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Wi-fi cameras mean no escape for drivers
David Williams, Motoring Editor19.11.07
Wi-fi speed cameras that could give blanket coverage to entire housing estates or even towns are being tested in the Blackwall Tunnel.
They are capable of fining hundreds of speeding drivers every minute.
Unlike conventional traps that catch drivers at a single location, the cameras monitor motorists' speeds over a vast network of roads.
The wi-fi technology enables large groups of cameras to communicate.
The cameras, made by RedSpeed, have been installed in the north bore of the Blackwall Tunnel. They catch drivers exceeding 30mph at any point along the northbound bore of the tunnel that is nearly a mile long.
Details of each car's number plate are beamed from the camera at the entrance of the tunnel to a second camera on the A13 slip road and a third at the exit. Computer software automatically calculates whether the car was speeding.
The London Safety Camera Partnership said the cameras were not yet live and were undergoing trials to gauge their effectiveness.
A Transport for London spokesman said: "It is particularly important to trial measures that could be used to enforce speed limits and reduce road accidents, especially in an environment such as the Blackwall Tunnel, where a crash could cause disproportionately high casualties."
Reader views (16)
Here's a sample of the latest views published.
average speed cameras (specs)dont stop speeding purley because if you entered the first specs and had to stop in a 50mph zone for say 1 minute with the cameras being a mile apart you could probably get away with doing 60mph when you pass the next camera so how does that stop speeding its just a revenue earner....
- Jamie, leicester
Why don't they just ban driving and have done with it! Just another way to make a few extra million quid in stealth tax.
- Andy, Bolton
Excellent to see technology being used to prevent crime and deter would-be offenders. It's progress... (and better than most TV!).
- Martin H. Watson
Average speed cameras do nothing to stop the real road crimes being committed! Technology will not solve the dangerous driver,the drunk driver, the road rage... these are more worrying than a year spent driving at 34MPH in a 30 zone...
Technology will never be a true replacement for actually having well trained police on the road and the streets.
Supporting this sort of scheme and not questioning why more real police are not being enlisted is just one reason we have become the nanny state, CCTV controlled farce of a country we are today!
- Anon, London
Putting on one side the issue of speeding, where the current system of speed cameras has so clearly blundered. Because it has criminalised people who've never been convicted of anything before, or ever had an accident, because they happen to be travelling at 46 in a 40 zone. While totally missing the guy in a Mitsubishi EVO who drives around at 70 plus, slowing down for that 100 yards or so as he passes the camera because he's savvy enough to have made a mental note of them and then speeding right back up again and is therefore not statistic because he's never been caught.
Do they not realise that this system will be wide open to exploitation as well as not being up to the task?
Didn't we once have a police force that were the envy of the world because they were actually good at this sort of thing and these cameras were to supposed to set them free to do other tasks while in reality all that's happened is the police force has been allowed to shrink to the tune of nearly 20% leaving rural areas uncovered for not just speeding and traffic offences, but other non car related crime as well?
Has the government gone a little bit mad on this and are just stubbornly refusing to admit they've messed up?
- Derek Wilson, Sittingbourne, Kent
We're going to let Ken... Our Ken have a computer system to run these cameras, open to exploitation by anyone who wants the database, like terrorists and cyber criminals, because it's airborne, when, as is being reported as I type this, the Inland Revenue can't even keep it's data safe?
..erm ..someone pass the straight jacket!
- Vince Cordall, Ashford, Kent
Excellent to see technology being used to prevent crime and deter would-be offenders. People used to object to fingerprints. People even objected to births being registered as it allegedly infringed their liberties. If you break the law, it is getting increasingly likely that you will pay the penalty. Let's link up all these cameras to the Internet, so that we can all help. It's progress. (and better than most TV!).
- Martin H. Watson, Teddington, England
Sounds reasonable to me, if you're breaking the law then you deserve what you get. I doubt there'd be any complaints if the new technology was to catch people breaking any other law.
- Trevor Roll, London
If you don't speed there's no problem, is there?
- Steve Johnson, Reading, UK
This sounds like yet another step toward a big brother society, where everything you do is monitored and freedoms are a thing of the past. I am against the new cameras.
- Mr P Clancy, Bristol
I'll probably live to be 100 as I live for the day when a UK Government finds a use for camera technology which fights the criminal rather than penalises the motorist.
- Owen, London
How about programming them to recognise when drivers are using their mobiles too?
- Paul Taylor, London
News Flash, London Transports Flag ship speed camera project brought to its knees by virus, millions of pounds lost.
You'd have thought they learnt their lessons from previous forays into IT, no money being wasted here, like the hospitals, passport office, child support agency etc, etc,.
Wi fi? ...are they actually mental?
Don't these people watch "The real hustle" and note the ease with which a hacker can sit there with a laptop and crack into a system and do whatever the hell he wants.
I'm sorry, I had to laugh, it is a bit like putting in an all singing all dancing alarm system but forgetting to shut a window.
It's getting a bit desperate now isn't it!
- Vince Cordall, Ashford, Kent
I wonder how long it'll take for some sharp operator to start selling an LCD number plate kit on the internet that triggers when it detects the wi fi and then presents Ken's Car (or Gordon Brown's, David Cameron's or even the Queen's) number plate at the important moment allowing the children of the technology to retain the upper hand.
The trouble with institutions like the camera partnerships is that they're a bunch of old fuddie duddies meddling in a world of hackers and whizz kids, that they clearly can't understand, while the law abiding citizen gets mullered by government all the way.
It's not about the safety, it's about the money and the inability to back down and admit they've made a mess of epic proportions that makes the Home Office statistics over immigration fiasco, look like a hiccup.
Farce, the whole lot of it!
- Carl Wallace, Southampton
Yet another tax raising scheme from Red Ken. The sooner this man is removed from office the better. Nothing he has done or for that matter said has worked.
- Neil Taplin, Rochester, Kent
Big brother gone mad. Livingstone has a hatred of cars and motorists. When will the British people realise that they have been stripped of their freedom and civil liberties by subterfuge? This is also a very neat revenue raiser...tax, tax, tax!
- James, Long Island, New York.
Yet more "big-brother" spying on the UK public - how much longer will people living in the UK put up with this enormous intrusion into their lives?
- Mr T Burgoyne, London
