Top telematics: Black box helps driver swerve speeding fine Motoring campaigner Neil Herron has beaten a mobile police speed trap rap by using the threat of revealing his own GPS-based telematics data in court. The incident took place in January 2014, when Herron was stopped by a police patrol who were using a Tele-traffic LTI 20:20 Ultralyte 1000 infrared laser gun. (PDF datasheet) …
Pain... I love it... Have you ever tried to challenge "UK government machinery"? Unless you have the budget to retain a lawyer who is doing it for you, you are not going to get anywhere as you will not get any work done yourselves. It is a classic case of "That level of justice is for 'peers' only".
As far as the laser - depends where they had it pointed. Could be worse - getting a ticket for 100mph in a 30mph zone. Out of 4 cameras within 2 miles from me 3 are in the flight path towards the local small airport. They regularly flash people and make them panic, hit breaks or otherwise behave erratically because they are triggered by the return from what is flying above them (fairly low at that point) instead of what is driving in front of them.
where challenging the police to produce "the evidence" resulted in cases being dropped. In each case, the police were obviously sour grapes over it, as they didn't contact the person to let them know.
Every single case hinged on what a policeman had "seen" on CCTV footage.
I suspect all that's happened is that the CPS/police found that they hadn't dotted i's and crossed t's in the establishment, placement and calibration of the speed camera prior to use.
I won't dispute that the guy was probably not speeding, based on his GPS stuff, but one has to wonder how tamper-proof the GPS traces produced by such devices are. It's not that difficult to knock them up, after all. Before allowing them, surely the court will have to consider this.
Also, would plod be allowed to have the entire set of trace data contained on the device? If so, you'd need to ensure you don't speed ever (not that I condone it!), as you'll need to keep at least 2 weeks of data on it to ensure you have coverage of any inbound ticket that gets delayed by Royal Mail.
@JetSetJim
I suspect all that's happened is that the CPS/police found that they hadn't dotted i's and crossed t's in the establishment, placement and calibration of the speed camera prior to use.
The LTI20.20 is well known in motoring circles at "The dodgy scope", not least because a barrister was able to show in court that the wall opposite the judge was travelling at circa 15mph.
Further, Steve Callaghan is equally well known, and seems to delight in making his own reputation.
The whole edifice of automated speed detection is crumbling before their eyes, and telematics boxes will be the last but one nail in the coffin. Under the DPA, the insurer would have no choice but to grant you access to your data.
Also, would plod be allowed to have the entire set of trace data contained on the device? If so, you'd need to ensure you don't speed ever (not that I condone it!), as you'll need to keep at least 2 weeks of data on it to ensure you have coverage of any inbound ticket that gets delayed by Royal Mail.
Prosecution for speeding requires that an officer form the opinion that a vehicle is speeding and verifies it with their equipment, or the equipment be certified for unattended use. So while you could use the telematics to defend an accusation of law breaking, it would not meet the evidenciary standard required to trigger a prosecution.
As telematics becomes more common, devices like the LTI20.20, which are considered genuinely suspect by drivers up and down the land, will either have to be made to function correctly or prosecutions will have to be dropped. Once the trickle of dropped prosecutions becomes a flood, the SCPs will have to explain why that is. Big hint here: The only thing which works 20/20 is hindsight.
I was forced to overtake a police car when he deliberately braked. I was accused of overtaking him over double white lines around a bend, this was BS!
I took an enlarged a map of the bend to court and got the officer to answer six questions. The stupid bastard did not realise that he could only answer any five of them with a yes. One of the questions was agreeing on my speed (50mph). I then showed that I would have had to be driving at 100mph to overtake him in the agreed distance. I was found guilty but got off at an appeal when I had discovered that the arsehole had emigrated* and so there was no evidence offered. Ha ha!
*I felt sorry for the Aussies
I deliberately don't brake a lot of the time, instead controlling my speed with the volume pedal and gearstick. Those drivers who dab the brakes at every bend in the road are nearly as bad as the ones who don't believe in braking distance or blindly follow overtakers into oncoming traffic.
I deliberately don't brake a lot of the time, instead controlling my speed with the volume pedal and gearstick. Those drivers who dab the brakes at every bend in the road are nearly as bad as the ones who don't believe in braking distance or blindly follow overtakers into oncoming traffic.
Although I agree that people that ride the brakes are one of life's great pains in the arse (motorways have more than their share of drivers that can only operate a car by stamping on the accelerator or the brakes) there are caveats to engine braking. That is that it's normally considered to be somewhat useful to change your speed by dabbing the brakes as it illuminates those little light things at the back that tell the driver of the 44T lorry behind you that you're slowing down. I believe that brake lights are considered signals much like indicators are so an arsey copper could well pull you over for failing to adequately signal.
Golden rule of driving is to be able to stop in the distance you see to be clear ahead. So unless the Police car overtook you or pulled out from a side road into your clear space and then broke you where in the wrong if you needed to overtake him for any reason. In effect you got off on a technicality and the initial conviction was correct.
Note this golden rule of driving might mean that you need to slow down to go round a bend, not because your car is unable to make the bend at the speed, but because the bend reduces the visible road ahead that you can see to be clear.
Yep, happened to me on Kenpass Highway in Coventry some years ago. Cop in outside lane doing 40. Me on inside lane doing 40. He brakes and stops me for "overtaking on the left".
Why did he feel moved to do this? A) it was 3 am and in 1983 driving the deserted streets at that hour was " suspicious". 2) he was paired with the sourest-faced WPC I've ever personally encountered. Something had put her back up that night and she was not in a forgiving mood.
I had my vengeance. I told him I wasn't carrying my paperwork (it was in the boot) so he had to write a dsk appearace ticket for me. I let him fill it out and when he said "Broad Street okay for you?" I said " No. Kingston-upon-Thames".
I was working a contract there and would be there from 8 am the next day for a week. He had to get on the radio and wake someone up so they could find a cop-shop for him to write in the ticket. I like to think everyone involved gave him hell for a bullshirt stop.
Why was I out at that time? I drove a TR6 and felt like a run with no other drivers clogging up the view.
" "overtaking on the left"
Is this still illegal in the UK today?"
I believe that if you are traveling on an inside lane when someone is going slowly in an outside lane and the road in front of you is clear then it isn't an undertake - you are simply making progress in your lane.
However, if you are behind the car in the outside lane, move to an inside lane to get past them and then return to the outside lane then that is in undertake.
Otherwise everyone stuck in a traffic jam would technically be undertaking when the inside lane starts to flow faster than the outer,
" "overtaking on the left"
Is this still illegal in the UK today?"
Not explicitly. Rule 163 of the Highway Code says "You should...only overtake on the left if the vehicle in front is signalling to turn right, and there is room to do so", which lacks the MUST/MUST NOT that the Highway Code uses to identify legal requirements.
Of course, the fact that you had failed to obey any rule in the Highway Code could be used as evidence in a prosecution for a crime such as careless or dangerous driving, or to establish liability in a civil case.
Only one?
I had both front lower wishbone mounts tear away from the chassis on separate cornering occasions.
I had the driver side trunion sieze solid so in order to turn I had to pull hard enough on the wheel to deform the suspension.
I had the coupling on the metering unit shatter at 70 mph on the M1 as I was leaving Newport Pagnel services.
I had the roof tear wawy from the rear anchor at 110mph just west of Havant and give me and the two ladies inside a damn good thrashing (it was still attached at the windscreen).
I had the throttle linkage disconnect as I pulled into heavy works traffic in Ayelsbury. On that model the throttle failed by opening to "maximum wellie".
I had the fuel pump overheat to the point that the petrol started vaporizing in the part with the cogs in it.
I had a wheel bearing fail so spectaculaly the mechanic actually tore the studs through the flange when the puller exceeded 90 tons force.
I did manage to fix the grounding problem that made the engine stall if you switched on too much stuff at once. (Which is the real reason TR6 owners flash their headlights at each other - a smug demonstration of mad electrician skillz).
All that and more and I'd have kept the car if I could. Broke my heart to have to sell it.
I have my phone mount in the car arranged to video every journey I make (well when the phone's in it, it's not a camera itself, before someone points that out).
Not cos of plod but I am a bit fed up of other people driving into me over the last few years and then lying on their claim response. Spose I could turn GPS on in the app though no idea how admissible it may be in court to challenge a spurious/speculative speeding charge. Anyone ?
Exactly what I was thinking when I collected this into clipboard:
The evidence from the device used by Mr Herron was not considered by the court, so there is no established error indicated by that device.
Seems the establishment is taking pains to NOT have its faulty "evidence" tested in a court of law.
I think it's more a case of challenging the Police's evidence seems to be enough in radar gun cases. Anectodally* it seems that when the radar gun is challenged plod routinely find they can't prove it's been tested or calibrated in years. And since showing the gun is duff (or at least not up to scratch as incontrovertible evidence) has the potential to unravel hundreds of fines they'll bail out as soon as they can.
*I read it on the internet so it must be true
@auburnman
Did the Judge not give the Prosecution a bollocking at least?
Happens every other time they're up in front of one, but it makes no difference. The CPS are the most ineffective arm of the criminal justice system by a country mile. Top to bottom they're absolutely woeful, and will circle the waggons in fear when challenged on their inability to perform.
This sounds highly fishy to me.
Neil Herron's tweet about the topic:
https://twitter.com/HerronNeil/status/649881678320664576
gives a link to: http://www.drivingintuition.com/ which itself has a link to "Grid". The same "Grid" of which (according to his Twitter profile) Neil Herron is the CEO.
Mr Neil Herron is also a joint owner of Creative Telematic Holdings Ltd
See http://www.endole.co.uk/company/09263397/creative-telematic-holdings-ltd
Although, unlike some people elsewhere have suggested, I don't think that he somehow fiddled the figures to get himself off, because not only would that mean that the Insurance Companies wouldn't trust their products, but he'd be open to a charge of Perverting the Course of Justice.
I don't think he fiddled the figures, but I wouldn't be surprised if he'd set it all up, "baiting" the police at a stretch of a road where he knew they'd be operating - all for the purpose to actually go to court and give publicity to the device. Remarkable involvement in promoting the goods, I would say. And while in general the more complicated the plot the less likely to have been actually hatched, his ties to the device, in the circumstances, look VERY uncircumstantial.
I got two NIP's for variable speed limit on the M25. I use Waze a lot, so I had very accurate Google location information. I wrote some code to calculate the speeds between location points. Unfortunately, it agreed with the NIP accusation, so at least I knew it was a fair cop. Although I couldn't prove either way what the limit was at the time, of course, but that is a different issue.
From watching too much Mythbusters (read: every single show to date) I've seen them on many occasion use high speed footage to measure the speed of an object going past a stripey background with the stripes being a perfect measured width.
So doesn't it stand that even basic dashcam footage (one without GPS) can give you the speed of the vehicle if you measure how many frames it takes to get from one spot to another spot along a road if you know the exact distance between the two spots and the framerate?
Doubtful it would hold up in court as the prosecution would say the camera's framerate isn't calibrated, but it could tell you wether you were even close to doing 40 in a 30 zone.
GPS receivers usually update every second, but most loggers won't store every position. Back when I worked in telematics (many years ago, to be fair), the actual sample rate was every 20 seconds or so. Based on a normal-ish car, it would be very easy to accelerate from standstill to 60mph - and be doing double the speed limit - and then back to under 30mph again all within a single sample. A policeman could clock me at 60, but my log might only show 30, even though I had indeed done 60.
Except that the positional information used to calculate your average speed between ticks would be wrong.
The GPS loggers don't read the speed from their sensors, unlike old style loggers that would record the speed directly from the wheels etc, instead the GPS system should take your two positional readings and work out the speed based on the time over that distance giving you a fairly accurate reading every second.
@Valerion
That'd only be possible if the telematics/gps device had a visible countdown to the next recorded measurement, you accelerated at a rate constant with your future deceleration, and you did all that knowingly in front of a camera van for the purposes of getting nicked. And it won't just be you, it'll be everyone the dodgyscope says was speeding who has telematics.
Not only is it unlikely, its so far beyond reasonable doubt that the SCP could claim Elvis was operating it with no further loss of credibility.
Having two objects move in unpredictable patterns at unknown speeds will always make it impossible for one object to accurately calculate the speed of the other when you're scaling up a distance travelled of a few inches during measurement to generate a speed in MPH. Its time all handheld or otherwise manouverable speed devices were decomissioned. Fix one to a tripod where the operator can't jiggle it, if you must, but lets at least be reasonable about the laws of physics.
back then maybe, but today with modern storage you can record every second or every sub second if needed. I set my Garmins (edge 1000 and forerunner 305) are set to record every second else my mtb segments & times are way off on strava and garmin connect, in fact smart recording setting and iPhones recording the same segments will show faster speeds, slightly shorter segments and less time. some of the gpx files for hours long recordings are just a few 10's of KB, whilst the units have GB & MB or storage.
I've also had a speeding case dropped by the prosecution in court after I appeared and provided evidence which contradicted their own, the details being:
Letter arrive announcing I'd been photographed travelling at 93mph in a 50mph zone. Bit strange I thought so I checked out the date and time and found I was still at work at the date and time given, some 40 miles away from the location where the photo was taken. My car was with me (I'm a wheelchair user and am the only person insured to drive the car so it stays with me).
Gathered evidence to prove this - shift rota, emails I'd sent to others around the time of the offence and most damningly an extract from the swipe card system used at work showing I was still in the building.
Turned up at court and presented this evidence. All the prosecution had was an extremely blurred photo of my car, showing the speed as 80mph and a different date and time. when this was pointed out (by the magistrate's adviser person) to the court the prosecution withdrew immediately and was given a talking to about wasting court time by the magistrate.
I was given a stern "you've been lucky this time" mention.
The point is, always challenge if you believe you're in the right. They are not all-powerful and are subject to errors, both human and technological.
This post has been deleted by its author
As others have said Herron is a director of the company that makes this GPS device. If you look back a few years his co-director Dr Philip Tann was caught speeding and he too had his case withdrawn by the CPS. Strangely enough both got caught on the same road in Sunderland, how strange is that?
It seems, on the reporting, that the evidence from the device was not tested by the courts or submitted to an independent expert so it could be examined.
I can see a large problem with using such a device in making a proper challenge to a speeding offence. The laser gun will measure the speed of the car in a fraction of a second. The GPS machine will not or is not likely to sample at this high sample rate so comparison is largely futile. Drivers who have been speeding and subsequently see the speed gun and police brake so a slow sample rate GPS averaged sped will always be lower than the speed gun reading.
Another issue is one of time synchronisation. While the Herron/Tann GPS log is on GPS time how many police laser speed guns will be connected to a GPS time source? In the Herron case it is an LTI20.20 Ultralyte 1000 so this will have its time set, if it was, by the police officer's watch. As such the time Herron was caught is only an estimate, unless of course he has a source inside the police that is passing the time to him. Only joking there folks.
So this case has been dropped probably because of a prosecution service mistake not because of the telematics device; maybe Mr Herron can enlighten us all on that...or will it ruin his advertorial?
So it's the same on both sides of the pond. I've found every time I'm prepared to fight a ticket, it's dropped. The cop is usually not interested in taking the time to testify. In other cases, it was a K55 radar unit, and when I ask for the daily calibration records, it's usually "uh, we left that in our other jacket. case dismissed"
I've been charged with running a toll booth, where the truck had the same tag number as my motorcycle - the photo was included with the mailed citation.
I was told "THAT'S NOT POSSIBLE" of course, and it was dropped when I presented all my evidence of vehicle registration, etc. I found out that the truck was from another state with a different numbering scheme.
Edit: I got the stern "you're lucky" from the judge and I responded with "No, your Honor, I just don't run toll booths... I'm not that poor." and gave the gimlet stare right back.
I've also been told if I fight a ticket the cop would add more offenses (which is "illegal duress against due process" as he's trying to keep me from showing up in court) so not only did I get my speeding ticket dropped, he got a black mark on his record.
It's bad in Iowa, it's the only state where state law on radar and laser says they NEVER have to calibrate their equipment, and equipment calibration cannot be used as a defense. Luckily, I have not heard of cases here where the equipment is hugely out of calibration like this.
Pennsylvania, some state senator got pissed about getting caught in a speed trap a few years ago, and made it illegal for ANYONE but the State Patrol to run radar or laser (including the local police!) They can technically use "Vascar", this ghetto rig where they are supposed to either use two landmarks or put dots on the road, measure the distance, hit a "start" and "stop" button as the car passes the dots, and get a speed. It's apparently labor-intensive enough compared to aiming the radar gun and pulling the trigger that they don't bother.
The city of Cedar Rapids, Iowa was told their cameras were illegal and basically said "fuck you, w'ere leaving them up anyway." Unbelievable. The city officials were apparently quite shocked when people started demanding refunds on their ilegally-collected fees. Of course, Gatso operates these, you actually get a "request for payment" from Gatso (which you're not obligated to ever pay, since you didn't order goods or services from this company... and if they report it to a credit agency, you can tell the credit agency the same and they are legally obligated to remove the negative item from your report) instead of a ticket from the city (where there are actual legal penalties for non-payment.)
"As others have said Herron is a director of the company that makes this GPS device. If you look back a few years his co-director Dr Philip Tann was caught speeding and he too had his case withdrawn by the CPS. Strangely enough both got caught on the same road in Sunderland, how strange is that?"
Not strange at all. Given the comments on this model of laser speed gun being known to give improper readings, they probably were both improperly photographed, and were just two of the few with evidence to refute these false speeding claims.
When they catch you with one of their lasers, they basically threaten to throw the book at you unless you plead guilty. It's "pay up, or your driving life will turn to shit in hours and you'll wish you'd never been born". There's no hint whatsoever that the box does anything like what they claim it does. I'm pleased that this man challenged them, but I'm surprised they didn't a) take his car apart looking for faults and b) do him for DCA as well when he did. That was what was going to happen to me, I was told.
Back in the early days of the laser speed-gun, my now retired mate in the Met tried one of them to see how useful it was. Duly dispatched to K Divisions streets, he came back to the station and presented the Sergeant his findings. The best one was Mr O Tree. On explaining that the oak tree was travelling at 40 mph, the Sarge decided it was either the machine or my mate that was defective. Guess which one it was.
The device (for those of cynical nature - ie all of you reading this)
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