Driving to the airport? Big Brother is about to get really nasty. [Archive]

gravity victim

21st May 2001, 18:37

Just had a warning note via an MOD mate originating at BAe Systems which I think worth passing on:

Be aware of the new speed cameras which are being erected the complete length of the A and M road network. They are recogonisable as a tall blue pole with a small aerial pole next to it.SPEEDCHECK SVVD or SPECS went on-line last weekend on the M1, netting 4300 offenders in a day. The system is not radar-based like the gatso cameras - it measures time between two cameras on a 500 metre baseline. Fully automatic, digital, records date,exact time, location and speed, plate and colour of vehicle. Connected to DVLA computers. Radar detectors useless against it, no flash needed.

Kent and Leicestershire police are racing to install it, and 60 new cameras go live on the M25 on Monday 14 June between A3 and M40. They can deal with 60,000 tickets an hour!

There is a possible hold-up due to arguments about privacy law, but this system will go way beyond speeding, as it will be able to keep track of every single car in the country when the network matures.

Onwards into a scary future!

Capt PPRuNe

21st May 2001, 18:54

How many times do we have to go through this?

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">What's That Then?

This new innovation from TrafficMaster is a system again designed in the UK. PTFM (passive target flow measurement) is a new technology currently being installed on over 95% of the country's main roads, developed specifically for traffic monitoring purposes. Australia has a similar system implemented but only for heavy goods vehicles, called Safe-T-Cam.

The technology involves cameras sited at approximately 4 mile intervals. These cameras only read the central four digits of a sample of car's number plates and from this create an electronic pattern, or tag. Batches of this tagging data are then transmitted by radio link every 4 minutes from each camera site to the control centre, which matches up sightings of a sample quantity of vehicles. This enables Trafficmaster to determine if there is a problem, and accurately monitor average journey times throughout the entire UK. Note this system does NOT read every car that passes by, so you can wave goodbye to those "Big Brother" fears. It's designed to target 16 vehicles every 3 minutes.

From Michelle Murphy at Trafficmaster:

"Under the terms of Trafficmaster's licence agreement with the Department Of Transport, we must dump the information gathered immediately it has been processed. This type of technology has been around for some time now, but has never been successfully developed for enforcement purposes. This is due to the fact that the information would have to be 100% accurate - based on a 100% sample. For our purposes, this is not only not necessary, but not desirable - the equipment needed to process that amount of data would be extremely expensive, and totally unnecessary. We only read the central four digits of a car's number plate, and in addition only read a small percentage of those vehicles that pass by each site.

Trafficmaster's core business is the provision of live traffic information. This new system can only benefit motorists - telling them if there is congestion ahead, and how long it will take them to get from A to B."

Note: The cameras are painted a cobalt blue colour to distinguish them from speed cameras.
Thanks to Tomek Lichtarowicz for the images here

And why might you think it's a speedtrap?
Because it's a camera box. But it is painted blue so you'd be pushed to mistake it for the real thing.</font>

http://www.brakehorsepower.com/speedtrap/ptfm2.gif

For an education go to The SpeedTrap Bible (http://www.brakehorsepower.com/speedtrap/speedtrap_notatrap.html)

Tell your MOD mate to check his sources. :rolleyes:

Now off to a more appropriate forum with you.

------------------
Capt PPRuNe
aka Danny Fyne
The Professional Pilots RUmour NEtwork