Roads in Croydon and Sutton are to be among the sites for a trial of radar-based speed cameras.
New tech: Croydon and Sutton roads are to have the new radar-based speed cameras installed
Given that this scheme is being brought in by the Met Police and Transport for London, motorists can expect it to be legally watertight, with little chance of multi-million-pound refunds down the line because of any “unlawful” introduction, as might have been the case were Croydon’s failed Mayor Jason Perry and the council’s chief legal official involved.
Croydon has had 20mph zones on many of its roads for around a decade, but the limits are routinely ignored by many motorists, and there has been little, if any, enforcement to get the speedsters to mend their ways. The new radar-based cameras might just change all that.
According to TfL: “Evidence shows that exceeding the speed limit or travelling too fast for the conditions is a factor in around half of all fatal collisions, and TfL and the Met remain committed to enforcing safer speeds and modernising and expanding London’s safety‑camera network.”
The cameras will be installed over the coming weeks in Haringey, Tower Hamlets, Havering, Hammersmith and Fulham, Brent, Hackney and Ealing, as well as Croydon and Sutton. “All sites are located on 20mph or 30mph roads and have been identified on the basis of suitability and risk,” TfL says.
The current spot speed cameras at these sites use sensors embedded in the road surface to detect the speed of all passing vehicles. The new cameras combine 4D radar and a 4k colour camera that requires no visible flash or white light and no in-ground sensors or road markings, “offering increased reliability and a more effective method of detection”, TfL says.
Coming after you: the Met say that they ‘will use every tool available… to deter dangerous driving’
The cameras also provide better quality images, which in turn improves the police enforcement process for drivers caught speeding.
They can provide coverage of up to five lanes of bi-directional traffic flow from a single camera, whereas the current spot speed cameras can only monitor up to three lanes of traffic, requiring sensors in each of the lanes.
All enforcement signage will be checked and cameras will be calibrated before the police begin enforcement, the authorities say, offering a bit of a schooling to the chancers in Croydon’s error-prone highways department.
The cameras are part of the measures being introduced under City Hall’s Vision Zero plan, which is trying to eliminate deaths on London’s roads by 2040. The rollout of new cameras, the transport authority says, is “based on speeding risk and or persistent community concerns about speeding”.
Detective Chief Superintendent Donna Smith, of the Met’s roads and transport policing command, said: “It is tragic whenever anyone is killed or seriously injured on our roads, and speeding remains a major factor, which is why our officers are totally committed to reducing that risk.
“Working alongside TfL, the Met will use every tool available, including new radar‑based camera technology, to deter dangerous driving… helping our officers hold offenders to account and ensuring we have a modern and effective enforcement system that saves lives.”
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It might be useful to educate pedestrians on avoiding being run over rather than just focusing on road users as the culprits. Then again, that wouldn’t rake in much money. I guess that’s what you’d expect from TfL.
Can you provide the number of motorists killed or seriously injured from carelessly driving into pedestrians or cyclists when speeding?
I expect Ian is one of many people who have had a speeding ticket or two, and resent the state’s tax on their desire to endanger and intimidate other road users.
There’s an obvious way to avoid paying a speeding fine, which is don’t speed. That’s a lesson lost on Oliver Glasner, so rich he could afford multiple speeding tickets – until he finally got a 6-month ban for doing nearly 30mph on the 20mph Old Kent Road
I would welcome cameras that also detected incompetant drivers who really should not be on the road – I recently followed a car driving at 10 to 15 mph down Coombe Lane / road who persistantly applied the brakes every time they approached a bend or a car travelling in the opposite direction.
You don’t know why they did, and you don’t have an automatic right to go faster. What did it cost you – a minute? Two, three?
Could have been a mechanical issue, disability, loose cargo, who knows. Or just someone with nerves having a bad day.
We’d be rightly appalled if faster pedestrians tried to bully people out of the way, the roads shouldn’t be any different, but cars are dehumanising. Roads require social cooperation, but you don’t get much body language – or language of any kind – out of an anonymous rigid metal box.
The word you’re looking for is ‘ Incompetent
Vehicles are restricted to 20mph and yet e-bikers and scooters travel far faster (on roads and pavements) with no helmets, no insurance, no lights, no regulations or no care about any other road users or pedestrians – madness!!!
Ebikes and scooters are literally regulated to 15mph. It’s the law.
The police run periodic stings against noncompliant vehicles and confiscate them (permanently afaik), I’ve seen low-loaders full of them being driven out of town on a couple of occasions recently.
Small vehicles tend to look faster than they are, for the same reason small animals do. I do occasionally see these doing over 25 (and you’re a proper idiot if you do that without a helmet, most have crap tires and brakes), but it’s really not common.
There are a number of ebike and motorbike riders who consistently flout the law, eg speeding, going through red lights, nearly knocking over pedestrians, sometimes all three at once. These offenders also ought to be in the range of the radar.