How Fast are you Driving your Car?
The car that you are driving is fitted with a speedometer. The car that you drive is fitted with a speedometer because, if not, it is not MOT certifiable, and therefore, not road worthy.
The gauge allows you to view your speed objectively, but the speed you drive at is more likely to be down to your perception, or feeling of speed in relation to surroundings.
This really is just an estimation, and more often than not, an estimation that means that you will exceed speed limits, making the purpose of the speedometer little more than decorative.
As cars are made to higher specifications, quieter and more powerful for instance, the limits become easier and easier to violate. The SUV has grown hugely in popularity with its higher wheels distorting the perception of speed while driving, normally meaning underestimating it.
Within the confines of the UK, road conditions are becoming more and more congested as traffic density increases and the days of being inattentive to the speedometer are growing short.
These days there are some 10 million commercial vehicles and 25 million cars on our roads, and to minimise the problems of them banging together, or taking out pedestrians or property, something more decisive than your speedo has been used.
You are reasonably free to choose if you want to use the roads or not, but the choice of speeds is becoming a thing of the past, your perceptions count for little in the non-blinking eye of the hi-tech speed limit enforcers.
On our roads now, the majority of driving speed enforcement is undertaken by cameras acting autonomously with no mitigations or exceptions. You will not outrun a camera. But if caught speeding, the services of specialised legal speeding experts such as Patterson Law Speeding Offence Solicitors can help to mitigate the damage caused to your driving licence.
The fixed position cameras became popular (or was it unpopular) in the early nineties with the cross country installations of Gatso machines. These were originally battle-ship grey in colour, but have been hi-viz yellow since 2001, probably in an effort to convince that they are “safety cameras”, rather than “speed cameras”, and there for your own good.
The Gatso is in effect, a radar gun with a camera installed. It takes pictures, when speed-activated, of the rear of the car and its registration number against the backdrop of white lines painted on the road.
The white lines can give a triangulation to give confirmation the car’s speed. The camera snaps the rear because it uses flash photography, and “flashing” at the front would startle, or maybe momentarily blind the driver.
The days of the local bobbies telling you to mind your speed, or, don’t do it again, are well and truly gone.