Highway Patrol police have issued two men with heavy fines after they were caught with radar detectors in their vehicles.

The devices were found when officers stopped a Singleton man on the Putty Road and a man from Manilla, near Tamworth, on the New England Highway at Muswellbrook.

The Singleton man is alleged to have told police he purchased the radar detector on the internet from the United States.

Northern Region Traffic Coordinator, Acting Senior Sergeant, Glenn Trubody says the offence carries hefty penalties.

“Just not use, it’s even to carry a speed evasion article or a radar detector as most people know them,” he said.

“Particularly country police do have the devices fitted to their vehicles that are capable of detecting these radar detectors.

“$1346 is the current infringement penalty for it and nine demerit points off your licence.”

Obviously the guy wasn’t using a stealth radar detector (one that cannot be detected by the police)

POLICE Commissioner Karl O’Callaghan’s son was one of five people who suffered serious burns in an alleged drug lab explosion in Carlisle yesterday.

Mr O’Callaghan said his son Russell, 29, received head, shoulder and arm injuries in the explosion.

He said he had not yet visited his son in Royal Perth Hospital. He said he would be working as normal and would not be taking time off over the incident.

Mr O’Callaghan said he had attempted to contact his son yesterday.

“I am not at this stage able to speak to him (Russell),” Mr O’Callaghan told a packed media conference this morning.

“These matters are obviously very distressing for the families involved but I have a duty to come here and talk about this issue publically this morning.

“At this stage there is an inquiry being conducted into the matter and that inquiry is being overseen by a senior police officer to avoid any suggestion that the inquiry will not be attended to properly.

“I have not asked for the details of the inquiry…and I will remain at some distance from the (inquiry) process.” Mr O’Callaghan said he had only “occasional” contact with his son.

“His life has taken a bit of a tragic path unfortunately…I understand from speaking to other family members last night that he has recently been suffering from a depressive illness and he was due to seek assistance from a doctor this week for that illness,” he said. Mr O’Callaghan said he does not know why his son was at the house at the time of the explosion as he does not live at the property.

Police said the explosion happened just after 5pm in Bishopsgate Street. It was allegedly caused by an illegal drug lab. Police Inspector Trevor Davis said five adults were taken to hospital with serious burns. “One man is in a critical condition, while one woman and three other men are in stable conditions,” he said.

“Although initial reports indicated that children were injured, this was not the case. A three-year-old and a four-year-old were near the explosion but were not hurt.” Police said this morning that a 26-year-old man injured in the explosion was in a critical condition. A 26-year-old woman, a 29-year-old man and two 28-year-old men were all in a stable condition in hospital.

A FESA spokesman said the explosion caused about $300,000 damage to the home.

The RAC calls for speeding fines to be doubled during holiday periods

According to an independent review, DOUBLE-DEMERIT penalties in Western Australia have NOT cut road deaths.

In fact the figures show fatal car crashes have jumped almost 50 per cent on holidays and long weekends since double-demerit points came into force in 2002.

The revelations have sparked calls from the RAC for fines – not just demerit points – to be doubled to send motorists a “sharp message”.

That would mean the fine for not wearing a seat belt would jump from $500 to $1000 and the penalty for exceeding the speed limit by 15km/h would rise from $150 to $300 during double-demerit periods.

A report by independent researcher Synovate showed the average number of fatal crashes during double-demerit times was 0.71 a day in 2008 compared with 0.48 a day in 2002 – an increase of 48 per cent.

The report also showed the average number of crashes causing injury during double-demerit periods had increased by nearly two a day between 2004 and 2008, rising from 15.31 to 17.02.

WA has about 40 double-demerit days each year, including the Easter and Christmas breaks.

RAC spokesman Matt Brown said stiffer penalties should be considered to reinforce the impact of double demerits.

“We think the Government should look at whether financial penalties should be doubled on holiday periods as well, to send an even sharper message to people,” he said.

“These are the most dangerous times on our roads and you have to accept a higher responsibility to act safely during those times.”

Mr Brown said more cars on the road at holiday time had contributed to the increasing toll, but he called for a review of the demerits policy to ensure the scheme was having an impact.

“The double-demerits system has a good awareness level and strong support in the community, but that doesn’t mean the system we introduced all those years ago doesn’t need to evolve,” he said.

Mr Brown also wants double demerits for drivers using mobile phones without a hands-free set. Currently only speeding, drink-driving and seatbelt offences attract double demerits.

Opposition road safety spokeswoman Margaret Quirk agreed stiffer fines and penalties should be considered, but Police Minister Rob Johnson said existing double-demerits legislation was reducing the total number of crashes on WA roads. He said the Government had no plans to double fines.

Office of Road Safety executive director Iain Cameron said the increase in holiday fatalities between 2001and 2008 was significantly lower than fatal crashes in non-holiday periods.

INDEPENDENT MP Bob Such is thousands of dollars out of pocket after losing a court battle against a speeding fine.

The long-serving MP and former Liberal Cabinet minister had challenged the accuracy of hand held laser guns in the Adelaide Magistrates Court after police detected him travelling at 69km/h in a 50km/h zone at Aberfoyle Park in January 2008.

Dr Such went to trial, telling the court he was not speeding and questioning other errors made by the motorbike officer, Constable Gregory Thompson, who issued a $300 fine.

Today, Magistrate Joanne Tracy found “the laser was operated and read correctly” and therefore, Dr Such was guilty of speeding.

She found Dr Such had not proved the laser was inaccurate.

The court heard he had no previous convictions for speeding.

She ordered Dr Such pay the original fine, plus prosecution trial and hearing costs totalling $1020. He was also ordered to pay court costs and a victims of crime levy.

Dr Such – who has represented the southern suburbs electorate of Fisher since 1989 – has previously said the cost of preparing a defence was about $10,000.

He had said he was fighting the fine because “you cannot put a price on integrity”.

During the trial, Dr Such had sought a court order for independent testing of the police laser gun, which was refused.

Isn’t that simply disgusting? If you can’t seek an independant test of the police laser guns, how can you possibly defend your innocence in court? This is how bad the system has become – and proves how bad they want to keep their revenue raising cash register’s flaws a secret.

Outside court, a surprised Michael Woods, for Dr Such, said the finding would be appealed to the Supreme Court.

He said the ruling would affect ordinary members of the public who could not afford to contest a fine.

“`There’s a lot of members of the public that are left in a similar position where the cost of fighting these matters is ridiculous and its outweighed with the weight against the accused,” Mr Woods said.

“It’s almost got to the position where it’s a reversal of the onus of proof and that’s what scares the poor members of the public off on these sort of matters because you can’t afford to fight it.”

He said he found it surprising the police would not hand over the laser “that they so cherish” for independent testing.

“I would have thought that in this day and age we could be more open about that.”

In a call that some would describe as stating the bleeding obvious, Victoria’s State Opposition Roads Spokesperson Terry Mulder has claimed that the Victorian Government is using its mobile speed camera network as little more than a revenue-raising program.

Referring to figures obtained through the Freedom Of Information Act, Mr Mulder said that around 150,225 motorists had been caught speeding by mobile cameras in the first three months of this year, compared to 138,191 for the same period last year.

The figures also showed that fines issued by officers on the road had dropped eight percent compared to the first quarter of 2009, and fines from fixed speed cameras had dropped by three percent.

Mr Mulder singled out the South-West, where mobile speed camera fines increased from 2990 in the first quarter of 2009, to 3699 in the same period this year.

“Everyone knows that the number of police officers in the south-west is below satisfactory levels so there has been less on-the-spot fines issued and more of this underhanded form of speed monitoring,” Mr Mulder told News Ltd.

Mr Mulder said that the Victorian Government has likely put pressure on mobile speed camera operators to make up the difference, particularly with the end of the financial year in sight.
Figures Obtained by the Victorian State Opposition have revealed that revenue from speeding fines has risen dramatically over past year, with most fines being issued in Melbourne’s suburbs.

Around 312,500 fines were issued betwen April and June this year, a 21 percent increase over the same period in 2008. Most of the speeders were caught in the  Boroondara, Monash and Whitehorse council areas.

Detections from fixed speed cameras over the same period jumped by 45 percent.

The inner suburbs of Fitzroy, Prahran and Richmond have also become speed camera hotspots, while the Stonnington and Yarra council areas have seen a 221 percent surge in speeding fines.

With the infringements issued between April and June worth $36 million to the State Government and total speeding fine revenue expected to top $437 million this year (up from last year’s $397 million), the Opposition says the latest figures prove speed cameras are being used for revenue raising.

However, Acting Superintendent Steve Frost from Victoria Police’s Traffic Camera Office said the use of speed cameras was a viable deterrent against speeding.

“Speed enforcement initiatives are underpinned by strong evidence and are primarily directed at reducing road trauma, rather than raising revenue,” Supt Frost said.

“Speed is one of our biggest killers and can easily be avoided with common sense and care.

“Speeding fines are a voluntary contribution, if you abide by the speed limit you have nothing to worry about.”

Nearly 400 Sydney drivers will have their fines returned and their demerit points wiped out after the Roads and Traffic Authority admitted a faulty camera was randomly photographing cars.

The fixed digital school zone camera on the Kingsway at Miranda took photos of cars outside school zone times, and as a result incorrectly fined drivers for speeding, The Daily Telegraph says.

“Last week the RTA detected a timing error at the school zone speed camera on the Kingsway at Miranda, affecting speeding offences from May 23 to June 11 inclusive,” the RTA said on Friday.

“The timer on the school zone speed camera was out of sync due to a software error, which meant some motorists were being incorrectly detected for speeding.”

There were almost 400 penalty notices, worth about $49,000, issued to motorists during the period the camera was faulty.

“The RTA has asked the State Debt Recovery Office to withdraw the 380 penalties issued to motorists at this location during the time of the error,” the spokeswoman said.

The RTA said it was the first time such an error had taken place, but the technology downfall was similar to a faulty sensor on a camera that recorded incorrect speeds earlier this year.

Yet again more evidence that’s proves people making comments such as “don’t speed and you won’t pay a fine” or “it’s a voluntary tax” need to wake up and realize cameras DO make mistakes, and innocent drivers are being fined. Yes they admitted there was a fault with this one, but what about all the other times when people have claimed they were innocent. What about the 1000′s of drivers complaining about the Wellington Road cameras on Eastlink? How can 100′s of drivers claiming they had their cruise control set at (or below) the limit [and only being fined at that one point] all be wrong?

How much does the government actually cover up with repect to faulty equipment?

THE Barnett government expects to reap an extra $120 million a year in speeding fines by doubling the number of police cameras on West Australian roads, and by becoming the first state to use digital hand-held cameras that detect speeding from a distance of 1.2km.

Western Australia will also soon join other states in outlawing the use of radar detectors, Police Minister Rob Johnson said yesterday.

Police have welcomed the 14 new hand-held digital cameras, called TruCams, because they allow officers to catch dozens of speeders within a short space of time. There is no need to stop each driver and issue a fine as infringement notices can be issued automatically when video and stills of each speeding vehicle are downloaded at the end of the police officer’s shift.

As with mobile cameras fixed to vehicles, the digital cameras will allow police to issue fines automatically, rather than needing to stop offending drivers on the road. This new approach means that individual officers will have the capacity to catch dozens more speeding motorists in the same amount of time.

The hand-held laser cameras, which are being trialled in other states, can track an approaching speeding vehicle from a distance of 1.2km, then take video and photographs of its number plates when it comes into view. Of course what they don’t tell you is that at 1.2km the diameter of the laser beam is 3.6m wide – a size easily capable of reflecting off a car or truck next to yours!

LTI has integrated a laser with a digital video camera, making the LTI 20-20 TruCAM™ one of the most sophisticated speed enforcement tools available.

A complete chain of video evidence is collected, along with a high resolution image that identifies vehicle make and model, license plate number and facial characteristics of the driver.

The TruCAM is more than a speed enforcement laser and video camera; the data it produces can feed into any Geographic Information System (GIS) framework. By utilizing GPS, it automatically generates location-based information every time the TruCAM is used. This provides managers with historical data to determine why, where, when and how to deploy valuable human and capital assets in the future.

LTI has patented technology that measures the time and distance between vehicles. TheTruCAM is able to acquire these critical measurements and back it up with video and photographic evidence. The TruCAM is capable of enforcing multiple speeds and even hard to get motorcycles.

Mr Johnson said he expected the new cameras would contribute to additional revenue from fines of about $120 million in their first year, but this was likely to drop as driver behaviour altered.

Last year, more than 430,000 were detected speeding in Western Australia. More than 7500 of those were found to have been speeding at 30km or more above the speed limit.

Mr Johnson has previously spoken publicly about a car accident that left his eldest daughter, Susan, disabled 11 years ago, saying it motivated him to punish hoons.

Yesterday, he said the 30 additional hand-held and fixed cameras cost $30 million, and he predicted a proliferation of fines would change the way West Australians drove as bad drivers became “fed up” with infringements.

“People need to take responsibility for their actions and realise that when they choose to drive above the speed limit, they are not only putting their own lives at risk, but also the lives of other, innocent road users,” he said.

“We have seen all too often this year the devastating consequences speed can have on our roads. I don’t want to see any more lives tragically cut short, nor do I want any families to suffer the heartache of having a loved one seriously injured in a vehicle accident caused by speed.”

A German court last month overturned a traffic citation after prosecutors failed to prove the accuracy of a new laser-based speed camera technology. The district court of Dillenburg heard testimony from four experts, each of whom cast doubt on the system. The Judge Matthias Gampe concluded that the motorist accused by a Poliscan automated ticketing machine of driving 96km/h (60 MPH) in a 40 (25 MPH) zone was not guilty.

Manufactured by Vitronic in Germany, the Poliscan system is mounted in tall roadside poles or in a more compact mobile version. It uses lidar to estimate a vehicle’s speed across multiple lanes over a distance of 130 feet. Vitronic boasts that the ability to simultaneously track multiple, individual cars on a multilane highway gives its product a competitive advantage over conventional products that use radar or in-pavement sensors to estimate speed.

Several of the devices were installed in Mannheim in 2007. After receiving complaints about erroneous readings, the city temporarily put a hold on 19,000 citations while an outside firm created a report that confirmed the cameras were accurate. Expert witnesses testified that changing lanes or having a vehicle cross between your car and the camera could confuse the system and cause misidentification. As the court found, there is no external means of verifying that the speed estimate generated is accurate because the system does not photograph vehicles at set distances like conventional systems.

Vitronic counters the criticism by admitting the theoretical accuracy problem is irrelevant when compared to the hundreds of thousands of tickets that have been “confirmed with approvals of competent state authorities.” Nestor Traffic Systems had exclusive rights to distribute the Poliscan system in the US before going bankrupt. American Traffic Solutions acquired Nestor earlier this year.

The court case number is 3 OWi 2 Js 54432/09.

You know that’s just typical of these Fat Cats. “Well we’re making thousands of tickets – SO WHAT if a few of them are incorrect”

Britain’s booming speed camera network is at the centre of a giant ‘scam’ aimed at making ‘buckets of money’ for the Government, the boss of a leading supplier of the devices has admitted.

The sensational confession was made by the chief executive of Tele-Traffic, which supplies cameras to virtually every police force in Britain.

His unguarded comments, made to an undercover reporter posing as a prospective buyer of speed cameras, will add new weight to the public’s perception that the gadgets are designed more for making money than improving road safety.

The Tele-Traffic boss, Jon Bond, who was until a few months ago the police Chief Superintendent in charge of speed cameras in Warwickshire, urged our reporter to place an order and promised: ‘There will be so much money coming in you won’t know what to do with it.’

He and his colleagues revealed how:

So many motorists are being snared that courts are struggling to process the sheer volume of cheques sent to pay fines.

Tele-Traffic is run by former traffic police who offer to introduce customers to currently serving officers willing to give advice on the products.

The Government manipulates the speed camera system so that the Treasury rakes in the multi-million-pound profits without the cash going back to improve roads.

The Mail on Sunday posed as the London agents for an Eastern European firm keen to establish a speed camera network in their own country. We asked how the cameras operated in Britain – and the answers we received will shock many, but also confirm the darkest suspicions of millions of motorists.

The Tele-Traffic team encouraged our reporters to site any cameras they bought where they could catch ‘businessmen in the morning and school-run mums in the afternoon.’

Setting up cameras in new areas was the equivalent of having ‘a blank cheque book’, they said, guaranteeing ‘when you first set up you will have lots of offences, you will have bucketfuls’.

Britain’s speed camera system is run by more than 40 regional road safety partnerships, made up of representatives from police, courts and councils.

The partnerships are funded by the Department of Transport, which demands that each region gives target figures for the number of motorists they plan to catch speeding over the next year. If these targets are not met, then Whitehall cuts the size of its funding.

This has the effect of making the local partnership set low targets, rather than risk losing cash by falling short of predictions. And that is good news for the Government, since the system is geared so that any extra fines go to the Treasury.

Warwickshire, for example, had set a target of issuing 80,000 tickets in a year. Under the recently amended rules all the revenue from the fines goes to central government, with a portion of it returned to local authorities and to fund the road safety partnerships.

If Warwickshire only managed to catch 60,000 motorists, then the local partnership would have to make good the shortfall itself so it dare not undershoot. If, however, it fined 100,000 motorists, then all revenue from the additional 20,000 fines would disappear to the Treasury.

So although it might appear that the Government’s rules are intended to encourage partnerships – to set low targets and therefore not persecute an excessive number of motorists – the practical effect of them is to ensure that the targets are regularly broken and more, rather than fewer, motorists are ensnared.

And although it escapes any of the blame, the Government picks up all the profits.

Further, partnerships that easily overshoot their targets one year can set higher ones the next, so growing their empires.

Mr Bond claimed that the Government was so keen to increase this revenue that it announced changes to the rules last year.

Instead of fines going directly to fund the partnerships, that money will, from 2007, go direct to the Treasury. Whitehall will then allocate funds for road safety to local authorities to use as part of their general transport plan, in theory breaking the link between fines and revenue.

‘This was done so the Government wasn’t perceived to be revenue raising,’ explained Mr Bond. ‘But the reality is that the Government is actually raking off even more money than before. They are giving less money to the partnerships than they would have received through the old operation. So it’s all a scam – it’s smoke and mirrors.

‘The Treasury cannot lose and they get the cash while the camera operators are the ones who get all the criticism. Brilliant, really.’

But successful partnerships do rake in increased grants, enabling them to engage more staff, move into bigger premises and methodically expand their empires. The result is an ever-burgeoning speed camera industry in which central Government, local worthies and gadget suppliers all have a stake. But it costs the motorist millions of pounds in fines, plus immeasurable inconvenience.

Again, critics said yesterday, road safety is forgotten. The speed camera system is a scandal that is all about hitting targets, building local empires and raising money for Government.

Paul Smith, of the motorist organisation Safespeed, said: ‘This Mail on Sunday investigation has given us the first glimpse of the secret society behind the world of camera partnerships and the private firms which are picking up lucrative contracts from them.

‘In Tele-Traffic you are showing us a company which has become a virtual retirement home for police officers. I believe that now this Pandora’s box has been opened there will be more to come.’

Tele-Traffic UK supplies 97 per cent of the country’s police forces with portable laser cameras which are hand-held or set up in special roving police vans.

Mr Bond’s partners are Peter Gay, a former PC and now the firm’s customer service manager, and Mike Ricketts, another former policeman.

Posing as foreign businessmen, The Mail on Sunday met them over dinner in a Michelin-starred restaurant at a five-star hotel in the Cotswolds.

At the beginning of the meeting the Tele-Traffic team stressed the importance of speed cameras in promoting road safety. But then the trio began to speak more openly about the ‘revenue raising’, truth behind the cameras and that remained the dominant theme of the evening.

Mr Bond at least is well qualified in that respect. Five years ago he set up the Warwickshire Safety Camera Partnership, which has a website mockingly called ‘smilecamera. co.uk’. But Mr Bond admitted that during his tenure as chairman of the Warwickshire partnership the number of cameras in that county doubled and the courts were swamped with cheques from speeding motorists.

Mr Bond, who is due to address the annual conference of the Association of Chief Police Officers this week, said: ‘The beauty of the mobile units we sell is their flexibility. They will catch businessmen going into work in the morning and school-run mums in the afternoon.

‘There will be so much money coming in you won’t know what to do with it.’ Asked how Tele-Traffic could guarantee a return on the cost of their cameras, Mr Gay laughed and said: ‘You are going to get your revenue. That, at the end of the day, is not a problem.’

Mr Bond said: ‘The money will come in in buckets, a promise repeated during the course of the evening by his colleagues, who also spoke in terms of generating ‘buckets’ of money.

So much so, said Mr Bond, that the courts – which process fines and issue the points on a driver’s licence – have been struggling to cope with all the cheques. Again, he made clear that the speed camera industry was all about meeting targets rather than preventing accidents.

He said: ‘It will be too much for you to cope with. It will be too many offences – you won’t be able to cope with them.

‘In Warwickshire last year we issued 80,000 tickets when we could probably have done double that number. But we couldn’t because the courts, which handle the fines, wouldn’t have been able to cope.

‘Imagine 80,000 cheques for £60 coming through your door in a given year. They were swamped and we are the smallest of all the speed partnerships.’

Mr Bond said that in his last year in Warwickshire he deliberately sent officers out to quiet roads when the number of fines approached the limit the courts could cope with an extraordinary story that makes a mockery of the police’s claim that speeding tickets are about safety.

‘I had to send the camera operators out to roads where they would only catch one or two people an hour,’ he said.

Tele-Traffic sells basic hand-held laser speed cameras for £3,000 and the directors told how this could be recovered from speeding drivers in just an hour. Mr Gay said: ‘Take the UK model of £60 a pop. If you buy a piece of our kit at £3,000, then operate it in a two-hour session, on an averagely busy road, you will catch about 100 drivers that’s £6,000.

He also told how Tele-Traffic was expecting approval from the DoT for a camera the company has developed which can trap motorists from almost a mile away, raking in even more cash.

Tele-Traffic’s business is not limited to the UK. Ireland has bought more than 400 laser cameras from their company – and over there, the government is quite open about using cameras to raise revenue.

Mr Ricketts said the Irish government had made an election promise to reduce stamp duty and had made it clear they would make up the lost revenue from speeding fines.

‘We have produced for them a new system to make up that revenue,’ Mr Ricketts said. ‘So they are going the opposite way to the UK Government. They are actually openly promoting speed enforcement as their revenue raiser.’

One thing Tele-Traffic appeared less open about was an alarming discovery it made last year that thousands of motorists might have been wrongly prosecuted for speeding. Mr Gay told how the son of the firm’s founder, another former chief superintendent, was caught speeding by a police officer using one of the firm’s lasers in a camera on the A14 last year.

He added: ‘We looked into it and the officer operating it had not been trained properly, which technically makes the prosecution invalid. We told them that meant every prosecution over the previous five years could also be invalid because of the absence of training. But they insisted on prosecuting him anyway.’

Despite having a news section on its website, Tele-Traffic never told the public about the ‘unsafe’, prosecutions and there is no record of any of the police forces covering the A14 making any such declaration either.

Happy that our meeting had gone well, Mr Bond and his colleagues promised that it would be ‘no problem’, for them to introduce the undercover reporters to serving policemen on the Warwickshire Safety Camera Partnership and get hold of unpublished figures for how much the Treasury is raking in from speed cameras.

Last night motorists campaign groups demanded an inquiry.

Tony Vickers, of the Association of British Drivers, said: ‘Motorists have suspected for many years that the whole system is against them – now we have the proof that it starts with the Labour Government and goes downwards.

‘While there is no evidence that any individual on the partnerships profits from this, the truth of the matter is that it is enabling certain police officers to build mini-empires which are completely unaccountable to anyone but the Treasury.’