Angry Populace Burning British Surveillance Cameras
“Motorists Against Detection, the vigilante anti-speed camera group have announced a summer of MADness which will see them target for destruction all speed cameras in the UK. It’s now going to be a period of zero tolerance against all speed cameras, said their campaigns director Capt Gatso. “The group claims speed cameras are just money-making machines and they have given the authorities long enough to prove their worth. The first camera to fall in the summer campaign is in south east London on the A2 at the Sun in the Sands roundabout on-slip heading northbound towards the Blackwall Tunnel.
“Capt Gatso, the group’s campaigns director, said: “We have completely pulled it out of the ground, it is now lying flat. You can see some of our handiwork posted on www.speedcam.co.uk. “He added: In many areas the cameras have not saved one life – the statistics for road deaths haven’t gone down. In some areas they have actually gone up – in Essex, for instance, which has a high density of cameras there are more people being killed. We are now planning to target any and all cameras until the Government sees sense and rethinks its road safety policy. Before we had speed cameras we had the safest roads in Europe – since their introduction this is no longer true.” There are a lot of frustrated people among our members who have seen the number of cameras increase while road safety levels have fallen. Indeed, the only thing the cameras have done successfully is to reduce the number of traffic officers patrolling our roads and lose a lot of decent people their driving licences and their livelihoods.
“The group says it has perfected a new and quick way of destroying speed cameras which will enable them to destroy a roadside camera in just a few seconds…”.
Are we finally seeing a little resistance from the notoriously stoic Brits?
Not that I am for any type of cameras like this but have any of you scene how people in Europe drive? I was there this summer and it’s amazing chaos.
Why burn? A 99 cent spray can would do the trick.
#1 – domc
Some stats. I think it all depends on where you go… did you visit Germany?
I saw metro Paris from a cab (It’s hell to take a cab from one train station to get to another train station…) It was much worse than what I encountered in Chicago. And driving from Basil, CH to Mulhouse, FR was about like any drive I’d expect here in America.
And I got to see one of the speed camera’s in France too. It would have been hard to torch that one, since it was in the middle of what we would call the interstate.
#1, not only it depends where you were but also in how do you perceive traffic. Some of American “traffic organizing techniques” sound unbelievable to my friends “back over the pond”. When I tell them that there are 4-way STOP signs here they think I am joking… With good traffic education what may appear as “chaos” to USA driver used to signs telling him what is he to do, to the native people it is completely well regulated situation (ex. job of four 4-way STOP signs is done by one YIELD sign).
This is good news, screw Big Brother. We need to do that here too when they start plastering more surveillance cameras all over. 🙂
sounds like a job for PAINT BALL MAN…
A little burg around the corner runs from 45 to 35 to 25 to 35 to 40 to 55 in one direction, and 55 to 40 to 35 to 25 to 40 in the other direction. On the same road. Some places have a different speed limit in one direction than the other.
Local officials got beaten out of being a speed trap when a Judge in a neighboring jurisdiction got tired of the complaints and insisted on hearing the cases himself. That cost the Mayor’s Court a lot of money.
However they’re still very proactive in enforcing the limits and you spend more time looking at the speedometer and looking for signs than you do looking at the traffic….
(Lord help you if you’re from out of town….)
If they ever put in cameras, I’m going some other way….
The whole point is that unless a camera can record the WHOLE scene it’s unfair to the motorist who may indeed have mitigating circumstances (red light cameras are worse in this respect), AND at least one camera supplier has been forced to own up to tricking the cameras into running a shorter “yellow” cycle than normal.
I’m an old rent-a-cop. As an Auxiliary I used to do ride-alongs with the City PD. One night I was riding with a City Sergeant I knew pretty well. We stopped at a traffic light one car behind an intersection. A friend of the Sergeant’s came through the intersection from one side and Bill beeped his horn at him.
The guy in the car in front of us heard the beep, looked in his rear-view mirror, saw the black & white and two BIG Uniforms in it, and promptly shot through the still red light….
(Bill looked at me: “Did I do that?” “Yup….”)
A camera would have cited that guy…. We’d have testified for him, but the PITA factor would have been considerable.
Regards,
Stu.
Was it the speed that caused the problem or people hitting the brakes when they come upon a camera? Kind of like the good old CHP here in California with their ‘non speed traps’… Oh, “speed monitored by aircraft”
only all the aircraft are doing homeland security duty.. so we’re back to them sitting in the weeds… bull poop. Bring on he cameras. watch for my finger and my George Bush mask.
F big Bro !!!
Let em burn baby,
Nice work guys.
#2 – Jäg
“Why burn? A 99 cent spray can would do the trick.”
Think about it a little more. Spray paint? A pennyworth of paint thinner and it’s back in action. Destroy the camera? The local Council then has to figure out how to come up with £2000 for another one. And that pressures them to say enough’s enough.
Sets their unjust cause back a bit more that way, wouldn’t you agree? 🙂
In Australia, these cameras, called Supernovas, are manned by police.
I guy stood down the street from one with a sign warning drivers there was a supernova ahead. 10 minutes later the whole police dept was there busting him on anything they could think of in order to protect their precious revenue machine.
The local paper noted that they police sure don’t respond that fast if someone is breaking in to your house, or raping someone.
12,
thats easy, just raise the county TAX $1 per person, and you could have LOTS in 1 year.
Also,
With a PAINT ball gun, you DONT have to use water based paints. Use the Epoxy based…Takes ALONg time to Cut that stuff OFF.. Or try Meratic acid, dont know if it will eat the plastic balls, but will Etch the glass REAL well.
I happen to like speed cameras. When they introduced them here in Ontario, the number of crazy drivers fell dramatically. When our conservative politicians got rid of them a fe years later, the driving got just as bad as it had been before. Of course the increased number of traffic cops they promised in exchange never materialized….
“Are we finally seeing a little resistance from the notoriously stoic Brits?”
Perhaps they saw “V for Vendeta”. I wonder where one can order a mask and cape?