The public only complain about the enforcement of unfair laws. It would be in the Police Force's interest to lobby the government against unfair laws as it turns the enforcers into the bad guys. Everyone is glad when a copper stops them having the compost beaten out of them but nobody likes being fined for something that wasnt hurting anyone or doing any damage. Everybody is glad when the police keep the peace on a Friday night but no-one likes it when the pigs stop people marching to express their civil rights. My advice is to the police - refuse to enforce unfair laws and the public wont hate you anymore.

Hi everyone. My name is Steve, and while I am not the official organiser of the speed camera tolerance rally, I am authorised to speak on the organiser's behalf.

If the critics of our rally would care to notice, we're not asking for an increase in speed limits. We're not promoting or condoning dangerous driving. We're not even asking for abolition of speed cameras. All we are asking for is a reasonable tolerance for the enforcement of speed limits, because as it stands, motorists are being unfairly (and realistically, illegally) penalised over absolutely ludicrous discrepancies between their speed and the posted speed limit.

Here's a few facts regarding speed laws and enforcement:
ADRs (Australian Design Rules) formerly required speedometers to have a PLUS OR MINUS 10% tolerance in their accuracy. That is to say, the speedo had to read anywhere between 10% under and 10% over the actual speed. Note the name of these rules: Australian DESIGN Rules - they cannot be applied retrospectively. However, over time they have been edited, and cars that come of the production line at the moment (the latest revision of speedo related ADRs only occurred as of July 1, 2006 [ADR 18/02]... so four months ago) must have speedos that read under the true vehicle speed. So if you buy, say a VE Commodore, you won't be inadvertently speeding if the speedo says you're under the limit. Which is handy for owners of such recent vehicles, but not specifically any use whatsoever for owners of older cars. Since there are no legal requirements for updating the accuracy of a speedometer (including to gain a roadworthy certificate - all a speedo has to do is read in km/h and operate to its specific ADRs, which again, cannot be retrospective as they are DESIGN rules), it is entirely unreasonable to somehow expect every single car's speedo to suddenly read much more accurately than its design envelope specified.

(cont'd)

The Victorian Government is currently enforcing a 3km/h speed tolerance - note that this is not a percentage of the speed limit. That means at 100km/h, despite the fact that you're quite probably driving a car that has a stated +/- 10% (thus 10km/h) accuracy, you can be penalised for being just 3km/h (3% at 100km/h) over the limit. Fair? Not quite.

Some other factors to consider, and this is before we leave the purely scientific realm and enter the practical and logical world:
- The difference between the upper and lower operating tyre pressures of most tyres accounts for approximately 3% difference in actual speed vs displayed speed.
- Difference between brand new tyres, and minimum legal tread is typically about 2% in terms of actual speed vs displayed speed
- Driver height alone (between 5'2" and 6'2") can account for ~2km/h of parallax error at the 9 o'clock position of the speedo (which is roughly where 50-60km/h is on most speedos)

So just in those factors alone, you're looking at a solid 5% error. And that's assuming that you can actually read a speedo to the nearest km/h from wherever you sit (I can't, and my speedo only goes to 160 so the spacing is large), and that there is no variance in the speedometer's actual measurement mechanism at the gearbox.

And now for the more pressing argument: the fact that watching the road is infinitely safer than watching your speedo at any speed where an impact can be potentially fatal (approximately 35km/h for most vehicles - sounds low, but most actual impact speeds are far lower than the vehicle's travelling speed due to braking effects). At 100km/h, spending a second to check your speedo (and if you believe you can do it, accurately, faster than that, try it 10 times in a row and get someone to time it - you'll be surprised how long it actually takes), you'll have traveled 27.8m.

(cont'd)
. Any recent model Commodore will stop from 100 (in the dry) in under 45 metres or so. Adding 10km/h to that makes it about 52 metres (both of these are plus reaction time). In either case, glancing at your speedo to make sure you're less than 3km/h over a 100km/h limit will add over 50% to your stopping distance, whereas being 10km/h over adds about 20%. These are facts, not speculation, and are not up for debate by any scientifically minded person.

Basically, we feel that motorists are being victimised for the failure of road laws to somehow prevent all deaths on the road (which statistically is never going to happen until we outlaw all modes of transport altogether, people even get killed in single-vehicle bicycle crashes). This, in addition to the easy enforcement and faux-pas "moral high ground" of fining people who are only a small amount over the posted speed limit (which, strangely, are only ever in 10km/h increments... strange eh, it's almost as though they are only approximate to begin with!), is entirely representative of a government whose sole aim with speed cameras is to raise huge amounts of revenune under the facade of being "safety conscious". As a personal note (and this is not a claim or demand of the protest rally), I feel that this is also indicative of the control-freak mentality that has seized so many people recently. Many people love telling other people what to do, and the holier-than-thou critics of supposed "speeding hoons" and "homicidal maniacs" et al are the very image of this. 99% of people who get fined for speeding aren't actually doing anything particularly dangerous, and one might point out that they may well have been IRRESPONSIBLY watching where they were going rather than watching their speedo or looking out for cameras.

(cont'd)

One only has to look at where speed cameras are actually placed to acknowledge that the apparent road safety claims are a farce. If they were serious about safety they would have less speed cameras along the Hume Highway and more attention paid to extremely dangerous intersections (such as the one near Donald where several people got killed recently).

I hope this has cleared up any misconceptions about our protest rally. Again, we are not asking for a free-for-all, just a fair go.

Cheers,
Steve

Very interesting Steve. Great to see this stuff expressed here.

Now where do I start?!

I’ll start with a summary.

The rule of law is of vital importance. In the case of speed limits, the signs are a 100% crystal clear; the LIMIT is the number displayed. 60 should mean 60kmh absolute maximum speed, end of story. Anything else amounts to duplicity in the rule of law and an erosion for respect of the law.

Most of what you say is fair and reasonable, but NONE of it should be used as an excuse to travel faster than the limit. People should be made aware of all these various error factors and travel at the necessary speed below the limit to account for them.

Perhaps a 60 sign should mean a 60kmh speed ZONE, where that actual limit might be 70 or 66 or whatever is deemed appropriate by the LAW MAKERS ….and not by the police, unless the lawmakers specifically give them the right to make that decision, and that decision is then universal across different speed zones and across the country!

The drivers/owners of older cars should make sure that they know the accuracy of their speedos, which is very easy to do with a GPS. Surely it is the responsibility of a driver to know how their speedometer is reading, in just the same way as it is their responsibility to have everything else in roadworthy condition. It’s not matter of getting expensive repairs to make it accurate, but rather just to know the error factor. Very important I would have thought.

In Victoria, the 3kmh-over absolute limit is very well publicised. So why hasn’t message got out that it is the driver’s responsibility to adjust his/her driving accordingly?

There does seem to be fault with the police and authorities here, pertaining to an incomplete approach to this issue. But the main fault must still lie with drivers, if they don’t think about the error factors, and adapt their driving accordingly.