Canberra Roads the most watched?

‘Cameras per capita’ is an entirely meaningless statistic, particularly when you’re comparing a vast geographical area like NSW, with its diverse mix of urban, regional and remote communities, with a single town.

Having just traversed NSW by road a couple of timesduring the holidays, I’d say theres a fair share of small NSW towns with speed cameras that have a population of less than 500 people – even accounting for through traffic, I’d say the people living in those towns are under the camera eye a lot more than us.

I have a rather radical view on Speed Cameras. I reakon we should be able to hire them as private citizens (or pay to have them in our street) take a % of the revenue and put the rest to the local infrastructure like utilities (storm water & sewerage pipes) and the local shops. If that happened people may stop doing 100 down my 50 km/hr street. The Police don’t care about the speed, and they say that to have a regulated van it has to be passed in Parliament first. I reakon we should have the ‘supa novas’ like perth and just raise revenue for the local community! ;-o) The upgrade of suburbs supported by those taking short-cuts through them and using them as race ways at night.

All they are doing is breeding the same culture as we see in Victoria where there are many fixed cameras, the locations of which are well known and published, but little other physical law enforcement on the roads. As a result you have drivers that go flat out whenever they know they are away from the fixed cameras because the chances of being caught are remote at best.

If the government wanted to have safe roads they’d make an effort to have a decent level of physical enforcement from patrols that move about, thus people don’t know where they will be at any time (and a mobile speed camera on the same section of road at the same time of day (as they all are) does not achieve this) and will simply have to follow the rules all the time (which isn’t a hard thing to do anyway).

I reckon we should just hand the traffic law enforcement over to the NSW plods. Let them have the loot to cover their costs.

If the cops were out and about on our roads, then odds are one would be near to you when you call for them, as opposed to bludging in the station.

And then when your house gets knocked over or your car knicked you’ll be moaning about “Why don’t the police go and catch some real criminals, rather than poor, hard done by road users”!

The point is that we should have enough traffic cops to properly police ACT traffic, and enough to do the other jobs. I have no problem seeing police just driving around..”patrolling”. And when I do get burgled I expect them to turn up sooner than 16 hours later.

Did forget to mention that they red light cameras only get those RUNNING the red light. You can go through the intersection , once the camera has done its normal flash & get away with it. I saw this while waiting through 5 light changes in Kambah during Drakeford Drive resealing. As the traffic controllers were forcing people to go through the red light, however the camera light never flashed.

This is not true, Some of the camera’s are infrared and don’t flash. They take a picture when the light intially goes red. If you cross the line after that while the light is red you will still be pinged for it.

It’s a red light speed camera, like all the other red light speed cameras there is only a small sign not long before the intersection warning of it.

It’s only the fixed speed cameras that get the big warning signs.

In response to post 37 and from the perspective real time and space not from Google Earth

I was wrong. There is a speed trap warning.

Thoroughly Smashed said :

The 80 sign, which is another 400m to the west, is no more visible than the previously mentioned 60 signs. It is the same size, and at the same height, and on the kerbside only:
Additionally, on the immediate approach to Ball St once you have crossed Melrose Dr there are two additional 60 signs and giant lettering painted on the road more than 100m before the intersection:

So far we’ve seen a total of four 60 signs at ~100m and ~300m, two giant 60s painted on the road at ~100m, and a single 80 sign _700m_ west of Ball St is causing you confusion. What more do you need?

The speed camera warning two sixty signs and two painted on the road lie virtually on top of the speed camera. In traffic, vehicles in the left lane do not necessarily see the right hand sixty sign and can miss the left hand sign which is attached above the much larger direction sign.

The very visible 80 sign lies 18 seconds before this. What do I want? Read my previous solution.

What they should do is put a speed camera on Hindmarsh Dr eastbound at the Melrose Dr intersection, that’ll mix things up.

If it is as badly signed as the Ball St intersection it too will be a speed trap. Is that where you are coming from.

Woody Mann-Caruso said :

Got anything by somebody who is actually qualified and objective? If one of my people handed me that quality of analysis I’d have them counselled.

Are you part of the ACT government? You seem to behave the same, discounting someones point of view as unqualified simply because it doesnt fit with your view.

TP 3000 said :

Did forget to mention that they red light cameras only get those RUNNING the red light. You can go through the intersection, once the camera has done its normal flash & get away with it. I saw this while waiting through 5 light changes in Kambah during Drakeford Drive resealing. As the traffic controllers were forcing people to go through the red light, however the camera light never flashed.

I saw a similar instance with traffic controllers, and the camera flash was going off every second or so, as each car passed through the intersection, as I was thinking at the time ‘I hope the ticket issuing isnt automated’.

bd84 said :

Personally, I have no problems with the speed/red light cameras at intersections, with the exception that they’re more likely to cause rear end crashes as people jam on the breaks when the lights turn amber.

I was driving at the flow speed of the surrounding traffic once (about 90 in 80 zone, its unsafe to stay at 80 when everyone else does 90). As we came over the crest of a hill (Athllon Drive Northbound), the vehicle in front of me saw a camera and slammed his brakes on. Fortunately, I was able to see and react in time, and applied my brakes too, however I was in a commodore he was in a laser, so he slowed to about 40km/hr faster than I could. This caused me to run right up the back of his little laser, causing an at-fault accident for me. It was only due to good luck that other vehicles didnt run up the back of me, as they swerved and changed lanes, potentially causing other drivers to have to react.

shanefos said :

But, dang it, if they don’t have nice big signs right next to the cameras, how do we know where to drop our speed back to below the limit and when it’s safe to break the law?!

At least the ACT government left big black boxes on the roadway to indicate where to slow down.

Felix the Cat said :

I’d be interested to know how many fewer accidents Canberrans have now that we have all these cameras to slow us down.

Not only that, Id be interested to know how many accidents still occur at speed camera sites. I watched an accident happen at an intersection with a red light camera in Kambah. The at-fault driver was travelling northbound and turned right against a red light and into the path of oncoming traffic. However, due to the single-camera nature of the speed camera setup, the first image the camera wouldve recorded, was about 20 seconds after the accident.

Id also be interested to know how the number of speeding motorists has changed at camera sites, since their installation. Has it changed driver behaviour at all, or just raised lots of money, for no change in behaviour.

Woody Mann-Caruso said :

Got anything by somebody who is actually qualified and objective? If one of my people handed me that quality of analysis I’d have them counselled.

Have you got any study on the effectiveness in reducing fatalities or even crashes, from fixed speed cameras in their current positions in Canberra?
No?

bd84 said :

Personally, I have no problems with the speed/red light cameras at intersections, with the exception that they’re more likely to cause rear end crashes as people jam on the breaks when the lights turn amber.

Apparently they do take your speed into consideration when issuing a ticket for running the red light. If you are doing, for example, 30k’s & the light goes amber as you enter the intersection & as it goes red, you stay at 30k’s. 80% of the time, they’ll let you off. However if you are doing 90k’s then you’ll get 2 tickets.

Did forget to mention that they red light cameras only get those RUNNING the red light. You can go through the intersection , once the camera has done its normal flash & get away with it. I saw this while waiting through 5 light changes in Kambah during Drakeford Drive resealing. As the traffic controllers were forcing people to go through the red light, however the camera light never flashed.

Personally, I have no problems with the speed/red light cameras at intersections, with the exception that they’re more likely to cause rear end crashes as people jam on the breaks when the lights turn amber.

The revenue from the other cameras just proves people don’t pay enough attention while driving to notice the huge signs saying “speed camera ahead” or are too busy paying attention to the traffic around them to avoid having an accident. I would also like to see what the percentage of interstate drivers being caught on the top 2 money raisers (Federal Hwy and Northbourne/Antill) is. I’m guessing there’s a lot of visitors getting welcome to canberra fines as they cruise into Canberra not keeping up with the multiple speed limit changes.

Has anyone else noticed the ad’s by google on the side of this page? Currently my ad is about avoiding TrafficCam tickets.

Holden Caulfield said :

…and even that is being generous given the line markings on entry to the roundabout that make it pretty clear you need to slow down.

There are accidents at the Federal Hwy/Antill St roundabout quite regularly (saw one there last week), especially when it’s raining. They have recently resurfaced the road at the roundabout with a slightly coarse mix, presumably because the previous surface was deemed too slippery, but there hasn’t been much wet weather since so not sure if the problem has been resolved.

I’d be interested to know how many fewer accidents Canberrans have now that we have all these cameras to slow us down.

Aren’t the speed cameras suppose to be changed to point to point cameras to punish as Tuggeranong Valley residents only?

The thing I hate about them is that they are either placed at the bottom of a hill (where people do let the speed go up slightly) or in a slip lane (where people speed up to fit in with the traffic).

I remember that back during the Easter Long weekends, the Police were altering drivers to the speed camera van up the road.

If the Canberra Times runs a campaign to SERIOUSLY increase the size of stubbies sold at licensed venues, I’ll consent to use of “Territorian”.

Until then, it firmly means someone from NT. And possibly John Jarrett when driving to Wolf Creek.

threeze said :

Can’t we be ‘Capitalists’ instead?

Everyone seems to have become distracted by the secondary topic of the OP, but I will second that motion. Has more character than ‘Territorian’.

My second choice would be ‘ACTors’.

Well, let me know if you do!

: )

If it means my feet finally get the respect they’re due, I just might Granny!