Motorists in Scotland will face being prosecuted for creeping just 1mph over the speed limit under plans announced by the Police.
Previously a common “margin of error” has been allowed, which is often – but not always – 10% + 2mph.
That’s now going to change with Police saying that doing even 1mph over the speed limit will result in a ticket.
In England and Wales other forces are considering the possibility of following suit…
A spokesman for the National Police Chiefs’ Council said:
“If you are over the limit, you are breaking the law”. “Enforcing speed limits is at the discretion of individual chief constables.”
It appears to be another potential step towards a ‘Police State’ to me, where any and every minor demeanour is jumped upon and punished.
One relief is that this doesn’t appear to be a directive from government level as far as I can work out, but rather the Police throwing their weight around.
I’m sure that a lot of people in Scotland will be petitioning parliament to stop them when this is introduced…
All the best,
Adam
Big Brother indeed!
It will make the calibration of their speed cameras and the training of their operators even more critical. If they are going to prosecute for I MPH over the limit they need to be very sure that their equipment is capable of that sort of accuracy!
Sounds like a way of increasing police funding to me!
it would be interesting to know how many manufacturers speedometers are accurate to that degree , and older vehicles can be even less accurate
Obviously the police in Scotland have a lot of time on their hands !!
This proves that they are over staffed if they really believe that ONE MILE over the speed limit is worth pursuing.
I think Scotland could save money and cut numbers on the Scottish police they are clearly TOO MANY OF THEM !!!
Sounds like a scheme designed by Traffic wardens, or whatever they’re called now, and the Police Chief Officers, wonder why the public think they are aliens, and semi brain dead.Yes! it is getting like a Police state,are they trained behind the ‘Iron Curtain.???.
In France there is a 0% tolerance! It works well here, although the higher 130km per hour (approx 80mph) spped limit on a lot of the motorways goes a long way towards compensating and more.
This is outrageous!Don’t police have enough serious crime to deal with?According to recent reports they only manage to solve 30% of burglaries – why don’t they put more resource into that?Could it be that motorists are a soft target again & this is another easy way to raise revenue? (Stealth tax?).
How many accidents will happen by so much extra concetration on your speedo rather than the road ahead.
Police in Plymouth are already doing this in the average speed camera area at Gdynia WAY there are now over 50 speed cameras in Plymouth I believe Exeter has about 5
There has to be an uncertainty of measurement calculated into the speed gun or camera etc and I would imagine a good lawyer would shoot this to bits should you get a ticket for going 1mph over the limit. There are so many 20mph zones these days and cars are simply not built to cope with such a low speed,I find it difficult to keep to 20 or below. Imagine being done because you were doing 21mph its ludicrous but something we come to expect from an idiotic police state. That is the level of intelligence they have, they fail their entrance exam to work in McDonalds so they join the police force instead
Definitely a case of the Police throwing their weight around and yet another instance of trying to turn us in to a ‘Nanny’ state, they must be short of cash in Scotland.
I don’t see how even the Police’s equipment can accurately show someone driving 1mph over the limit and I’m equally sure that the courts will face an increasing number on ‘Not Guilty’ plea’s with legal representation.
It’s not speed that kills, it’s driver’s.
At this rate it will be mandatory to take out a Drive Protect policy.
All well and good. but that surely is ambiguous to say the least. question. if this is going to be the norm the speedometer in a vehicle as the only refererance a driver has is called into question; then the calibration of police equipment measuring it not attached to the vehicle should equally be accountable. to measure the difference of 1 mph on either part is wishful with current equipment to say the least. a vehicle is calibrated in a bar graph newer vehicles may have digital readout but not all. how can you say legally you were or wernt over the limit using a bar scale? this would surely place the emphasis on the police equipment as the speedo only has to work in a vehicle and be accurate to within 10% so it makes a mockery of zero tolerance if the driver cannot be sure (as the police are) you were or wernt over the limit.
Are the police trying to decrease road safety and increase accidents?
When limits have been reduced from 30 to 20 mph OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT FIGURES show an average increase in accident rates of 32% presumably as drivers are looking more frequently at speedometer in fear of a fine and not concentrating on what is really important. Why don’t they concentrate their efforts on idiots who use mobile phones, which apparently is a dangerous as being intoxicated when driving, as I see this every journey, obviously to difficult?
It appears to be rather draconian, to actually be driving and consatntly monitoring your speedo to ensure you are not jus 1 mph above the speed limit is surely an incitement to cause more accidents, as bad as using a mobile phone! When will we all have governors fitted to ensure we obey the police in a police state?
Persecution of the motorists has reached a new low.
This will criminalise 99% of motorists in a few years.
Maybe it’s time for motorists to flex their muscles and simply refuse to cooperate with this. We cannot all be prosecuted – the courts would cease to function.
They miss a car off road down an embankment with two fatalities….on the most photographed road in Scotland. Kinda puts confidence about accuracy and in them at an all time low. It will just mean more money for lawyers.
This is rediculous. Speedometers are not that accurate. My is only graduated in 5mph steps. Even the difference between the diameter of brand new tyres and worn (but legal) ones will alter the indicated speed on the speedo by nearly 1mph at 70. Also, a speed cameras accuracy to +/- 1 mph is questionable.
My county of Cornwall is grinding to a halt with another 40,000 houses to be built without improving infrastructure, this restriction will only make matters worse! Police attitude is ” forget the burglers, lets do the easy touch, the motorist”,
Just another example together with zero drinking (not even half a pint),just why people should avoid ever going to Scotland.how many scottish country pubs have shut down. They seemed determined to introduce a police state by stealth and overturning long excepted social customs and mores. Be-warned.This petty intolerance is yet another example of the rise of the Scottish Nazi Party. Very soon the country is going to vote for independence and will self destruct. Its landscape destroyed by thousands of useless windfarms and its products boycotted (has anyone shopped at the Edinburgh woolen shops lately)by the rest of GB. The police should remember they are there by our consent.
How about asking as many drivers as possible to deliberately drive at 31mph past a particular speed camera on a particular day – all together and then everyone that takes part refuses to respond to any letters from the Police.
I suspect that a number as small as 3 or 400 motorists refusing to cooperate would bring the lunacy to a head as it would not be easy for the Police to deal with this and it would take masses of their time if they tried it.
If every other sensible motorist in the country wrote to support the protestors at the same time,it would elevate this nonsense to a public debate.
So, manufacturers are going to calibrate their speedos accordingly then?
Ive tracked my car against gps and my wifes in the lane next to me and at 70mph, they were all 3-4mph different..
She crept past me whilst maintaining 70mph (cruise control assisted) whilst my gps read 66mph for my car at 70! Thats 4mph different for my car and 4+ mph for hers!
At a tolerance of 1mph, the super calibrated police devices will need to be aligned to the car they are prosecuting. (remember to produce many speedos at that accuracy will cost a lot more money – plus its not required elsewhere in the world – why woukd manufacturers bother?)
All the cost will go to the british tax payer and further clog the court system with pointless paperwork.
Imho, this is unworkable… Interested to see other views.
Car speedometers are calibrated to over read by 10% so an indicated 30 is really 27. This is deliberate by the vehicle manufacturers to avoid being implicated in speeding offences. I seem to remember that the statement put out when this policy was announced was that “they had to do something to bring down the number os accidents” so the police perception is that 1 MPH over the limit and you are going to crash!!! If this is indeed true I guess we can see an end to police chases as these are either going to be very dangerous or very slow!!!
Having worked as a police officer for 30 years (as a detective – NOT TRAFFIC) and now as a civvy for a force, I find this totally unjustified. Officers are struggling to deal with ‘proper crime’ let alone 1MPH over the limit. Total joke. Someone somewhere has too much time on their hands!
Easily avoided, don’t go to Scotland! Its always raining and if it isn’t the midgies are out!
Give them their independence, rebuild the wall, truncate the A1 and the M74, let them do what ever they want!
Absolute craziness. They appear to be self governing full stop. When at home I walked up to a mobile speed camera van (Scottish Police) and asked why his vehicle was not MOT’d and why it was sat on a grassed area with risk of contamination to the environment as many of our kids walk these areas and many of us walk our dogs there, he looked like a total idiot with no answer. This speed issue…..I would happily play their game and point out that the maximum limit speed and drive at half the speed just to see what point would be made, as long as I was not being dangerous or hazardous to other. How could I be if they are behind me with just a waiting game being played. Given that the Police have stated that they are under severe pressure and may not attend burglaries its really a slap in the face that perosnal safety and security is last on their agenda. Idiots. Someone needs sacked!
There appears to be a misconception among some that this is about Road Safety. To be conviceted of speeding two independent bodies of evidence must be presented to the court. With a hand held “camera” the primary evidence is the operator’s opinion that the vehicle is speeding and the data from the “camera” providing the second or confirming evidence which, of course is delivered by the same operator.
The “hole” in this process is obvious but that is accepted by the courts thus confirming that the whole process has not a shred of credibiity and thus has nothing to do with its supposed purpose, Road Safety. You cannot measure safe driving in miles per hour.
And this, from the force who very recently allowed a young woman to lie and suffer and eventually die in a crashed car for three days due to their negligence and total incompetence.
I see many drivers texting or looking at smart phones and holding mobile phones to their ears, but apparently this is acceptable! The policing of our highways is a joke, we need cameras to catch these “mobile offenders” instead of speed?
What happened to Policing by consent?
Seem to me that it IS,Policing by contempt.
From what I have read the proposal is for FORMAL warning to be issued, not automatic prosecution. One mile an hour is proportionately larger the lower the limit so theoretically it is easier to assimilate speed variation whilst driving. Speedometers by law must not indicate less than actual speed and no more than 110% of actual speed. Modern speedometers should be more accurate, most being electronic rather than mechanical/magnetic. Satnav probably the most accurate in a straight line with hig number of satelites visible to it. Speed camera indicators often have large speed read out displays and if carefully placed are much safer to read than even a speedo.
I just hope they nick a few of their own doing 31MPH. Wishful thinking!!!
As my tyres start at 8/9 mm and wear down to 2mm my speedo would have to be calabrated every month / week as my tyres wear As they are not calerbrated anyway this makes 1 mph over impossible to check
Hand held devices cannot have sufficient accuracy to allow this reading in a court of law. I think Drive Protect might be a little busier. At 30MPH the speedo in a car must read 10% fast by law, but it is not possible to read a car speedo to within 1 mph.
Police in E & W have been doing this for some time – candidates are then offered a Speed awareness Course as an alternative to prosecution.
The 10% +2 has always been an ACPO guideline, never law.
If you clock reads 30 mph, then you should be doing around 28 as all clocks are designed to over read.
I canna say what these canny Scots will say, whether Legal Beagles or the ‘innocent’ MOTORIST.
What I can say is that we Sassenachs in the South know very well that there is that the CROWN Prosecution Service would never dare risk allowing this going to Court because it would FAIL. The point is, is that no car manufacturer can produce a mass produced car that be will bespot on.
So while Adam is right to warn us of Scottish practices it aint going ‘appen ere!!
Funny how they decide some offences are to be treated with ZERO tolerance and others ignored! Having worked with the police during my time in the fire service I quickly became aware that offences that were relatively easy to prosecute (unlike arson/murder etc) always got their attention – particularly where they gained financially.
The Police could spend their time better catching real criminals , but as we know there in more profit to be gained by persecuting motorists .
If this is the case then they should also be looking at mobile phone use, incorrect children in seats,eating,wrong roundabout driving the list goes on it just proves the point the wording Cash Cow comes to mind, oh yes and what about the speeding police cars in towns they do not seem to drive to any style or within limits most are awful drivers.
Where was the police and what were they doing when the 2 people had died in Scotland recently in the news ! Oh I’m Sorry we were too busy catching motorist , really Scotland . Are the police saving up to Independence Day !!!
the reason that they (at the moment) give a 10% leeway on speed is because car speedo’s are inaccurate where police detection devices are almost 100% accurate, i can seeat some future date all speeding fines issued ~(within the 10% of the offence speed limit) will be refunded when somebody fights a conviction in court, current system is fair and sensible leve it alone, this is just a MONEY MAKING OFFICIAL SCAM.
My understanding is that <1% of serious / fatal accidents are caused by people exceeding the speed limit whilst sober / not committing a crime. It is around 35% distraction / mobile phone; 25% unlicensed / stolen; 15% weather; 15% too fast for conditions; the rest are drink drive / bad driving.
So why target 100% effort on 1% of the cause then?
Adam – are these figures up to date / accurate?
I regularly drive a van up the A9, about 130 miles of average speed camera’s. A9 vehicles over 7.5 tonne are allowed to exceed the speed limit and do 50 mph
(in Scotland single roads are 40mph and dual carriage ways are 50 mph, England and Wales 50 mph and 60 mph)
Over 7.5 tonne max speed on the limiter is 56 mph so in Scotland on dual carriageways/motorways 50 +10% + 2mph = 57mph so they never have to worry about HGV’S and can concentrate on the regular motorist.
The A9 average cameras are not set up to monitor the dual carriageway area, but no information is available if you are in a car, are the camera’s multi section or just 1 section.
give’em 10, ( more speed less accidents? ) but the bread butter motorist just give’m a dodgy 1mph less speed to reduce accidents
In the highlands ( north of Glasgow /Edinburgh) of Scotland its not just keeping an eye on your speedo… sheep and deer are major distractions..
As said, this is all about generating money also improving cops crime statistics. I’ve got a speed limiter, it’s like the opposite of a cruise control. Garunteed to cause an accident when I switch it on as it prevents any momentary extra few MPH when say passing a parked vehicle, totally confusing other road users. However if thats what they want I can switch it on and stick so ridgidly to the limit it will be mayhem behind me as I cruse cheerfully on at dead 20MPH.
At My age I heard moans it seems forever
We know we could beat the system by sticking together BUT this is England we put our efforts into moaning but when it comes to doing something and sticking together :: There’s the RUB
This is unfair as tyre wear can cause the speedo to be inaccurate and change over time. To do exactly 30mph would require the driver to look at his speedo every 5 secs or so. With the performance levels of modern cars and the ups and downs in the road it’s impossible. Driving instructors tell us to look in our rear view mirror every 25 secs. Both these actions can take up to 3secs so looking at speedo 20 times per min and rear view mirror twice per min leaves no time for the driver to watch the road! Even using cruise control does not guarantee your speed would not go over by 1mph on the slightest downhill gradient! which is where the police usually set up their mobile traps! I was going to holiday in Scotland next year…don’t think I’ll bother!
This is a ridiculous move which has not been thought through by the Scottish police. It will dramatically increase the cost of the Scottish police in fighting motorist’s claims that their equipment is faulty or cannot be calibrated to meet the 1mph tolerance permitted. Taxpayers will ultimately have to carry the additional costs for no gain whatsoever!! Sounds like a devious way of reducing speed limits by 5 to 10mph depending on the limit in force on the section of road!!!!
As I understand it Car speedometers are not 100 present accurate and that is why a tolerance was put in place
im disgusted to here that.. 1 mph over and your nicked mate.. the police might as well just hide and jump out from behind a tree and shout ner ner na ner ner got ya !
I have the same problem as some others, I have checked my speedometer and find that when I am doing 70mph according to my speedo if I look at my gps it will usually tell me I am only doing about 65 so if the police can get to 1mph they do not have a hope in hell as when they take the mobile cameras out on the road, the movement in the car will often affect the calibration.
We certainly are in a police state
Rod. you say “Hand held devices cannot have sufficient accuracy to allow this reading in a court of law.” I agree with you but that does not prevent the courts accepting not only their highly questionable evidence but clearly perjured evidence provided by the “camera” operators.
I would like to make one point, we are discussing the speed limit, not the mandatory minimum speed requirement! Try driving at 65mph, it is very easy then to never go 1 mph above the 70 mph limit.
I was lead to believe that most modern vehicles speedos are usually only accurate to +/- 10% !
If this is the case the surely the authorities are on a loser trying to enforce anything less than this ?
A good lawyer would have a field day with them !
This is just a MONEY MAKING SCAM and has nothing to do with safety.
I think the best thing to do is drive at 15mph under the speed limit as the bus drivers did in London grid locking the areas up until they change there mind about it
I agree it we are becoming a police state. if this is adopted in the rest of the UK it will be further proof of police forces being overstaffed therefore looking at financing their bloated numbers by stealth taxes.
It is also very interesting to note that the Ministry of Justice has just announced it is considering closing 91 courts around England & Wales and merging others.
How do they expect to cope with the extra cases unless they think they can just issue mandatory tickets you cannot fight in court.
Riddiculas! Drivers will be so scared of going over they will be driving at 28 mph and creating impatient drivers wanting to “get on”. Also car speedometers are NEVER accurate so how will they over ome that?
The EU law on speedos is that they can never read less that true speed and can never read 110% more that the true speed. Because of this manufacturers build in a high speedo reading. For example, if your speedo shows 50mph, you will not be doing less, but you may actually be doing up to 55mph. The built in high reading is because your speedo is based on a mechanical sensor which could be affected by (for instance) tyre wear and will always fluctuate because of the mechanical bits. Manufacturers do not want to be prosecuted for a speedo that shows a lower than actual reading.
I can not think that Police Scotland would proceed with 1mph prosecutions, as they would get blown out of the water. All Police forces make the same noise about speeding by 1mph above the limit is speeding because they do not want to seem to be encouraging motorists to calculate the built in margin of error and drive to that slightly higher speed, knowing they will not be caught. Sat Nav, if you have one, is more accurate if you want to have a look at how much your speedo over reads.
I got done for doing 41 in a 40 3 years ago in Scotland. Its always been the case to charge you but they usually use discretion.
Think long and hard before you allow any Insurance Company too insist on you having a tracking device installed on any car you own, as they monitor Many aspects of your driving. Signing away your rights to privacy could mean that one day Soon they will be forced into providing Police with all Speeding info. Driving at 34 in a 30 shortly before your accident, wonder If they’ll pay out…..doubt it!
In Germany the autobahns have an advisory speed 130 kmph and have less accidents per million kilometers driven than the UK, why?
The Scottish police have a different set of priorities, these leave accident victims to die of dehydration bitter to catch criminals exceeding the speedlimit by 1 mph.
Richard Blackman
How interesting that A spokesman for the National Police Chiefs’ Council said:if your over the limit you are breaking the law,Yet the police DO NOT take the same attitude when serious crimes are committed and will often take days to turn up to take a statement if they bother to turn up at all, yet again it proves that the motorist is the easy target, well I hope ALL police vehicles will be having their speedometres calibrated on a regular basis and not just the traffic cops and they have the paperwork to prove it, because I for one will be asking to see it if I am ever pulled over on suspicion of speeding.
What do you expect from a country run by the biggest bunch of money grabbing freeloaders you could ever wish to meet who give our hard earned money to every overseas Tom Dick or Harry, with no thought to their indigenous peoples some who cannot afford to live without handouts from charities so what better way to fill their coffers hit the motorist again, we all know that we live in more or less a police state
I once had a 2 year old car written off by a motorist ramming me from behind whilst waiting at a traffic light near Thirsk. The hapless North Yorkshire police refused to prosecute him yet fine people for trivial speeding offences because this ‘might’ be dangerous. It’s obviously a case of work avoidance by lazy police who like cameras to do all the work for them. My crash was not on camera.
Until recently I drove a Citroen van for work. It was within a private area with a 20 mph limit and plastic police. They had portable electronic speed advice signs. On approach these would fluctuate constantly between 15 -22 mph on my approach. The speedo read 20, the GPS 17. There is no way they can get an accurate reading off a sloping plastic fronted vehicle, and they know it. Not even the Clown Persecution Service are that thick, they only go for easy options where they think they have a good chance of a conviction. Take away targets and give discretion back to the copper on the spot. Also NEVER carry or produce your licence to a roadside officer, they make take it. Elect for a 7 day wonder, you are less likely to get done.
Don’t worry about Police Scotland checking your speed with mobile cameras worry more about the fact that Police Scotland regularly arm run of the mill beat cops to patrol around the country. How long before 1mph over the limit becomes a crime that necessitated the use of firearms against a persistent criminal?
Holster House at it again.
If it wasn’t having armed police on the streets it was lying about “consensual stop and search of under 12’s.
Just as well he’s been told not to apply for an extension of his contract in 2106. Oh, wait, he’s stepping down.
I sent an e-mail to Alex Salmond telling him a single Police Force was a mistake. Are ye there Alex? Then haud this. “I told ye so”.
The best thing to do is toemploy all the illegal immigrants in calais trying to get across the channel to walk in front of all cars in the uk waving a red flag. Speed limits would be reduced to 3mph everywhere thereby reducing all accidents to zero (my speed awareness course told me speed is the biggest cause of accidents) and solving the third world emigration crises in one fell swoop. The police could then be gainfully employed to annually certify all flag bearers leaving a more competent agency to investigate real crime.
I hope everyone caught ‘Speeding’ by a few MPH opts for a court hearing……. Should give the court system a good workout!.
What is needed here is a full investigation into our national,speed limit then if it is found prudent to,raise it to, say, 85 MPH, do that & really came those that continue to,drive over that.
Amazing that Scottish Police can consider this course of action yet not investigate a car seen off the road for days.
So the police no longer attend burglaries as they haven’t the staff. Why do I think this is a money raising scheme. Where are they going to find the staff to man it or will they just rely on cameras?
This sounds to me like the announcement is deliberately trying to “scare” motorists into dropping their speed. Can’t see how the police could realistically expect these cases to stand up in court. Welcome to the future, the police are NOT there to help you, they are just a money-making body taxing hard-working members of the motoring public.
I think the obvious solution – if people don’t want to get booked for speeding – is to stick to a maximum of 25 and 35 in 30 and 40mph limits, and closer to 10mph below the limit in 50, 60 and 70mph limits. If it proves successful and there are less fatalities and serious injuries (than the national average), then hopefully it will be adopted by police forces nation-wide.
And another key thing that needs doing – two in fact – is to reduce the speed limit of 60mph on country B roads and country lanes by 10 or 20mph, and to also significantly increase the penalties for exceeding the given speed limit by more than 10%, with an automatic one-year ban for anyone exceeding the given limit by more than 20%. What is the point in having deterrents if they don’t deter EVERYONE.
Paul Webster. I’d be really grateful if you could direct me to the “official government figures” you refer to (I think the problem to a very large extent is that you very rarely see mobile camera units in such locations, if ever, and the speeders know it).
C Williams point is just plain wrong! A car speedometer must be between 0% and -10% accurate, the indicated speed must never be under the actual speed. So, most cars travailing at an indicated 70 mph are doing somewhere between 63 and 70 mph. Manufacturers always make their speedometers read high, so as they drift over time, they must never become illegal and read lower than the actual speed travelled. If you convince the court your speed made you do it, then you are just breaking a different law!
£££££££££££
Dead easy. Don’t go to Sturgeonland
If the police are going to enforce such a stringent limit, where does the burden of responsibility fall when it comes the the accuracy of your speedometer. My much more accurate Talex GPS driven speed indication differs dramatically from my speedometer. If it is proven that speedometers are not sufficiently accurate will we see litigation against vehicle manufactures and vehicles being recalled for calibration, or will we all have to drive 10% slower in Scotland to avoid prosecution?
I hope drivers will not spend to much time watching their speedos and not the road and traffic!
This is going to cause an increase of accidents as drivers will be spend too long watching their speedo instead of keeping good observation and planning skills
I have checked the speedo’s on various cars I’ve owned using my satnav speed readout, radar speed displays on the road and, in the past, the distance posts on motorways ways. Most of my speedo’s have only been about 10% accurate up to about 50MPH after which they tend to read 5MPH over. The exception is my wife’s Ford KA which is actually pretty accurate to about 1 or 2 MPH. However, they have all read high rather than low. But 1 MPH is the thickness of the needle on an analogue display and drivers will probably be too frightened to go anywhere near the actual speed limit clogging up the roads while doing 25 in a 30, 50 in a 60 and so on.
How dare they say this is for road safety its PURELY revenue raising and if it was
How dare they say this is
for road safety and not revenue raising people will have to devote more attention to constantly watching the speedo so much that there is a lot more chance of having an accident, it only takes a second for a child to run out or a cyclist to swing out.
its bad enough having criminals steal and extort money from us but now this extra stealth tax will legalise the extortion of money from motorists, the police in this country discust me and millions of others like me we need to take strong action in getting them stop the motorist bashing for EASY MONEY and start going after PROPER CRIMINALS who after all hurt more people in half a day than motorists doing 31 plus miles per hour do in a decade. the police are acting like lowlifes for their attitude to money raising extortion.
Hi all , traffic cops are a nightmare up here (and I do work for them lol) the other problem we have is normal cops use the lazer gun , so if there quite the boss sends them out to stand at a bus stop , they get loads , but over last few months people have slowed down a lot so think there lies the problem, not as much money coming in ,
The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing over and over, and then expecting different results Einstein is reported to have said.
As speed limits come down accidents increase so if Einstein is correct either the obsession with speed limits is insanity or it is for the money.
To quote a previous contributor, this is indeed outrageous! The speed limit is the speed limit. Period. First of all, car speedometers have to be between -10% and 0% accurate, meaning no car on the road she display a speed which is less than the actual speed of travel. Manufacturers will always calibrate speedometers in the middle of that 10% band, so over the life of the car the car does not fall out of the legal specification, so most cars doing 70 mph on the speedometer are more likely doing around 66 mph. No other offenders could use the excuse I was only doing it a little bit…I only stole a little bit, I only beat her up once, It was only child….nobody in their right mind would accept any of these statements, but people who break the speed limit think this is a justified excuse! Grow up, drive within the law!
Scottish Police have always loved to catch speeding motorists as they are short of anything else to do. A mate of mine got done on an empty dual carriageway in the middle of the night going to Aberdeen. My advise is dont go to Scotland in your car unless you really have to! Lets hit them in the pocket with reduced tourism.
I note with interest Richard Cabburn’s posting above. My car is just over 5 years old and so therefore should have an accurate speedo. However, going through those sensors which inform you of what speed you are doing I note that it always states 1 mile an hour less than what the digital reading is in my vehicle. Could this be in my favour if I drive in Scotland and if the police get their way in this country? Speeding is stupid because of the risk of hurting others but also because you waste fuel. However, I think going just over 1 mile an hour and getting a ticket is just criminal in itself. The government and local authorities get enough of our money. The majority of it isn’t even spent in improving our roads. I will say to them, “Stop extortion of the motorists and fine those who deserve to be fined – those who go over by 5 miles +, especially those who use our roads as racetracks.”
how does tyre wear affect the speedo. If he speedo is showing over, can’t you just reduce your speed?
Will this also apply to police cars. How many times are you driving at the legal limit and a police car catches you up or you are following one which moves away into the distance.
Are they going to prosecute themselves?
It’s one law for us and another for them.
Hi Adam, thanks for this. How can you not find the Govt.’s hand in this? Forces are forced by ‘austerity’ funding cuts to raise revenue this way
and on that basis, expect more
and worse to come. PS. Hangar Lane to Arnos Grove average speed cameras on London’s North Circular road scheduled to go live after midnight last night. Check it out.
Regards, Norman.
Drive within the law some of you say,….it is not against the law to speed as all traffic offences are presented by acts of parliament(statutes) there is only one legal law of this land and that is common law,and under common law providing there is no crime committed then how can you be charged.
Some of you need to wake up as you are being robbed from the establishment
Isn’t the current “10% plus 2 (or 3)” leeway allowed due to inaccuracies in speed camera equipment/ calibration of speed cameras?
Anybody with half a brain can see, that you cannot state beyond any reasonable doubt, that somebody clocked by a speed camera doing 31mph, was actually doing over 30mph, when you take into consideration the inaccuracies/ margin of error in speed camera technology, or the equipments calibration.
Sounds likeoverpaid jobsworths within the establishment, who have probably been bullied and laughed at since they were young, trying to get their own back on society.
Police officers should be renamed as “revenue officers”, they’re no use at tackling crime, the only thing they’re good at is raising money to support the lavish lifestyles of self serving politicians.
How can the police even think about this as a cars speedo has a tolerance so you could believe that you are doing 30mph according to your cars Speedo but in reality doing 31mph how can this be in-forced without a speedo calibration being introduced into the MOT test
This will be a waste of money