'Speed Guns Misfiring' ITV Friday 8pm

[MGF]

Might be interesting, bearing in mind it is ITV primetime....


A motorist meets Mark Jordan to make claims that the speed guns police officers use to enforce limits are seriously flawed and error-prone. His views are backed up by people who have successfully challenged the device's readings in court. Postponed from February 26[/u][/i]

[James]

No doubt anything revealed will be at the centre of many future court cases.

[ROG]

Seems like just a bit more ammo for the anti speed camera brigade.

[SammyTheSnake]

I happened to catch this.

It's alarming that there is much disagreement between the US and UK authorities on the accuracy of these devices, and the quotes from the manufacturers were clearly daft, though it's possible they were taken a little out of context.

I remember there was a case a year or two ago in Australia (I think) in which a motorist successfully challenged a charge on the basis that the software used in a speed camera / gun / thingie wasn't open to public scrutiny and was therefore outside of the rules saying all process of law must be open to such scrutiny. I think they eventually persuaded the suppliers to open source their code and found bugs (unsurprisingly, any code more complex than "hello world" *will* have bugs and it takes lots of scrutiny to find them all)

Cheers & God bless
Sam "SammyTheSnake" Penny

[PeteG]

A lot of it came down to the device being used incorrectly, then the manufacturers saying "well, it's beign used incorrectly". Of course, proving it's been used incorrectly in each case would be tricky...

[Porker]

Seems like just a bit more ammo for the anti speed camera brigade.

That'll be me then.

P.

[MGF]

There has always been a maked difference in how the US and the UK treat evidence.

DNA profiling is still not standard in the US and yet it has been used extensively in the UK for almost 20 years.

Results from lie detectors are routinely used in US courts, they are inadmissable in the UK.

Although the manufacturer's claim the equipment will abort an attempt at a reading where it may be innacurate it was clear that occasionally this isn't happening. I suspect that unless you have strong evidence of a mistake (such as the driver whose car couldn't accelerate quickly enough to give any credibility to the alleged speed) then arguing the equipment is unreliable will be futile.

Interesting that the accuracy of Gatsos weren't under scrutiny. Perhaps they are more reliable and so at least in part, fairer than Police officers doing the job.

[SammyTheSnake]

Interesting that the accuracy of Gatsos weren't under scrutiny. Perhaps they are more reliable and so at least in part, fairer than Police officers doing the job.

Many, though by no means all, of the problems mentioned in the program were due to the operator failing to maintain a steady aim, which wouldn't be a problem for a post-mounted system. On the other hand, there are plenty of other issues that wouldn't be affected by that. Another issue is that Gatsos are calibrated against the road markings and use the radar only to trigger and give an approximation of the speed.

Cheers & God bless
Sam "SammyTheSnake" Penny