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.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Minnesota study finds support for automated speed enforcement
    December 14, 2012
    A recent study by the University of Minnesota found strong support for automated speed enforcement, particularly in work zones and school zones and if revenues from fines are dedicated for road safety programs. Presenting the findings, Frank Douma, associate director of the State and Local Policy Program in the Humphrey School of Public Affairs said automated speed enforcement has been deployed in fourteen states and in many countries, especially in Europe. Automated speed enforcement is proven to be an ef
  • Machine vision standards definition moves forward with establishment of new forum
    December 3, 2012
    The new Future Standards Forum will homogenise standards develop in the machine vision and partnering sectors. Here, machine vision industry experts discuss developments. By Jason Barnes At the Vision Show, which took place in Stuttgart at the beginning of November, the European Machine Vision Association, the US’s Automated Imaging Association and the Japan Industrial Imaging Association (JIIA) established a joint initiative, the Future Standards Forum (FSF). This, said the EMVA’s President Toni Ventura, a
  • IAMRoadSmart: Over a third of police use mobile safety camera vans
    February 2, 2018
    More than a third of UK police forces used mobile safety camera vans to prosecute over 8,000 drivers for not wearing seatbelts and around 1,000 with a mobile phone in their hand in, according to IAM RoadSmart’s freedom of Information request in 2016. It was submitted to 44 police forces which revealed that 16 of them used pictures from the cameras in their vans to pursue these offences as a matter of routine while a further four did so occasionally.
  • Trials of new technologies to counter age-old work zone challenges
    May 19, 2017
    New solutions are being used to improve the management and safety of work zones on roads both big and small, as Jon Masters discovers. The UK government has recently been going to some lengths to paint a picture of a nation embracing a future of digital technology – understandably given the economic concerns arising from exiting the European Union. In December last year, however, the UK National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) put down a somewhat different marker for where the UK is now in terms of mobile c