road side cameras (in vans)

jonnyc2420

Been wondering this for a while......

Do they work at night ? - ('cause you never see them out then)

And also, has anyone tried to ride past one on thier bike over the speed limit? - would it trigger anything in the van? :twisted:

andituk

It's done by hand, so you won't trigger anything.

And IIRC, they're not approved for use at night.

cougie

Hand held speed camera operator shouted out my speed as I sprinted for it.

The speed limit was never in danger of being broken....

M1llh0use

andituk wrote:

It's done by hand, so you won't trigger anything.

And IIRC, they're not approved for use at night.

in that case someone needs to tell the dorset "safety" camera partnership.

dave_hill

andituk wrote:

And IIRC, they're not approved for use at night.

Depends what type it is - the older Gatso cameras weren't approved for night use because of the flash, but newer ones have an infra-red flash. The Truvelos are all infra red anyway.

Mobile cameras shouldn't be used at night because they have to be laid out in a certain way and warning signs put out which may not be properly visible at night. That said, if they aren't laid out properly you can't use this as a defence. I've tried and failed.

biff55

give em the finger when you pass on a bike
not as if they can get your reg plate

Uncle Peter

dave_hill wrote:

andituk wrote:

And IIRC, they're not approved for use at night.

Depends what type it is - the older Gatso cameras weren't approved for night use because of the flash, but newer ones have an infra-red flash. The Truvelos are all infra red anyway.

Mobile cameras shouldn't be used at night because they have to be laid out in a certain way and warning signs put out which may not be properly visible at night. That said, if they aren't laid out properly you can't use this as a defence. I've tried and failed.

Do they only have to put out signs if the camera is located in the same spot more than twice in a certain period of time?

Alex

No, if there is a camera, there has to be a sign.

Mobile van teams don't work at night, even in the equipment does.

BigDarbs

biff55 wrote:

give em the finger when you pass on a bike
not as if they can get your reg plate

Not always... there was a well documented case where a guy on a motorbike wheelied past a gatso, his number plate obscured because he was wheelying and giving the finger at the same time. He was traced by identification through 'other means' which meant his leathers, type of bike, no alibi etc. He was succesfully prosecuted.

chris_sw

jonnyc2420 wrote:

And also, has anyone tried to ride past one on thier bike over the speed limit? - would it trigger anything in the van? :twisted:

Tried this when I was a kid on a normal fixed speed camera when they dropped the limit to 30mph and put up a speed camera near my house. Needless to say I failed miserably :P You need to reach about 33-35 to actually set it off.

bails87

Are we talking motorbikes, or bikes here?

Speed limits don't apply to pedal cycles, so if you could ride faster than the limit, then there's nothing that can be done. Apart from something like "furious cycling", but doing 32mph in a 30 zone isn't really furious, is it?

strodey

''Safety'' Cameras dont work or are not used at night, in dense fog, pouring rain, mist, sleet, hail and at dusk, the most dangerous time for visibility!



Hmmm ''good visibility and driving condition cameras''?

welshkev

i once got stopped by the police for doing 38 mph down the road. i'd accidentally over taken an unmarked police car in a 30 mph area!!! how exactly they clocked i was doing 38mph i don't know? i just lied and said i didn't have a driving license and gave a fake name - oops, no i didn't officer i told the truth, honest :oops:

bails87

welshkev wrote:

i once got stopped by the police for doing 38 mph down the road. i'd accidentally over taken an unmarked police car in a 30 mph area!!! how exactly they clocked i was doing 38mph i don't know? i just lied and said i didn't have a driving license and gave a fake name - oops, no i didn't officer i told the truth, honest :oops:

Nice going! You didn't actually do anything wrong though!

biff55

i am making it my personal mission in life to trigger a gatso camera whilst riding my
mountain bike.
theres a fixed camera at the bottom of a long downhill road near me , i'm sure its game on.
come summer , right wind , waxed legs , roadie lyrca , its mine......
surely someone on the bike forum has already achieved this ?
please share

n.battison

biff55 wrote:

i am making it my personal mission in life to trigger a gatso camera whilst riding my
mountain bike.
theres a fixed camera at the bottom of a long downhill road near me , i'm sure its game on.
come summer , right wind , waxed legs , roadie lyrca , its mine......
surely someone on the bike forum has already achieved this ?
please share

That has been one of my dreams for most of my life.

cat_with_no_tail

I want to do this too, and at just the right moment, sit up a bit and give a big cheesy grin and one handed thumbs up to the camera. sadly though, we have no cameras round here, just the hand held ones

P-Jay

BigDarbs wrote:

biff55 wrote:

give em the finger when you pass on a bike
not as if they can get your reg plate

Not always... there was a well documented case where a guy on a motorbike wheelied past a gatso, his number plate obscured because he was wheelying and giving the finger at the same time. He was traced by identification through 'other means' which meant his leathers, type of bike, no alibi etc. He was succesfully prosecuted.

it's true, most of the time you can happily zip past forward-facing cameras on your motorbike without fear, but if they start getting films back full of bikers popping mingers and giving the bird they're liable to take offence and start searching through the DVLA database for that type of bike and CCTV for matching bikes, leathers etc. It's very labour intensive, but sometimes if you take the piss, they'll make a point of making an example of you.

So if you're riding a Desmo with bright yellow leathers on, they might not always need your plate to find you, but a ride a Honda CBR (the Spesh Stumpjumper of the sportsbike world) and plain black kit like I do and the list of suspects is a lot longer.

Anyway, back to MTB's I'd LOVE to trigger one, but getting over 30 ain’t that easy on wide tyred MTB on the road, I reckon with a long enough hill and some semi-slicks on my DH bike (it's got longer gearing than my XC bike) I could do it, but I’m pretty sure part of the safety camera partnership rules is not to have them at the bottom of steep hills as they make it easier for the driver to stray over the limit.

delcol

sketching,, as it's know in the skating world.. or at least it used to be...

ie being towed in by a car or motorbike...

i have tried many time to trip the speedcamera on my way to work on my road bike it's flat but you have to come in at off a corner i can only seem to hit 28 mph..

would love to nail it past the camera at say 37 undertaking a car to see his face when he gets the letter trying to explain the bike was undertaking him not the other way round.

could this be a new years comp to see who sets one off first, on a pedal bike. :P

a.palmer

delcol wrote:

sketching,, as it's know in the skating world..

*Skitching

Rich25

bails87 wrote:

welshkev wrote:

i once got stopped by the police for doing 38 mph down the road. i'd accidentally over taken an unmarked police car in a 30 mph area!!! how exactly they clocked i was doing 38mph i don't know? i just lied and said i didn't have a driving license and gave a fake name - oops, no i didn't officer i told the truth, honest :oops:

Nice going! You didn't actually do anything wrong though!

Nothing wrong? He was going 38! You told them you didn't have a driving licence? How did that work out for you??

singlespeedexplosif

I think there's a trigger in terms of metal content of 'thing passing at a certain speed'. There's a camera near us at the foot of a 3km descent, in a 30mph zone. I've seen many many cars trigger it, but I went through at 50-odd mph on my bike..and nowt.

In the end...sign/no sign, dark/light...they only get you if you're breaking the law. If they do, then HTFU and face the consequences.

biff55

singlespeedexplosif wrote:

I think there's a trigger in terms of metal content of 'thing passing at a certain speed'. There's a camera near us at the foot of a 3km descent, in a 30mph zone. I've seen many many cars trigger it, but I went through at 50-odd mph on my bike..and nowt.

In the end...sign/no sign, dark/light...they only get you if you're breaking the law. If they do, then HTFU and face the consequences.

standard gatso works by scattering radar waves over the marked grid on the road.
will be triggered by any object regardless of metal / plastic / wood contruction.
but they move around the actual internal digital cameras from gatso box to another therefore not every gatso is working is working all the time. ( pretty sure they cost a good
£50,000 per actual camera so they cant afford one for each gatso box )

used to connect up the power supplies to gatso's when i was a county council electrician , needless to say i kept a master key to switch off the camera power 8)

bails87

Rich25 wrote:

bails87 wrote:

welshkev wrote:

i once got stopped by the police for doing 38 mph down the road. i'd accidentally over taken an unmarked police car in a 30 mph area!!! how exactly they clocked i was doing 38mph i don't know? i just lied and said i didn't have a driving license and gave a fake name - oops, no i didn't officer i told the truth, honest :oops:

Nice going! You didn't actually do anything wrong though!

Nothing wrong? He was going 38! You told them you didn't have a driving licence? How did that work out for you??

Speed limits don't apply to bicycles. So if you're riding above the speed limit then you're not breaking the law.

If he meant a motorbike or car then of course that's wrong, but having no license is even worse. It's like admitting to a murder to provide an alibi for a burglary!

welshkev

Rich25 wrote:

bails87 wrote:

welshkev wrote:

i once got stopped by the police for doing 38 mph down the road. i'd accidentally over taken an unmarked police car in a 30 mph area!!! how exactly they clocked i was doing 38mph i don't know? i just lied and said i didn't have a driving license and gave a fake name - oops, no i didn't officer i told the truth, honest :oops:

Nice going! You didn't actually do anything wrong though!

Nothing wrong? He was going 38! You told them you didn't have a driving licence? How did that work out for you??

it worked out fine in the end, i was only 17 or 18 so there was a good possibility that i couldn't drive, they bought that fact. i think that if i'd told them that i could drive they would've tried to give me the points for speeding. i just acted dumb - not too hard! - and they just gave me a little telling off. result

i was on my mountain bike, sorry if i didn't make that clear

Thread8

Certain cameras can be set off by anything, there was a story a few years back where a duck set one off in Germany, although they couldnt figure out its actual speed

The ones that flash up a warning like slow down or whatever can be set off if there is a big enough group of you spread accross the road, actual speed cameras can as well, but never a double flash, only a single warning one

dave_hill

Thread8 wrote:

Actual speed cameras can as well, but never a double flash, only a single warning one

A single flash indicates that the camera isn't active - i.e. it's a dummy. Only real ones flash twice.

bails87

You'd think they'd put some research into making the dummy flash twice, so that people can't tell where the real and fake ones are.

biff55

bails87 wrote:

You'd think they'd put some research into making the dummy flash twice, so that people can't tell where the real and fake ones are.

would you risk driving past a gatso at speed on the basis it may have flashed once and
not twice ?
not feckin likely

leon69

in newcatsle there are a total of 48 camera's only 12 of witch have film in them ....but this is the kicker ..its never the same 12

They only have 2 vans both of witch are live front and back all the time .....yess they can bust you from the front too by law a camera cant take a photo from the front it could blind the biker but vans dont flash

I had to go on a "you drive like a tw4t corse " and this is what we were told

To put a camera up by law some one has to have died there killed by a speeding car they CANT put them up were they like

Takes about 2 years in cout to get the permision to put a camera up .......so sorry they are there for a reason and alot of work gose in to were they are like them or not

on a side note you can loose your driving licence if they want to be arsey about it if your drunk on a MTB

butcher of bakersfield

leon69 wrote:

in newcatsle there are a total of 48 camera's only 12 of witch have film in them ....but this is the kicker ..its never the same 12

According to the boss at work, who attended the same course a few months ago (northumbria police) they're all digital now and the idea of them being empty of film is a myth. I'll probably get my own chance to ask though since it looks like I could be attending the same course very shortly

Passed a fixed camera on the bike once (there's a thread about it somewhere) doing around 42mph if I remember right. And nothing. Bastards. I was looking forward to it for months.