How accurate are the speed cameras in your county?

AUTO EXPRESS has published a report that gives an interesting insight into how accurate speed cameras actually are, effectively putting to be the notion that a ticket will be issued if a driver is as little as 1mph over the legal limit.

The report involved Auto Express approaching the UK’s 45 police forces, via freedom of information requests, to ask how strictly the police enforce the law with the nation’s 3,224 cameras.

They claim that the majority of forces that responded advised that a camera would only activate when vehicles exceeded the speed limit by 10% + 2mph – 35mph on a 30mph road and 79mph on a motorway – which is in line with the Association of Chief of Police guidelines.

While this information may seem like a green light to get where you’re going more quickly, the report also reveals that not all forces use the scale and some forces declined to reveal the threshold at all.

Here is the list of forces the magazine approached and the thresholds that they advised:

                  Force                 Number of Cameras              Threshold

Can you trust your bike's speedometer?

For the most part, yes. A modern bikes speedo should always over-read the machines speed – my BMW R1250RT claims 70mph on the speedo while the GPS (which should be a more accurate reading) claims 67mph.

Manufacturers are bound by legislation that means a vehicle’s speedo cannot underestimate the vehicles speed, most over-read by a few percent. Old vehicles may have much less accurate speedometers. It could be due to wear and tear, less accurate manufacturing methods or poor maintenance, all of which could add up to a speedo that wanders between speeds giving a very inaccurate reading.