It’s extremely common for cops to not issue speeding tickets unless you’re exceeding the speed limit by 5 MPH or so (closer to 10 on highways). But what about these speed limit cameras? Are they programmed to refrain from tickets for such violations?
I’ve had several instances when driving in NYC recently and Google Maps notifies me that “25 MPH speed camera ahead”. Does that mean that if I drive 26 MPH I’m going to get a ticket by mail? Or can I assume I’m OK if I’m at 25+X?
Specifically for New York:
“The system takes photographs of only those vehicles that exceed the maximum speed limit by more than ten miles per hour, within a school speed zone, Monday through Friday, between the hours of 6 AM and 10 PM.”
https://www1.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/speed-camera-faq.pdf
Thank you!
If I’m remembering right, it was somewhat controversial when Chicago lowered the threshold to 6 over.
All the ones I know of in the Phoenix metro area allow a 10mph ‘cushion’.
I remember a trip to Australia and NZ. The guidebooks and social media said there was a 10kph (6mph) cushion. About a year later (2005?) I recall reading an item that NZ was contemplating reducing that to 5kph (3mph), most likely because they weren’t squeezing the public for enough money.
Those two countries will mount fixed cameras in random places along the highways (like, I believe, UK?). Unlike in North America, where generally they are speed cameras disguised as intersection red light cameras. I read a report for one Canadian city which said the cameras had issued $17M in speeding tickets and $5M in red light violations - thus demonstrating their true purpose. One social media chat a poster wondered why the majority of tickets were for 62kph - suggesting the cut-off was 12kph over the limit, or about 8mph. Whereas, most police patrols and speed traps would overlook 10kph (6mph) on city streets and often up to 20kph (12mph) on highways.
many of these automated camera systems have been hurting, both from the drop in overall traffic during the pandemic, and from the public learning where the cameras are. I remember once a few years ago driving in NJ, and in a dead silence on Hwy 1 the GPS announces “Red light camera ahead!” We’d been using my dad’s GPS unit for a year whenever we visited, and did not realize it would talk.
I’ve also seen a few roadside radar installations with an electronic sign that shows your speed. All of the ones I’ve seen seem to show a speed about 5 MPH lower than what my car’s speedometer (which I assume is accurate) reads. That is to say, if I’m going 30 in a 25 zone (allowed under the unwritten convention that 5 MPH over is OK), the sign says that I’m going 25 (which is de jure OK).
I wouldn’t be so sure of that. According to Consumer Reports, it’s fairly common for car speedometers to overstate the car’s speed by a few MPH. (They noted that they did not encounter any which understated it.)
Yep, there is incentive to err on the side of caution on the part of the manufacturer. Also, as tires bald the speedometer will trend higher.
Those roadside signs are notoriously wrong. They are not easy to aim at oncoming traffic and I heard that patrolmen end up wasting up to an hour getting them into position to read correctly as they have to get back in their cars and drive back around to check the sign, usually multiple times. Perhaps they are worth the effort where the roads are straight and level but they don’t make much sense for an accurate speed around here. I have seen reporting that says the signs do help somewhat by making people more aware of the speed limit, but the same thing could be done without trying to display the speed of cars and using so much time to set them up.
When you get close to them cosine error becomes a factor-in the driver’s favor. [From the car’s deviation from a zero degree angle of approach.]
I have a ticket from driving through a camera speed trap in Luxembourg for the massive crime of driving 3 kilometers per hour over the posted speed limit, which is almost 2MPH over the speed limit. It was only $40 though so I paid it despite me not living in continental Europe but I might go back.
Do they put the same amount of effort into correctly aiming their hand-held radar guns? Those should be much harder to aim.
Do you mean it’s harder to aim the handheld guns? I assumed it was easier because they can be aimed, they aren’t just fixed in place. I don’t know how those guns work though. no idea if they take instant snapshot readings or the operator has to maintain the aim at the car for a period of time. For that matter I don’t know how the big signs work either.
So here’s some instructions for setting up the signs from a vendor.
Portland OR only–the magic number is 11mph over speed limit to make the speed cameras go off. I have one near my house–more accurately, the northbound and southbound cameras on the same street bracket my street–and it’s always fun to see someone zooming by me at 40+ mph (in a 30 zone) trigger the flash on the camera. You can always tell the “Oh shit I done fucked up!” moment when they realize what just happened. I have to admit that on the northbound side I’ve been known to bait people into the camera a bit by allowing my car to pick up speed down a slight hill, then I pull up right before I cross the bike trail, which is right where the camera will trigger. Sometimes people behind me get upset that I slowed down, whip around me and FLASH! Cue Nelson point and laugh. You’d think the warning signs the camera is there and the fixed sign that reports their speed before they get to the danger zone might clue them but apparently most people pay zero attention to such irrelevancies as signage–especially for active school zones, people just fly through those damned things constantly.
The only ones I’ve seen for a long time are at school crossings and 10mph would seem a bit generous there.
That’s an assumption I would be leery of making. I figure my GPS is accurate because it’s actively doing time and distance calculations, albeit every couple seconds. I check it vs. the car’s speedo when I’m driving at a steady pace and find the latter almost always exaggerates. I say almost because my latest acquisition, a 2001 Accura, is close as to make no difference below 50mph, then increasingly over reports above that.
The Your Speed Is signs, OTOH, match the GPS/
I didn’t know that school zones had them. Agreed, they probably don’t allow much over the limit. A cop once told me that school zone tickets for 1 mph over were not uncommon.
Paradise Valley has stationary and mobile photo radar units, mostly on Tatum and Lincoln. Scottsdale still has a few stationary ones; I know of one on Shea at about 110th Street. All allow 10 over.
GPS instantaneous velocity is usually done by doppler, not dead reckoning between locations, since it updates much faster. So I wouldn’t trust it as much as you might hope.
Where I live there is a cushion applied by both automatic and police. It is, at least in part, based on case law - basically what offenders have managed to avoid fines for when the disputed the fine in court. Part of the logic was (it may have changed) that car speedometers were inaccurate, and a driver could only depend upon the speedo in order to stay within the law. They seemed to settle on 10% at the time. I got pinged once for 67km/h in a 60 zone. This example is of course only valid for my state.
The logic of accuracy is rather in the driver’s favour, as noted above, cars always over read. It would be a very bad day for a car manufacturer to make cars that under read. The lawsuits that would arise from drivers discovering another scapegoat for their sins would be monumental. So manufacturers will always put a bit of bias into the system.
Regulations governing changing tyre size from those approved are in part driven by a need to maintain speedo accuracy.
Here in Mesa and Tempe the radar cameras are on the main drags where the speed drops to 35. The 15mph creep zones in front of the schools are manually enforced with parked cop cars visible. I think they figure the former are where people are more likely to barrel on through.
I make a point of the opposite - warning people whenever there’s a parked radar car. The fewer people they catch and the less money the city makes per radar, the less likely they will be to use that frequently or to try to raise revenue.
I’ve read about jurisdictions in Canada where half the cameras are empty because it’s not worth processing the film. (FILM!!!) They just flash at you to make you worry and check the mail for the next few weeks.
I ran across a website many years ago which documented speed cameras in the UK that had been “necklaced” - An old tire was draped over the camera body, filled with gas (sorry, petrol) and lit on fire. Seemed to be a national sport over there.