Aardvark Daily

The world's longest-running online daily news and commentary publication, now in its 30th year. The opinion pieces presented here are not purported to be fact but reasonable effort is made to ensure accuracy.

Please visit the sponsor!

Cunning new speed cameras for NZ?

8 December 2008

If you're travelling around the country by car this holiday, you'll no doubt have your eyes open for the ever-present speed cameras that earn a very pretty penny for the crown's coffers.

From a technology perspective, these cameras are pretty simple devices.

They send out a low-powered radar beam that bounces off any passing vehicle. When the reflected radar signal returns to the camera, it compares its frequency with the one that was sent and calculates any difference. That difference can then be easily converted into a speed measurement thanks to something called the doppler shift.

It's then a pretty trivial job for the camera to compare the measured speed with the threshold that constitutes "speeding" and, if you're going too fast, activate the camera to take a picture of your vehicle.

So, although we're told they cost a lot of money, the average speed camera is something that any geek worth their salt could cobble together for a few hundred dollars.

But imagine a speed camera that could prove you were speeding and issue a ticket, even if you drove by it at a legal speed...

With the speed cameras in use now there's a very easy way to avoid getting pinged, and it doesn't involve detectors, jammers or anything like that.

All you have to do is travel at or below the posted speed limit as you pass by.

However, dodging speed cameras may soon be a whole lot harder and you may come home from your holidays to speeding tickets you didn't even know you'd got and without you having even being snapped at an illegal speed.

With the existing speed cameras it's pretty easy to tell you've been caught.

The flash of the camera and the realisation that the van you just passed at 110KPH was in the employ of the police makes it easy to work out what's just happened.

Next Christmas there may be no flash and you might never know that you've been snapped.

What's more, you may not even be speeding when you're snapped -- but you might still end up with a ticket.

How does that work?

Well it seems we're about to invest in some new speed cameras that have the option of automated number-plate reading software.

Imagine the power that this provides to PC Plod and his obligation to generate revenues for the crown...

By placing such cameras at regular intervals down busy roads and by having those cameras triggered by each and every vehicle that passes (regardless of the speed they're doing) it becomes a trivial exercise to measure the elapsed time between any two points.

For example: you might be travelling down the motorway at 100KPH and pass one of these cameras. You then speed up to 120KPH before returning to 100KPH before passing the next camera. Both cameras will record your speed at 100 but, because the number-plate is automatically read, the information from the two cameras can be compared and an average speed calculated. If that average is greater than 100 you may find an infringement notice in the mail.

And what better place to trial this new kind of speed camera than the new toll road due to be opened North of Auckland next year?

Of course these cameras open the door to many other ways of enforcing our traffic laws too.

Vehicles with expired warrants and regos can be automatically pinged whenever they pass such a camera and perhaps a real-time alarm can be used to alert police whenever a stolen vehicle or "vehicle of interest" is detected.

These fancy new cameras aren't cheap. Reports (Radio NZ, Computerworld) put the price at somewhere between $3.5 and $5 million but it's pretty easy to see that these flash new machines could return far more than that to the nation's coffers in a fairly short space of time.

One would hope that this level of automation would mean there were more police available to address the real road-policing issues.

How do you feel about the NZ Police taking "big brother" surveillance to the next step?

Do you find it hard to argue against technology that will simply make our roads safer and whose impact can be easily avoided -- by simply sticking to the speed limit?

Or is this yet another step towards the Orwellian society that has been so long predicted by many?

Please visit the sponsor!