Oz Police Hit The Roof In Drive To Catch Hooning Motorists

[Darren]

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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Darren Griffin

[PedroStephano]

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!)
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iOS rokcs (but my typing - well....)
@PedroStephano

[scoobiewrx]

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.

[M8TJT]

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.

[HDRW]

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 UK£84. 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
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Howard, G1BYY
Mid-Herts RAYNET

[Darren]

[scoobiewrx]

[DennisN]

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.
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Dennis

If it tastes good - it's fattening.

Two of them are obesiting!!

[Dover]

South Australia - 100Kmh is the speed limit unless one finds them self on a multiple lane divided 2 way highway (110Kmh) and there are very few of them outside suburbia Adelaide. Ridiculously slow for bitumen country roads. Fatigue will become major cause of more accidents and deaths at night.
The fines vary, limit plus 15kmh you will be parting with $252 + vic of crime fee , 15 to 30 kmh $ 371 + vic of crime , 30 plus Kmh $532 +vic of crime fee and likely loss of licence & Car (hoon driver legislation).
http://www.legislation.sa.gov.au/LZ/C/R/ROAD%20TRAFFIC%20(MISCELLANEOUS)%20REGULATIONS%201999/CURRENT/1999.236.UN.PDF

Use to be only some of the marked Highway Patrol cars that had built in mobile radar. Now we see showroom coloured cars (not typical police) and Police marked cars fitted with mobile radar being regularly used on country roads day & night to increase revenue.

Speed cameras are a huge revenue raiser and most country SA Police Cars already have radar. Most new country police cars will have computer fitted for registration, unregistered vehicles & trailers, ownership, unpaid fines, etc..

Dover

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