertake are commissioned and paid for by government bureaucracies. Like I said, the government drives the road safety agenda and that’s like having Dracula in charge of the blood bank.

Nexus is right; the whole road safety issue is lacking the robust critical analysis that would characterize genuine scientific research. I think it’s unwise to quote any of the commonly touted statistics because too often they are simply unchallenged folk stories.

BTW tiga I would argue that the reason you don’t see the highway patrol during your morning commute it because you don’t need to. Most of the commuters, through repetition, have developed a level of competence in terms of their journey from home to work. These people can operate in higher traffic densities, at higher average speeds, with less risk than occasional drivers operating at lower average speeds.

[tigamica350]

A danger example for speedo accuracy and enforcement is one I encountered 18 months or so ago : 100 zone. Pass well hidden signed camera doing about 107-109 indicated on the stock tyres, an actual speed of no more than 99-101.
Spotting the sign, I check my speedo, and although I know the speedo is inaccurate, the brain processes the inaccurate info from the speedo and has me on the brakes to 100 (indicated) - "margin" processing discarded - vehicle following too close behind promptly stands on the horn, hits brakes and wonders why the ****wit in front of him just broke to 90Km/h all of a sudden.

Don't get me wrong I do the same all the time, (If you speed and get caught, take the hit)
But in reference to the above, if you only traveled at the indicated speed not what you thought the speed was and considering that all new cars have pretty much a similar error, then:
a. you wouldn't have to hit the brakes to try to slow to the actual correct speed and,
b. the tool tailgating would probably have overtaken you (and probably gotten booked)

However we are all not angels, and life would be pretty damn boring if we were.

Remember the TV add where Prof Ian Johnson talked about stopping distances while two cars passed him in slow motion with one colliding because it was doing 5kmh more than the other? That add was a perfect example of the government attempting to buy legitimacy for their speed enforcement strategy by paying an expert to agree with them.

Like I said, the government drives the road safety agenda and that’s like having Dracula in charge of the blood bank.

Nexus is right; the whole road safety issue is lacking the robust critical analysis that would characterize genuine scientific research. I think it’s unwise to quote any of the commonly touted statistics because too often they are simply unchallenged folk stories. (/quote)

True, but unless you are actually involved in the research, I don't anyone is actually qualified to disagree with them. It's bit like the whole conspiracy theory sort of stuff, where do we stop????

(quote)
BTW tiga I would argue that the reason you don’t see the highway patrol during your morning commute it because you don’t need to. Most of the commuters, through repetition, have developed a level of competence in terms of their journey from home to work. These people can operate in higher traffic densities, at higher average speeds, with less risk than occasional drivers operating at lower average speeds.

Unfortunately I can agree and disagree with that. Whilst there are a large amount of people who are quite good drivers in dense traffic and high speeds and drive with common sense.
However there is also just as large group who show complete disregard for anyone else, and are not happy to go with the flow (sometimes an easy 120+) but have to be the one in the front in the right lane and will often do anything to get their way.



Back to the original topic though, hidden cameras will not solve anything but raise plenty of $$$. Put more police on the road and is has a very dramatic effect on the traffic speeds (sometimes in the negative due to paranoia).

[Nexus]

Don't get me wrong I do the same all the time, (If you speed and get caught, take the hit)
But in reference to the above, if you only traveled at the indicated speed not what you thought the speed was and considering that all new cars have pretty much a similar error, then:
a. you wouldn't have to hit the brakes to try to slow to the actual correct speed and,
b. the tool tailgating would probably have overtaken you (and probably gotten booked)

However we are all not angels, and life would be pretty damn boring if we were.



Unfortunately I can agree and disagree with that. Whilst there are a large amount of people who are quite good drivers in dense traffic and high speeds and drive with common sense.
However there is also just as large group who show complete disregard for anyone else, and are not happy to go with the flow (sometimes an easy 120+) but have to be the one in the front in the right lane and will often do anything to get their way.



Back to the original topic though, hidden cameras will not solve anything but raise plenty of $$$. Put more police on the road and is has a very dramatic effect on the traffic speeds (sometimes in the negative due to paranoia).

Just a quick aside - in the example I gave, I was not speeding and did not need to brake to avoid a ticket - THANKYOU for once again demonstrating the dysfunctional psychology that is widely at play here.

I was travelling as a law abiding motorist at 100Km/h with close tolerances, and inadvertently braked to 90Km/h because my speedo lies to me and not at all because there was any need to or because I was driving unlawfully.

And I will reiterate once more that driving 10Km/h below the limit (at limit as indicated on speedo) is in itself a hazard in brisbane traffic.

Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou for once again demonstrating the grossly dysfunctional psychology that has become commonplace thanks to the way we are encouraged to view these things.

Once again, I am not speeding, have no intention to speed, was not speeding in th example posted, and was in fact placing my speed appropriately according to the speed zone and the flow of traffic and driving defensively.

My mistake was not speeding. My mistake was to brake to the indicated speed and so confuse the driver behind me, because my indicated speed is inaccurate eough to induce this, and when braking I a not reprocessing the grossly inaccurate speedo.

Following from your take on this; drive at the indicated speed even though you are a significant hazard for travelling 10K slower than the general flow of traffic, which itself is not speeding either?

Lastly, I have never before had to do this processing because not all new cars have much the same error as you claim. I am driving one that has about twice the error of other vehicles on the road.

The problem here is that as soon as you say "speed" people are unable to process that psychologically as anything other than a problem, even though the speeds in question are appropriate for the conditions, not in excess of the posted limits, and in appropriate consideration of surrounding traffic that is also driving according to the rules.

For me this problem exists BECAUSE I learnt to drive treating the speedo as accurate and now I have an inaccurate speedo, this is an issue!

---------- Post added at 02:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:01 PM ----------

To pull this back on topic, if the camera in my example was not signed, I would not have braked unnecessarily. thus avoiding an uncomfortable road moment, so there is a two-way aspect to the "immediate correction" argument. That is not necessarily a good thing, but having said that, I know of no statistics as to incidents in the vicinity of a camera. I've not even heard on once case. I have seen a camera placed in a location that was really a bit braindead in terms of consideration of road users safety.

I would prefer them all to be marked not so I can see them coming, but because I think the visible presence is more effctive, and hiding them and doing it covertly I think is leaning more towards maximising revenue.

Perhaps a happy medium - less signage, but still must be marked, so less likely to induce a panic response, whether warranted or not, that might be safety issue, while still providing visible presence.

Ultimately I think we are barking up the wrong trees with respect to correcting widespread driver behaviour.

Sorry for the diversion, but it is one of this weeks road rules debate topics (3% or less margin) and I sort of bundled it in.

My OCD focus on speedo accuracy is born of two aspects :
(a) There is a fundamental wrongness in enforcing greater accuracy from users than the feedback they are provided. Yes, the usual bias is in their favour, but it feeds to "I have this margin" psychology, and that psychology is used by speedsters to gauge how many points they are going to lose, for the more law abiding is used to find close tolerances, and for timid drivers to justify looking at someone doing close to the limit and considering them just as much a crim as the driver who is actually over it.

And the bias is not always in the drivers favour, as a read of this thread should reveal.

(b) If the tech has improved so much for our enforcement to be this much more accurate, then the tech has improved enough for our instrumentation to be equally accurate, and that the enforcement margin mandates adjustment of the manufacturing instrumentation margin.

In terms of covert rather overt, which is in the drivers favor? Overt surely. Is that appropriate? Well maybe sometimes, and maybe sometimes not. Ultimately if we allow more and more of this covert surveillance type enforcement, one thing is for sure : We will one day regret it and be horrified by the tyranny we allowed, and that applies very broadly, not so much mundane road usage.

Such things tend to end up abused.

[bd581]

Whilst nexus you are correct, there is two sides to everything.
Our cars as you point out have a unusually high inaccuratcy, but the majority of cars have the same error as others.
Looking through magazines that show speedo error you will see that on average cars are 2-3km out at an indicated 100
it is just a Mazda issue that if we stuck to the indicated limit we would travel significantly slower than those around us

so thinking of others not just ourseleves any situation like you discribed would not have as large effect on them, they most likely would not slow as much as you did.

The speedo error issue is only now becoming a problem since the popularity of GPS units. The average person is now aware and as has been discussed, push the limits.
So really up until now, if the conspricy theory is true, deliberate speedo innacuracy has been working to slow people down, even if it is just a couple of kays

dispite all that, I do think there is no real reason that speedos should not be made accurate.
But tyre wear and aftermarket wheels etc make them innaccurate once again

reason why you don't see police on freeways in the morning?
Probably because they are patroling school zones

more speed cameras are not the answer, fixed cameras don't work, they just turn roads into rolling starts like NASCAR, people slow down then speed back up again.
And that causes more issues than is solved, you end up with situations like nexus discribed

what does work is more police cars and even just simple signs. If I see a sign saying speed camera ahead, I slow down a little.

[tigamica350]

Whoa there, just let me get off my high horse.

A danger example for speedo accuracy and enforcement is one I encountered 18 months or so ago : 100 zone. Pass well hidden signed camera doing about 107-109 indicated on the stock tyres, an actual speed of no more than 99-101.
Spotting the sign, I check my speedo, and although I know the speedo is inaccurate, the brain processes the inaccurate info from the speedo and has me on the brakes to 100 (indicated) - "margin" processing discarded - vehicle following too close behind promptly stands on the horn, hits brakes and wonders why the ****wit in front of him just broke to 90Km/h all of a sudden.

Nexus,
Unless you have a speedo that has been correctly calibrated regularly (like the police patrol cars always have, used be done at General Automotive Instruments at Silverwater), your tyres are not worn, you have the same size and type of tyre as originally fitted, your tyre pressure is correct for that tyre original fitted (within 0.2 bar), your viewing angle of the speedo allows you correct view of the speedo, you are in an unladen vehicle and you weigh no more than 75kg, you do not know what speed you were actually doing. You are guessing. Even if you have a GPS, they use smoothing, and also if they cannot see enough satellites they become increasingly inaccurate.

Since you more than likely don't have that, the old "well I know my car has a speedo error of +7-9Klm/h" will not stand up with your blue uniformed friend nor will it stand up in court (not even using the defence of "honest and reasonable belief"). If you are so worried about the inaccuracy of your speedo drive to the indicated speed and never have to worry, nor does the guy behind you!

A court will expect you to keep the middle of the needle below the 100kmh graduation mark when in 100kmh zones, and that a person who drives over the limit because they could not clearly read the exact speed must have been reckless as to whether or not they were committing an offence. This is not a defence. The court expects drivers to make sure they are driving within the law.

Thank you for your interpretation on the analytical thought process of modern man.

The point I was trying to get across is obsession with driving to nth degree of the posted limit, when we are forced to drive with vehicles that have these errors built in (why because it's in the ADR which new cars prior to 1 July 2006 could comply with the ADR even if the speedo under-read by 10%. The current ADR disallow under-reading, and permit over-reading by up to 4kmh + 10%).

Just a quick aside - in the example I gave, I was not speeding and did not need to brake to avoid a ticket - THANKYOU for once again demonstrating the dysfunctional psychology that is widely at play here.

I was travelling as a law abiding motorist at 100Km/h with close tolerances, and inadvertently braked to 90Km/h because my speedo lies to me and not at all because there was any need to or because I was driving unlawfully.

And I will reiterate once more that driving 10Km/h below the limit (at limit as indicated on speedo) is in itself a hazard in brisbane traffic.

Yes I am sure Brisbane traffic is much worse than Sydney traffic ever could be.

Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou for once again demonstrating the grossly dysfunctional psychology that has become commonplace thanks to the way we are encouraged to view these things.

I'm not the one who decided to use the brakes, and nearly had an accident (If you knew the speedo was inaccurate why push the point?) Maybe you should apply some of the psychoanalysis stuff on yourself, Sigmund Freud.

Spotting the sign, I check my speedo, and although I know the speedo is inaccurate, the brain processes the inaccurate info from the speedo and has me on the brakes to 100 (indicated) - "margin" processing discarded - vehicle following too close behind promptly stands on the horn, hits brakes and wonders why the ****wit in front of him just broke to 90Km/h all of a sudden.

Once again, I am not speeding, have no intention to speed, was not speeding in th example posted, and was in fact placing my speed appropriately according to the speed zone and the flow of traffic and driving defensively.

My mistake was not speeding.

Now that makes sense.

My mistake was to brake to the indicated speed and so confuse the driver behind me, because my indicated speed is inaccurate eough to induce this, and when braking I a not reprocessing the grossly inaccurate speedo.

Following from your take on this; drive at the indicated speed even though you are a significant hazard for travelling 10K slower than the general flow of traffic, which itself is not speeding either?

Lastly, I have never before had to do this processing because not all new cars have much the same error as you claim. I am driving one that has about twice the error of other vehicles on the road.

mmmmm

Most new cars have the error because they comply with the new ADR, the amount of error varies, for example:

(Actual speed at indicated 100km/h)
Ford Ka 90.2
Hyundai Excel 95.2
Ford AU Fairmont 95.3
Honda CR-V 95.8
Subaru Liberty 96.7
Holden Statesman 96.8
Toyota Camry 99
Holden VT Commodore 99.6
Mercedes-Benz S430 100
Toyota Corolla 100
Toyota LandCruiser 78 series 101

Even the NRMA and car mags do car tests using a Correvit, which can show the same as the above so you are not alone.

The problem here is that as soon as you say "speed" people are unable to process that psychologically as anything other than a problem, even though the speeds in question are appropriate for the conditions, not in excess of the posted limits, and in appropriate consideration of surrounding traffic that is also driving according to the rules.

For me this problem exists BECAUSE I learnt to drive treating the speedo as accurate and now I have an inaccurate speedo, this is an issue!

Older cars generally run a gear-driven speedo box, connected to the transmission, with a cable turning the speedo needle. These mechanical speedos are less accurate than today's instruments, which convert mechanical revolutions to electrical pulses or magnetic fields. They also were not required to comply with the new ADR and were actually able to under read by up 10% although this was relatively rare. Funny that all my cars up until my VN dunnydore had cable speedos and it was common that you could get a reducer applied to the gearbox IOT make it read closer to the correct speed. Maybe it's because I grew up in the 70's-80's.

To pull this back on topic, if the camera in my example was not signed, I would not have braked unnecessarily. thus avoiding an uncomfortable road moment, so there is a two-way aspect to the "immediate correction" argument. That is not necessarily a good thing, but having said that, I know of no statistics as to incidents in the vicinity of a camera. I've not even heard on once case. I have seen a camera placed in a location that was really a bit braindead in terms of consideration of road users safety.

I would prefer them all to be marked not so I can see them coming, but because I think the visible presence is more effctive, and hiding them and doing it covertly I think is leaning more towards maximising revenue.

Perhaps a happy medium - less signage, but still must be marked, so less likely to induce a panic response, whether warranted or not, that might be safety issue, while still providing visible presence.

Ultimately I think we are barking up the wrong trees with respect to correcting widespread driver behaviour.

Sorry for the diversion, but it is one of this weeks road rules debate topics (3% or less margin) and I sort of bundled it in.

My OCD focus on speedo accuracy is born of two aspects :
(a) There is a fundamental wrongness in enforcing greater accuracy from users than the feedback they are provided. Yes, the usual bias is in their favour, but it feeds to "I have this margin" psychology, and that psychology is used by speedsters to gauge how many points they are going to lose, for the more law abiding is used to find close tolerances, and for timid drivers to justify looking at someone doing close to the limit and considering them just as much a crim as the driver who is actually over it.

And the bias is not always in the drivers favour, as a read of this thread should reveal.

(b) If the tech has improved so much for our enforcement to be this much more accurate, then the tech has improved enough for our instrumentation to be equally accurate, and that the enforcement margin mandates adjustment of the manufacturing instrumentation margin.

I think you will find the cars ECU knows exactly how fast it is going, it's from there to to display where the problem is.

In terms of covert rather overt, which is in the drivers favor? Overt surely. Is that appropriate? Well maybe sometimes, and maybe sometimes not. Ultimately if we allow more and more of this covert surveillance type enforcement, one thing is for sure : We will one day regret it and be horrified by the tyranny we allowed, and that applies very broadly, not so much mundane road usage.

Such things tend to end up abused.

Fair enough however, there are a lot of drivers who do not maintain their vehicles, do not pump their tyres to the correct pressure let alone make sure they have tread on them. So even if they the car manufacturers made sure their speedos were spot on, it would take one numpty less than 30000klm to make the previously correctly calibrated speedo, incorrect and there goes the whole argument out the window and the blame on the manufacturer.

Because people will always blame someone else.

Speed is not the only reason without a doubt, and the goverment has a lot to answer for IRT this, perhaps a few visits to the morgue or to a accident scene may change some people's attitude.

[Nexus]

Hey, look, the whole way this escalates out of all proportion is just demonstrating the point.

I've described a scenario where all vehicles are travelling within the road rules and an uncomfortable traffic moment happened due to an ingrained response to viewing the speedo.

That's all. Not a near miss or almost "accident"

That's all. By the way if someone hits you from behind, that's their fault, not yours for using your brakes.

As for your list of vehicles with speedo error, we've covered that. Lots of cars have, in my experience, 3-4Km/h, which is really not so bad, and reasonable matched with 3% enforcement tolerance.

Once you have a 10% error there is a reasonable safety concern in driving at the indicated limit, knowing full well that you are a minor to significant hazard by impeding the free flow of traffic by 10Km/h.

This is my issue with driving at the indicated speed when there is significant error, and it is a real concern. Not necessarily a big one, I drive around it, but I am aware that the error is an attention drain.

I won't have to use this as a defense in court because I simply won't put myself in that situation, and I am aware of my speed within small tolerances.

4Km/h is not a 10% error at 100Km/h. That is a 4% error, and if that is the current ADR rules, then nearly every 3MPS out there is non-compliant and we should all take them back and demand a new instrument cluster.

I was not aware this change was made and perhaps should have checked, last I read of specs it was +/- 10%, at the end of the day, that's what these discussions are for isn't it?

And doesn't it concern anyone that we are framing a driver who is not speeding in any way shape or form, as being at fault for having a speedo error that complicates merging with traffic etc and suggesting the only legal option for him is to drive at a slower speed than everyone else when nobody else is speeding in the flow either?

My point is that it is becoming absurd in a real sense in that it has become impossible to present such concerns without someone trying to make you out that travelling at 98Km/h is a traffic offence because your speedo says 105.

With regards to speedo accuracy, I have enquired with an authority on tis matter once, a police driver trainer, and at that time, about two years ago, there was provisions for consideration of speedo error.

Under-reads could have the fine waived if an authority checks he speedo and finds it out.

From your 4Km/h ADR comment, if that's true, all our vehicles are non-complaint. I don't know what that means in a legal sense, but we should be more concerned about this if that's the case.

-- Correction on re-read --

OK - you do mean 10%, not 4Km/h.

I'm not proposing that people excess the posted limits or do anything else that is inappropriate or unsafe. I just don't think the real world considerations are being applied appropriately and that seems to be evidenced by responses that presume drivers in a described scenario are doing something they are not, reversing the responsibility of a particular type of incident (rear-end), and reversing the burden of proof.

Road trauma can truely be awful, I was hoping we could try to think outside the box.

[shakespeare]

I'm totally against revenue raising which sacrifices safety, so if the new speed vans raise enough revenue to improve the quality of our roads, introduce additional driver training for all drivers and assist in funding our seriously overworked police force then I am all for it If however the revenue from these measures is used for other purposes i.e. political party funding or some other hopeless initiative then that is wrong and the government should be brought to task for gross misconduct

I drive my car and make my own decisions, if I speed and get caught so be it!

[TD]

Yes I am sure Brisbane traffic is much worse than Sydney traffic ever could be.

It has been for the past 2 years...

[Nexus]

bzzzzzz