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Oz Police Hit The Roof In Drive To Catch Hooning Motorists
Article by: Darren Griffin
Date: 30 Jan 2012
Police in Western Australia have developed a roof mounted radar speed detector, turning every patrol car into a mobile speed camera, in their drive to catch speeding motorists.
The new technology combines radar for speed measurement with an on-board video camera. Speeding motorists would then receive fines by post.
Police are now seeking funds to to install on 48 cars in the fleet and for further development. Ultimately they plan to install the technology in every new patrol car at a cost of $70,000 per vehicle.
Western Australia already measures the speed of 14 million vehicles per year and the introduction of this technology could see that figure rise to over 300 million.
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| Comments
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 Posted by PedroStephano on Mon Jan 30, 2012 10:51 am |
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Australian police are very good at enforcing speed limits and when I left there (1997) a common site was a radar car with a Highway Patrol officer ready to pull you over and give you a lecture and a ticket. Sometimes they didn't give the lecture, just the ticket......
This new development of "remote issue by post" will be very calming on the speedsters. Only non law abiding drivers could complain (and they will!)
iOS rokcs (but my typing - well....)
@PedroStephano |
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| Posted by scoobiewrx on Fri Feb 03, 2012 8:54 am |
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For a country many times bigger than the UK, less poluated than London and with more straight long as the eye can see roads than anywhere else on the planet i can think of excluding the USA and one or two other places, the police seem to be incredibly anal about catching speeders come what may. It's not like the motorist population is even that big, although i know Aussies are as big petrolheads as we are.
WTF is all that about!!??
Have the police actually nothing better to do? Is there no crime to fight? Are motorists simply the No.1 easy cash cow criminals for cops in Oz?
Puts me right off even contemplating emigrating there.
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| Posted by M8TJT on Fri Feb 03, 2012 9:13 am |
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I think thet your impression of OZ is possibly a bit incomplete. They do have cities and motor cars you know. They also get people killed by motorists and they also have dick heads p*****g people off with revving engines and wheelspin.
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| Posted by HDRW on Sat Feb 04, 2012 5:26 pm |
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New Zealand has had car-mounted radar guns for more than ten years -I know because I got caught by one! It was a dead straight road, but it undulated so the view ahead was sometimes only a quarter of a mile. I was doing about 80mph, and the national speed limit is 100kph (62.5mph). I saw his roof-lights appear over the hump in the road about 400m ahead, and lifted off, but it was too late. The radar gun was mounted on top of the dashboard, firing through the windscreen (how does this work? Maybe it was laser rather than radar). It's left running all the time, so as soon as his windscreen popped over the hill, I was nicked.
He got me to sit in his car, showed me the "129" displayed on the gun, and looked up the fines table - each 5kph band has a fine associated with it (lucky I wasn't going 1 faster!) and he handed me the ticket, which was for about UKŁ84. The bottom of the ticket is a paying-in slip, and you just go into any bank and pay it in as if it's a deposit, and that's it. As I was a foreigner I didn't get points on my licence as a local would have.
It's annoying that in a place where you see another car about once an hour (South Island has about the same area as England with a population of 800,000, about the same as Nottinghamshire) so the accident potential is tiny, that they have such a low national speed limit, but as it goes it's a very well-sorted way of dealing with a ticket!
Cheers,
Howard
Howard, G1BYY
Mid-Herts RAYNET |
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| Posted by Darren on Sat Feb 04, 2012 5:48 pm |
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| HDRW Wrote: | | New Zealand has had car-mounted radar guns for more than ten years |
But the difference here, is the addition of a camera making them, in effect, mobile speed cameras, with the ability to capture offending vehicles, and issue tickets, without ever having to stop a driver. More drivers = more money. Every patrol car becomes a mobile speed camera that can set up anywhere. Very difficult to handle that with GPS POI based warning.
Darren Griffin |
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| Posted by scoobiewrx on Sat Feb 04, 2012 6:19 pm |
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| M8TJT Wrote: | | I think thet your impression of OZ is possibly a bit incomplete. They do have cities and motor cars you know. They also get people killed by motorists and they also have dick heads p*****g people off with revving engines and wheelspin. |
I can tell you're a petrolhead 
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| Posted by DennisN on Sun Feb 05, 2012 9:50 am |
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You really have to wonder sometimes about the accuracy of some of these figures. If it costs $70,000 to install just one system into one car, what's the economics of it all? I don't know the price of a speeding ticket in Australia, but if it's $100, then each and every car has to trap 700 speeders just to recoup the cost. Plus at that price, are they adding a helluva lot to the price of a car? How long do police cars last?
Just wondering. 
Dennis
If it tastes good - it's fattening.
Two of them are obesiting!! |
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