CCTV spy cars rake 8m fines catching nearly 200,000 victims

CCTV spy cars rake 8m fines catching nearly 200,000 victims

www.dailymail.co.uk

Unsuspecting motorists were stung for more than £8million in fines last year by a fleet of 'drive-by spy cars'.

The 187,993 victims of the CCTV-equipped Smart cars included parents stopping momentarily to drop off children by the school gates.

Civil liberties campaigners described the cars as 'a very dangerous escalation in Britain's surveillance society'.

(visit the link for the full news article)

When will this nanny state be put into its place?

The UK must surely be the most surveilled (sp?) nation in the world. What the hell has to be done to stop this craziness?

Where did the £8 million collected in fines go?

This just takes the biscuit though: 'In Ilford, North East London, the council purchased a Smart car specifically to catch 'inconsiderate parents parking dangerously outside schools'. '

Darn those pesky parents dropping their kids off at school!!!

www.dailymail.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by spacedonk


Shouldn't it be 200,000 offenders? How are they victims when they break traffic laws?

They have to fill quotas.

They are fining people in cars.

What about all the murders, beatings, child abuse?

Oh, no, do traffic violations.

reply to post by spacedonk


I was caught out by one of these and I got fined and two points put on my license though it could have been three I cannot remember. In any case was I bothered? Not a chance and these days I use a radar detector (adapt and overcome) so they can stick that in the pipe and kick it into the long grass.

Everyone is a cash-cow and as long as we continue to moo like cows we will continue to get milked hard by calloused hands

*edit*

It was a police mobile radar van that caught me not a radar gun on a mast but the same principle, they hide out of sight like snakes.

[edit on 8-7-2010 by SmokeJaguar67]

reply to post by spacedonk


QUESTION:

Would Saran-Wrap on the license-plate be enough to blur or make the cameras view illegible? Perhaps a polarized clear plastic sheet?

We have cameras on top of traffic signals to catch the people blowing red lights. They are very good at reading plates as in NY all plates are reflective to a prety good degree. That lets the cameras read the plates correctly no matter what the slanted angle might be.

My friend installs security camera and he has one of these "plate reading cams" mopunted in the front of his house in a suburban area. The cam works great in daylight or night.

He has hundreds of plates logged on his PC from the camera and software. He can't do much with it other than identify how many times plates # 123-456 has passed in front of his home. He is not a police officer nor does he know of any that could help him.

I plan to test my saran-wrap theory soon. I just need to find the time to check that out.

-E2

Isn't this what the police are hired for? Nobody was entrapped or fooled into breaking the law. These people broke the law of their own volition, and they were caught on video doing it. I have a feeling people are mad because they're finally getting caught breaking laws they previously got away with. Like the little kid getting caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

I wish they had those in western NY. When people are allowed to violate the traffic laws, then violating traffic laws becomes habbit. I can't begin to count the number of times we've narrowly avoided an accident in the short time we've been living up here.

reply to post by Ferris.Bueller.II


I break 10 laws (on average) before i get to work in the morning. Really.

The problem is that there are so many laws, we are all "lawbreakers".

Please understand, i accept the need for a coherent society, but where i am they are creating thousands of petty laws, which they make great fanfare about "enforcing" but the basic laws, like don't kill people, aren't carried to conviction and sentencing. The professional criminal has an easier time with all these millions of laws than the honest citizen.

This is an abortion of justice and a threat to our communities. You cannot keep pretending it's for our own good. Clearly it is not.

Deny ignorance.

reply to post by harryhaller


Then you should be voicing your concern towards the law makers and not the law enforcers. If the laws didn't exist then you wouldn't be breaking them.

[edit on 7/8/10 by Ferris.Bueller.II]

I like the fact that in the US they basically say in driver ed "you WILL break the law". And that we should just not be dumb and all will be well.

Here, it seems England says you can't break the law, not the littlest of things. or someone WILL see you and get you.

Yea, great.

reply to post by EyesII


I think it's better to put some real strong IR leds around your license plate. All those traffic cams are digital these days and ccd's pick up IR light. This way you "over-expose" your plate and they will only see a white blur/lensflare


[edit on 8/7/2010 by KrisFromGenk]

One of the biggest problems I have with this is the sneaky nature of using cars with masts, fixed point cameras fine (although there are mountains of these now). It seems underhand to use mobile car cameras specifically as a revenue raising scheme.

In addition a lot of these tickets have been issued for people parking on double yellow lines which definitely have their place but in the UK a disabled (blue) badge holder can park on double yellows for any length of time whenever and wherever they choose. This would be fine if half the parking bays aren't already set aside for disabled drivers only on the streets and in the car parks. Furthermore in the town I live i counted 11 blue badge holders parked in a row on double yellow lines causing traffic carnage.

I am of the opinion that traffic laws and particularly parking restrictions and penalties has gone crazy in this country. It is over regulated and over enforced. Last year my town brought in 24 hour traffic wardens to give tickets to people round the clock. This can only be a revenue raising exercise as there were no problems with people parking at night on empty streets.

I have written to the 'law makers' and they give short shrift - the revenue is too important for the town to go back on their laws now.

Of course this is all about revenue. Like "sin" taxes on cigarettes and alcohol, they feel they can get away with this because the person getting whacked with the fine did something wrong -- petty, but wrong so people will accept it --- or so they think.

It is also a lot easier and safer for the leo's to spend time on this kind of thing than chasing the real bad guys -- they could get hurt doing that and the city would be stuck for the bills and the law-suits.

reply to post by spacedonk


Stealing money from the people systematically and people are still silent. This is from the poor, the rich gets richer, the rich ruins the economy, the rich destroys people's livelyhood while the government steals from the poor.

TV works, it has brainwashed so many people that there is no turning back like Germany under NAZI regim.

reply to post by Ferris.Bueller.II


The intent here is not to control traffic but to make money. I guess what you don't understand is this, the big brother on one side pushes you to commit crime and on the other side they are ready to give you citation. In the last 10 years at least I am watching Roads under construction and blocked for miles that has only one lane open for traffic. This is the scenario not only in one state but all across the country. They only work 8 hours a day and in most cases no weekends. Years ago, if this was a busy road, the work will continue around the clock seven days. The least amount of days required for the project to finish and reopen the road for traffic. Do you think there is no planning for these kind of projects. I guess we can keep complaining but nothing will happen because we are dealing with mafia, no legitimate Government to take care of us. They run for the office for their personal interest. We are dumb to vote them in instead of getting organized and united and then ask some one among us to run for the office.

so what if your car has been stolen, or is being driven by somebody not tied to the plate, the car owner gets stuck with the bill?

here, most insurance companies cover other drivers, so without a formal stop/id check how do they know who committed the "crime"? they cant always assume the registered owner is the one operating the vehicle.

just wondering.

or whats stopping somebody from removing your plate, driving through every red light in the city, and then putting it back on your car before you wake up for work. here in the states most are only held on by 2 screws and can be taken off/stolen in seconds.

reply to post by Ferris.Bueller.II


It's not so much getting angry about breaking a pathetic minor law; its more about seeing this world turned into a Demolition Man world where you get an infraction for slipping a curse word or passing gas in an elevator. We get pissed off because they (police/TPTB) focus more resources on making money on photo radar than keeping child rapists, woman beaters..ect off the streets. Why is that? Could it be that there just isn't any money involved keeping rapists off the streets?

/end rant

Edit: grammer reasons



[edit on 8-7-2010 by disfugured]

Originally posted by harryhaller
reply to post by Ferris.Bueller.II

 

....The professional criminal has an easier time with all these millions of laws than the honest citizen....

The reason is that criminals usually DON'T have money (they spent whatever they had on defense), while US citizens MAY have money to pay the fine.

It could be that simple.

-E2