Dave Gee: Life from Right Field

The new Aussie-supplied mobile speed cameras introduced by the NZ Police this year are crap-ass, and have been wrongly issuing tickets for twice the true speed of large vehicles. FAIL!

Police have waived over 130 tickets from the new cameras because of proven or suspected cases of inaccurate readings. 43 of the new digital cameras were rolled out across the country in January, at a cost of $4 million, replacing 31 old film cameras.

However, Police have admitted the cameras were initially set incorrectly, resulting in false high readings. The problem seems mainly to affect high-sided trucks and buses, with the cameras' radar beams being "deflected from the sides of large vehicles to nearby metal objects and back, doubling the recorded speed".
Until the problem is sorted out, Police have stopped issuing speeding infringements for large vehicles, giving them a temporary free pass to choose their own speed limits!! As it should be :-)

Officials won't reveal how much money they've lost in speed camera revenue while the problem is sorted out, and refused to admit whether any tickets issued for regular vehicles had also been waived.
$36 million was collected in speeding fines last year, and it is claimed the expansion of the speed camera programme is aimed at lowering the road toll.
A total of 536,995 speed camera tickets were issued in the 15 months to April 15 2009.

* Stuff: Cameras record incorrect speeds