M1 money cameras VIC

Are they 'point-to-point' cameras or normal speed cameras?

sigh.. no more 70 minute trips to Geelong from Outer East Melbourne anymore...

i'm pretty sure they're just normal speed cameras. i make sure i slow down before i go under them, but i still always give them the finger as well.

70minute trips? what are you going slow or something?

i think 58's my record lol.

zac_smits wrote:i think 58's my record lol.

Ah, c'mon, gimme a break...i'm only running a 40HP! lol

point to point.

word will get around pretty quick once the fines go out methinks

ba$tards

well, it makes sense (and LOTS of cents) that they're not 'normal' speed cameras. I didn't think the gov would be THAT stupid (esp when making money is invovled)


crapola

You need 10 cars exactly the same to do the same journey 5 minutes apart and shuffle the number plates/remove the front one. That oughta piss em off.

i met a guy installing speed cameras, he says they are going mad with installs on every main road in the next few years, i dont think we has seen anything yet !

hmmm.. maybe i DON'T need to spend money on a larger engine in the future then... 40HP all the way - no/less fines and better fuel consumption!


money makin fu@#$%@#$%^&**&^%$@#$%$^$#&#%!🥷👎

are they really point to point ones? what if i cover the car and number plate in mud and tell them i got bogged? will that do :P:P

I went on Sydney's new M7 last week for which I have an e-pass (not a tag - but they deduct money after doing a rego check) - which got me thinking. If at the start and end of my journey they photograph my number plate, then with the time stamp on the photo, they could work out average speed and then theoretically fine me if my average speed is above the speed limit. Big Brother is here.

Here's a tip for not getting caught on the speed camera's ......... Do the speed limit and don't speed.


There you go....easy isn't it.👍

no more cruisin' in my mates celica at 140ks on an 80 zone. 🙁 (hes a P plater, only been for a week, only had his learners for a short time, and has neva been on a highway EVA!)

But hes a nutter of a driver. He betta watch out.

this is why i have cruise control on my cars :P:P


brooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom.....

nah i agree.

people need to learn to watch there bloody mirrors!

i mean seriously, it's not that hard. i don't care if you're driving a 4wd, look out for others damnit!

you really only save a few minutes when you speed. To REALLY save time, you have to REALLY speed.. so it's not really worth it. And you exponentially(sp?) increase ya fuel consumption with each 5km increment over 80kph or so...:blah

[ Edited on 1-2-06 by oval TOFU ]

I dont have a problem with them trying to stop speeding... i just fail to see how making somebody pay them is going to show anybody that speeding was bad?!?

apart of course from the $$$CHA-CHING$$$ factor 🙂

ah well... its election year... maybe the transport minister will be killed in a horrific low speed accident, in his hybrid car (that uses more petrol than a standard 1.5ltr car anyway) and in the process steve bracks will have to "look into it" and forget that he was supposed to be running the state.. thus removing d*ckheads from office, thus returning the state to a sense of normality! 🙂

hmph... thats my political piece for the week 😏

i would assume that they would be normal cameras coz if they are point to point then where are the points that they measure between??

The cameras are the point they measure between. And check it out, there were lines cut in the road at the same time. Measuring points?

Not hard with technology to record your rego no and the time, then match it up further down the road, and check the time taken..l There is that sort of software, and the police have cars running around with cameras reading rego numbers and checking records, automatically, informing the officer driving if that vehicle has any outstanding fines, etc.

It's been done with trucks for years, and I've heard of drivers being booked for as little as 1 minute fast, must have been speeding,,, doh.

And if you want to run up the road with your number plate covered, make sure it's both. remember to cover your rego label.. digital cameras are able to read those. Why is it law to have your sticker on the front window, and noticed how big the actual rego number is on the sticker. And don't have anything that enables you to be recognised when you go back in the same car again, apparently when trucks tried it, they were able to zoom in and read the company, and drivers name on his shirt!!!

Don't speed on Geelong road.

And like someone has alredy stated, when the fines turn up, we'll find out.

dak002 wrote:The cameras are the point they measure between.

so between say the westgate bridge camera and the one at the millers road sign gantry?
what if i dont cross through both in a trip? does it become just single point camera?

dak002 wrote:there were lines cut in the road at the same time. Measuring points?

i believe these lines are the measuring points for the individual camera

I believe the WestGate Birdge camera is an 'instant' camera as it's an older one and not part of the point to point ones on the M1. Don't take my word for it though..

Hey Guys.........its all about revenue raising.

Twenty years ago the speed limits were the same.....the cars then could easily exceed the speed limit....and on much poorer quality roads.

Now we have better/safer roads and MUCH SAFER cars and most speed limits are still the same.......oops NO...a lot have been reduced in certain areas/zones, but now they tell us the cameras are for road safety.....what a croc.

The motorists are just a cash cow for the politicians and a large percentage of police are now just revenue collectors for the Govt of the day.

Just because something is legal does not make it right!

Recall reading where some Euro country (Holland I think) mooted the idea of installing a box/gadget in every motor vehicle that automatically issued a speeding ticket through the mail each time the vehicle exceeded the set speed limit in a particular zone.......all done electronically.

It didnt get off the ground because even the politicians realised it was going to far.

Makes U wonder how our freedoms keep getting wittled away under our great democratic system.......but thats another issue.

:alien

^^here here.

regardless of the fact that speeding kills, speed cameras do not cut crashes...they simply make a LOT (400million + in victoria alone last year) of money for the govt.

The Westgate freeway is one of the safest roads in Victoria. When the cameras on the Western Ring Road were switched off for being completely inaccurate, fewer crashes resulted.

In Italy, the Westgate freeway would have everyone doing 130-150 km/h. In Germany, the surface would be smoother, and a few places would be banked a bit more, but that class of road would be unlimited. Speeding on wide roads with adequate areas for running off is safe as long as everyone is doing roughly the same speed and watching their surroundings not their speedo.

Now, I sit behind Geelong bound people who brake suddenly near the two points I go past. No one ever used their brakes there before. I noticed some new glass alongside the road near the gantry on my way home tonight. Speed cameras cut crashes? My arse.

Good one, Bracks.

Andrew

^^no fair enough.

having been to germany repeatedly (as i'm sure a lot of you guys have 😉) and having a few 16-20year old german friends, you would be absolutely amazed at how hard it is to get a licence over here.

none of this aussie try to do 120hrs practice, they have to do lessons in city driving, country driving, and autobahn driving, all with an instructor, in varying weather conditions. ie, 50hrs + in each situation and each weather condition. they are so strict, and so stringent on driving rules and regulations that they (not instinctively) know how to handle their vehicle.

in my opinion, the very best drivers in the world, are german, finnish, and swedish. learn to drive over there on snow, and ice, and gravel, and you would be amazed at how much you don't know.

zac_smits wrote:^^no fair enough.

having been to germany repeatedly (as i'm sure a lot of you guys have 😉) and having a few 16-20year old german friends, you would be absolutely amazed at how hard it is to get a licence over here.

none of this aussie try to do 120hrs practice, they have to do lessons in city driving, country driving, and autobahn driving, all with an instructor, in varying weather conditions. ie, 50hrs + in each situation and each weather condition. they are so strict, and so stringent on driving rules and regulations that they (not instinctively) know how to handle their vehicle.

in my opinion, the very best drivers in the world, are german, finnish, and swedish. learn to drive over there on snow, and ice, and gravel, and you would be amazed at how much you don't know.

I totally agree with that. I have a german frauline and she told me of the stringent methods used to educate drivers over there. THAT'S why they are such safe drivers (in my opinion) due to DRIVER EDUCATION. Not bloody speed cameras. True, there are those idiots that break the limit by crazy amounts and by all means, they should be fined. But with all the revenue raised, where is it all going to? Free roads? I think not - hello? the Frankston Freeway Link (or whatever it's called) is going to be tolled.. Why can't they use those 400000 squids and spend it on better driver education, not just driver paranoia with those RTA car crash ads (though some of them are pretty cool - no offense to anyone) The Vic gov needs to find another 'prevention' method. Just having a marked cop car on the side of the road (regardless of whether it has a speed camera operating or not) WILL slow down traffic effectively. And if you're speeding past a parked cop car, then you deserve to get booked. Unmarked camera cars don't really do shit except piss ppl off.

lobus wrote:As fo the old German "Autobahns and unlimited speed is safer" crap theory. What is safe about a 7 series BMW passing a 1.6 turbo Caravelle which is passing a row of trucks about 120kms long,

As for drivers hitting other drivers up the arse because the first car braked suddenly, driver 2 shouldn't be travelling so close as to be unable to avoid a dangerous situation

learn to control your vehicle and realise that the roads are for everyone to use, not just pompous pricks who think it is allright for them only to break the road rules just a little bit.

This same argument was played over and over when mandatory seat belt laws and random breath testing came in.

What has Steve Bracks got to do with it? The next person in the job will probably make it even more difficult to drive like an idiot and get away with it.

Again I am goint to cop it from the right wing knuckleheads for these views I am sure.

For a start, here's the statistics which show that the autobahns are the safest roads in Germany:

http://www.dma.org/~ganotedp/autobahn.htm

Secondly, when you look at the raw death rate per 100,000 population, Germany's rate is a smidge lower than ours even though we drive a lot slower. If "speed kills" then the Germans would be as bad as the US, where they drive anywhere from too slow to around 65 mph (closer to 70...). The US rate is far worse than ours because they have lax drink driving laws (walk the line...), 0.08 instead of 0.05, and lax enforcement of seat belt laws along with really poor and unsafe SUVs which roll over at the merest hint of a verge or grassy knoll.

"Speeding" in modern cars on safe roads like the Westgate or the Western Ring Road is not dangerous - they are the safest roads in Victoria no matter if you measure it by deaths per million km driven or just pure deaths per year per km of road.

The deaths per year on our roads has not decreased since 2002 (in fact, it went up again last year), despite newer safer cars, several safety related ADRs coming into force, and a manyfold increase in the numbers of cameras and arbitrary enforcement of speed.

http://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/2004/pdf/rfa2004.pdf

There are many things which could be done to cut the road toll (ostensibly the point of "safety" cameras), but current measures of "speed", "fatigue" and drink driving are simply not working! The statistics at the ATSB and MUARC show that despite bucketloads of speed enforcement, we're still dying! Something needs changing, and it's not more speed cameras.

If I was safety nazi for a day, these are the changes I would make:

* Ban motorcycles except on privately owned land (like farms)

* Eliminate level crossings and improve public transport so that more people can reasonably use it instead of being forced to drive. Public transport is so much safer than cars, if more of us use it instead of driving, it should reduce our death rate per 100,000 people.

* Eliminate trucks from peak hour traffic so that there's less congestion and on > 2 lane roads, make it illegal for them to use anything but the two left lanes (unless there's a right hand exit ramp)

* Put up more pedestrian crossings in high pedestrian traffic areas which separate them from cars completely whilst eliminating jay walking in unsafe areas. Construct fences to deter pedestrians from entering roads > 65 km/h and any road with more than (say) 5,000 cars per day flowing by.

* Figure out a way to change school drop off zones so that kids and moving cars don't intermingle, and badly / awfully parked cars do not block through road traffic. Or even better return to the days like when I grew up when I walked to school and back again.

* Fix bad road patterns - road design is partly to blame for many unnecessary deaths, particularly on slower roads. For example, having solid light / power poles right next to even 60 km/h roads is deadly. All road fixtures should be able to absorb or deflect crashing cars, just like it does on a freeway.

* Put cameras and sensors on all cars (not just SUV's) to prevent cars running over kids, like what happened to Phil Kearns' daughter

* Force convicted drunk drivers to have a three year mandatory installation of a breathalyzer interlock so they can't drive when drunk for long enough that they learn the lesson properly

* Put an ADR through so that keys are the drivers license, so that when your license is suspended, the car doesn't start

* Put an ADR through that the park brake doesn't disengage until all seats with weight in them have a seat belt on

* Put in variable speed limits on decently engineered roads, so that say on fine dry days, you can go up to 130 km/h to Geelong or Albury, but reduce it to 100 km/h at night, 50 km/h when it's cold, slimy and foggy, and 80 km/h in the wet.

* Change speed cameras so that they catch tailgating drivers as well. This is far worse habit as far as I'm concerned

* Get the police out of unmarked cars and put them back into marked cars. Nothing makes people behave properly more than a visible presence. They might even be able to spot the 17-25 year olds who need to be weeded out for a few years who form an immense segment of the mortality statistics. I liked the rewards scheme for being a good driver as well.

* Mandatory 5 year renewal of licenses by re-testing, including for vision and road rule knowledge. Improve driver training and emphasize the need for not looking at the instrument binnacle, but scanning the surrounds, mirror and head checks, and leaving enough room so minor mistakes don't become statistics.

Bracks and his transport minister are responsible as they introduced most of the new revenue raisers to allow their budget to have a surplus. They are addicted to sin taxes, like gambling and fines. It wouldn't be so bad except that they budget for increases which are essentially in line with the number of new cameras.

Lastly, I do not waste my vote on right wing politicians. I reserve my vote for progressive socially aware candidates who have society's and then my interests at heart rather than seat warmers for the machine men of their party. It's hard with a capital H for me to vote. But I try anyway.

Andrew

Bottom line is that if you want to get somewhere on time, then leave... on time! It will take a lot of speeding to make up for the five minutes you lost because you had to set the vcr before leaving the house, even on the M1.

If people relaxed and chilled there wouldn't be as many accidents.

lobus wrote:The cameras have been around since the mid (?) 80s and there has been Labor/Liberal/Labor since then. So do you think a change of government is gunna reduce cameras?
If you do I know a bloke who is selling real estate on Mars, tell him I sent you and you will get a 5% discount for cash.

Easy peasy...go slower... pay no fines..keep license..keep driving...if you hit something you hit it softer...less damage, less injury, less death.

I think you missed my point... im not talking about speed cameras as a deterrant... im talking about the issue of monetary recompense. Which, as you would know, has gone up 300% with the bracks government. Yes people should slow down, yes the government should enforce this, but monetary fines are not the solution... they just fill holes in the budget that the govt cant fix in other ways.

[ Edited on 3-2-2006 by fekkinell ]

a male driver under 35 is more likely to die at his own hand (suicide) than on the roads.


We dont see the govinment doing naff all about it.

Oh sure a few bucks into some mental health programs but there is no money to be made from itand no serious effort.

Road safety is another issue. If they were really serious we would have federal laws covering roadworthies, strict training and better roads etc.


Try and prise the 400 million out of the treasurer for *real* life saving.....

Actually.... ignore everything i've said previously... People are smart/people are stupid... People are going to live/people are going to die...

Banning motorbikes/cars/trucks/egg whisks is not going to change the fact...

Maybe if everyone just took their own life and responsibilities towards others, into their own hands, then we wouldn't need little sh*ts in brown suits to 'protect' us.

You just need to see the episode of Happy Tree Friends where the baby bear is playing with the lawnmower... the daddy bear is worried about the baby bear so he puts him in the hammock where he is safe... the daddy bear then mows the lawn and hits some rubbish in the grass, which is flicked out the side of the lawnmower and kills the baby bear.

Cotton wool isn't going to save anything... least of all lives!

(gee i sound schizophrenic today...hmm)

:alien

Just ban all male, P-platers from getting behind the wheel of a commodore and we'll all be right as rain 😉

^^but then we'll have a shitload of fords, skylines and civics on the road!

(i mean a shitload more :P)

I agree with the idea of checking cars properly, and more often. I mean, cars like mine shouldn't even be allowed for farm use, let alone be allowed to drive on the public road system.

For starters, if a car doesn't have good brakes, good steering, good seat belts, good tyres, good suspension and everything bolted together tightly, it shouldn't be driven on the road. Driving a car that has a fault with any of it's main components is simply just waiting for the sistuation to arrise that requires that failing component to perform properly.

If your brakes aren't too good, and you make allowances for this, everything's fine, until some twit pulls out in front of you. At this time you wish you had a margin for error (ie, the margin for error effective brakes give).

Even a dud shockie can have fatal effects in a situation that calls for evasive action. If you have a bung shockie on the left front corner, someone brakes suddenly in front of you, and the road's a little wet, it's most likely that your car will slip and take a dive to the right (the physics dictate it'll be towards the opposite corner of the dud shockie, because that's the wheel with control and grip), straight into the path of oncoming traffic. Instant fatality just because a shock absorber wasn't replaced when it should have been.

Add to poor maintenance with bad driving practices and it's inevitable that people will die, and we already have plenty of proof of that.

With the complexities of life these days, we all need private transport often enough to need a car on the road. And the reality is, not everyone has the money to fix their car when they should.

Maybe the money got from speeding and drink driving fines should be used to fund a scheme of welfare that grants people that have no money, the funds for the repairs to their car. If you're out of work or ill, you still have to have a home and food, so they give you the funds for that. If you have children, they give you extra to cover feeding them. If you need medication, they give you subsidies for that. SO WHY THE HELL DON'T WE HAVE A VEHICLE MAINTENANCE SCHEME for people on welfare. This would save not only the lives of the poor, but also the lives of anyone else their car takes out.


As for radar traps, maybe radar "guns" should be reconfigured to shoot out the tyres of tailgaiters and speeders. That would certainly slow them down. LOL

ruckus wrote:Bottom line is that if you want to get somewhere on time, then leave... on time! It will take a lot of speeding to make up for the five minutes you lost because you had to set the vcr before leaving the house, even on the M1.

If people relaxed and chilled there wouldn't be as many accidents.

Agreed - more chilled drivers the better. Road rage and angst leads to unsafe driving. As does overconfidence and the immortality complex most P platers seem to possess.

However, to me it's not about speed enforcement that I have an issue with, it's the ludicrously low speed limits on safe roads. If the speed limit was 130 km/h, I'd be very unlikely to want to exceed that on the Westgate. There's just too much traffic at the times I drive to make it safer to go faster, and honestly, the average Australian driver is not well trained enough to handle much faster than that anyway.

On the road to Albury, it's basically straight for the most part, and banked properly. I'd reckon 150 km/h would be safe for some of the more straight sections with good long range visibility and minimal road side fixtures, like the last 100 or so km to the border, 130 km/h for most of it, and 100 km/h where it passes through the black forest and there's trees close by to the road. Compared to the major metropolitan freeways and toll ways, there's not a lot of traffic, so it's safer for those slightly higher speeds.

I have the full complement of points on my license, despite passing four sets of speed cameras and one red light camera every day (for a grand total of 10 times a day I can lose my license). I don't speed, but I also don't have to like it.

Andrew

What about...

for every fine that you get..(regardless if speeding, littering, talking on your mobile etc), you insurance premium increases, as does the fine depending on how often you get them...

That already happens in the US, and to a lesser extent, it happens here.

Andrew

this is what vic roads should strive for.... http://gettingaroundgermany.home.att.net/autobahn.htm#design

The German autobahn systems are the best in the world, not like Vic Roads or there contractors putting down a thin layer of shitty bitumen that falls apart at the sign of a decent rain fall.

I agree with speed camera's even as i drive for a living, because the speed limit is there for ALL to obey, BUT the revenue should go into creating the freeway systems that europe strive for so we could increse the speed limits on certain roads if they were built for it, not the bumpy and uneven crap we have to deal with everyday. But unfortunately NO goverment from either side, in power or not will give up the huge money generated from speed camera's to put 100% back into the roads. It's a sad but true reality.

Step 1: "Wipe off five to save lives"
Outcome 1: Ok so I wipe off five. But I am still moving, and so is everyone else, so there is a chance someone could die.

Step 2: Lets "Wipe off [another] five to save lives"
Outcome 2:
- If speed is greater than 0km: see outcome 1, repeat step 2
- If other: Get out of car because you better start walking.

There is always going to be a chance of people getting injured, as long as cars are moving at "speed" (anything greater than 0km/h). At what point does the possibility of injury escalate exponentially? Do not set the speed limit higher than that.
Speed is a factor in a large percentage of fatalities. Not surprising really, given that if you are moving then speed is a factor!

It's not quite as simple as that. Before cars, there were deaths due to riding horses, trains and so on. For example, Marie Curie's (the discoverer of radiation and the first to extract polonium and uranium from ore) husband died from being run over by a carriage. Literature is littered with people carking it after falling from their mounts. Horses rarely if ever travel above 45 km/h, and yet the danger is still there.

So let's say we're never going to go back to horse and carts, and we'll stick with well designed cars with modern safety equipment. It is possible to walk away from most low speed incidents as long as you don't hit something like a light pole in the wrong way. Other times, you can kill someone at 5 km/h, particularly if they're a small child outside the car.

Above a certain speed, no car can safely ensure that you will survive. For early Beetles without collapsable steering columns, this speed is likely to be as low as 50-60 km/h. In 5 star NCAP modern cars, it is more than likely around 100 km/h. At that point, it's important to ensure the local driving environment is as safe as possible; ie minimize the chances you will hit something so fast you have no chance.

For example, if you hit the armco on the freeway, you're likely to bounce off it and come to a complete stop a little way away, be able to open the door, change your underwear and you'll be fine. If you're on a 60 km/h normal road, if you're doing 60 km/h and the other side is also doing 60 km/h, if you're involved in a partial offset frontal collision at a closing velocity of 120 km/h, it is borderline unsurviveable. New cars and heavier cars generally win those battles. This type of accident is the one that causes the most amount of death and permanent disability. The answer is not to make 60 km/h roads slower, but to separate traffic so that you don't hit something at 120 km/h.

There is a relationship:

p = mV^2

which states that the faster you go, it will take a lot more distance to stop and hurt a lot more if you crunch. That's why I support 50 km/h speed limits in back streets and 40 km/h around schools. But freeways are different. It's very rare that you stop in a meter or so, often freeway accidents are stupid things like hitting the armco after falling asleep or low speed accidents like running into the back of someone else when they've stopped in morning peak hour traffic. But for the most part, it takes something truly stupid to lose your life on a freeway as you have so much more area to run off, and side swiping people and hitting them even at speed is generally non fatal.

If you're a regular Sun Herald reader, they have a reporter whose job it is to ambulance chase the road toll figures. They report the location of every fatality. Try this exercise. For the next month, see how many deaths occur on any freeway. You may need to go for a while longer than a month. It's a tiny, tiny fraction of the overall road system, whilst they are the busiest roads in the state.

Some roads need to be strictly speed enforced, many need to be redesigned, some need reductions, but modern freeways are now set too slow and are just out and out revenue raising.

Andrew

Yeah cameras save crashes NOT!!!!!!

The area around the Hoppers Crossing camera was bad enough as it was now it is a nightmare with people hammering the brakes when they are approaching the cameras. I can clearly see there is going to be more accidents on that stretch of road now.

Next they will drop the speed limit of the roads to 90 then 80. Its not speed that causes accidents, it is poor driver education and people pushing themselves beyond their capabilities and the conditions of the road.

Love the comments from the authorities on the new cameras "2000 people caught in a few hours"

yes... lots of people... did they crash?... no?... hmm thats odd, they said they would if they did that... they must've been ok this time cos big brother was watching. 🙂

Hey I'll put my hand up "I SPEED" usally I don't know I'm doing it but when I'm doing it my eyes are on the road not on my speedo every five seconds checking to see if I'm going to get a fine because I'm 2klm over. I know where my eyes are meant to be looking to be a safer driver. Anyways where I'm originally in from England there use to be 2 speed cameras on the way to work (about 30klm ) now in the last three years theres now seven plus at least one mobile camera every two weeks. Its all about saving lives :P:P:P :repuke not about making a buck hey. These roads are not dangerous there no different to any others. Every time I get a ticket I say good luck to them as they must need the money more than me !!!!:thumb

nIck
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