Skip to main content

Average speed enforcement, a huge impact on reducing speed

A guaranteed way to get drivers to slow down and comply with work zone speed limits is to use average speed cameras. Deployed in the UK for over a decade now, they have had a huge impact, not least in achieving around 99 per cent compliance with speed limits. It's not difficult to understand: when someone knows that if they speed through a work zone it is absolutely guaranteed that they will be caught, fined and have points on their licence, only a total fool would. In the UK, SPECS average speed cameras we
January 31, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
UK Roads

A guaranteed way to get drivers to slow down and comply with work zone speed limits is to use average speed cameras.

Deployed in the UK for over a decade now, they have had a huge impact, not least in achieving around 99 per cent compliance with speed limits. It's not difficult to understand: when someone knows that if they speed through a work zone it is absolutely guaranteed that they will be caught, fined and have points on their licence, only a total fool would.

In the UK, SPECS average speed cameras were developed in 1999 by SpeedCheck Services, which recently joined forces with 31 Computer Recognition Systems to become 604 Vysionics. That average speed cameras produce previously unimagined compliance levels with speed limits, is only part of the story: it is well documented how traffic flows more smoothly, congestion is significantly reduced, vehicles can merge and diverge more easily near junctions or ramps.
The system, very familiar to UK drivers, is poised for widespread use around the world. While the recently formed Vysionics is looking outside the UK, major industry players have now entered the market.

Australian-headquartered 112 Redflex, which developed a point-to-point camera system in 2003, says it is now working closely with European governments that are looking to improve road safety over large stretches of road, be it in work zones or on highways. Moreover, Redflex promises that its next-generation point-to-point systems, being launched in the coming months, will see features like non-intrusive technology, newly designed enclosures, and solar power.

 Meanwhile, global enforcement camera player 37 PIPS Technology, part of 38 Federal Signal Corporation, has launched, and won UK Home Office Type approval for, its SpeedSpike average speed enforcement system. PIPS's first product within the average speed enforcement market, it was developed as a cost-effective distance-over-time speed enforcement system, for deployment just about anywhere, and over short or long distances. Up to 1,000 cameras can be linked in any one system.

Related Content

  • Authorities select enforce now, pay later option
    October 19, 2015
    Outsouring of enforcement services is on the increase internationally as highway and traffic authorities seek further support in resources and expertise from the private sector. Jon Masters reports. Signs of a significant company making moves into a new market can usually be read as indication of likely growth in that particular sector. Q-Free’s expansion from tolling operations into general traffic enforcement could be viewed as surprising as it is moving into what are relatively mature and consolidating m
  • Automated enforcement tames speeders in Chicago’s Children’s Safety Zones
    November 20, 2013
    Chicago is installing automated enforcement after pilot schemes indicated that one in 10 motorists exceed the speed limits in Children’s Safety Zones. Each year in Chicago there are around 3,000 incidents of pedestrians being struck by a motor vehicle - and about 800 of those casualties are children. In an effort to improve child safety the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) has established Children’s Safety Zones around schools and other areas where children congregate. These zones allow the impos
  • Monitoring and transparency preserve enforcement's reputation
    July 30, 2012
    What can be done to preserve automated enforcement's reputation in the face of media and public criticism? Here, system manufacturers and suppliers talk about what they think are the most appropriate business models. Recent events in Italy only served to once again to push automated enforcement into the media spotlight. At the heart of the matter were the numerous alleged instances of local authorities and their contract suppliers of enforcement services colluding to illegally shorten amber signal phase tim
  • Cars reinvented: huge new opportunities and dangers, says IDTechEx
    December 2, 2016
    The new IDTechEx report, Electric Car Technology and Forecasts 2017-2027 finds that the biggest change in cars for one hundred years is now starting. It is driven by totally new requirements and capabilities. They will cause huge new businesses to appear but some giants currently making cars and their parts will spectacularly go bankrupt. Cities will ban private cars but encourage cars as autonomous taxis and rental vehicles. Already 65 per cent of cars in China are bought by businesses. The Japanese wa