Road Angel 2

...becuase of the type of road (wide, two lane, well lit) I continued very cautiously at around the 25mph mark. Having being later informed by my colleagues that this road had some of the new no flash digital speed cameras on it I spent the next couple of weeks worrying whether I was going to get a ticket or not.

I balanced the admittedly high monetary cost of this device against the worry that I experienced and the possible fines and ...
...suckers and rubber grommets
Road Angel unit
Anti glare cowl for the unit
Magnetic sticky pad for alternative mounting on a flat surface
2.5m straight power lead to cigarette socket
1m coiled power lead to cigarrette socket

I've no experience with other models but the light, plastickly feel of the unit up close makes you think that £300 is a lot to pay for it!

Before installing the unit ... more

I'm not a particularly fast driver and generally remain at or around the quoted speed limits. However, an incident the other week involving a late night drive around an unfamiliar area in London made me decide to invest in one of the these 'blackspot and camera alert' devices. On this ocassion the limit suddenly dropped from 30 to 20mph (Upper Thames Street?) and being a bit tired and surprised becuase of the type of road (wide, two lane, well lit) I continued very cautiously at around the 25mph mark. Having being later informed by my colleagues that this road had some of the new no flash digital speed cameras on it I spent the next couple of weeks worrying whether I was going to get a ticket or not.

I balanced the admittedly high monetary cost of this device against the worry that I experienced and the possible fines and increased insurance premiums resulting from any lapse and decided the take the plunge and get one of these units.

I did plenty of research and generally found that this one is well regarded by users for its ease of use large display and accurate database of cameras.

I ordered and paid £300 for a new unit which duly arrived the next day. In the box was:

A manual,
USB cable
Winscreen mount with associated suckers and rubber grommets
Road Angel unit
Anti glare cowl for the unit
Magnetic sticky pad for alternative mounting on a flat surface
2.5m straight power lead to cigarette socket
1m coiled power lead to cigarrette socket

I've no experience with other models but the light, plastickly feel of the unit up close makes you think that £300 is a lot to pay for it!

Before installing the unit in the car and using it you need to register your unit on-line with Blackspot by supplying the serial number. It takes approximately 24 hours to register the unit on their database - it is only at this point (when you receive an email confirming such) that you will be able to update the camera locations on the unit.

After registering the unit you get (a rather stingy) 6 months of free camera database updates via the internet (this is done by connecting the unit to your PC via the supplied USB cable). Note that you need to download an application to your computer to faciliate the updates - they don't do a version of the application for apple MACs - only PCs. The first update took about 10 minutes to complete and they recommend you update every week as approximately 80 camera locations are added or removed each day.

After the first 6 months you need to pay blackspot a further subscription fee ranging from £49 to £99 for 1 to 3 years of updates.

After fiddling with the settings of the unit (you can change the volume of alerts, turn voice alerts off, the types of alerts to receive, display contrast etc.) the unit easily installed into my car using the windscreen mount. If you have a flat dash and the windscreen wipers don't obstruct the front of the unit you can mount it on the sticky magentic base that blackspot also supply in the box. I found that in motion the windscreen mounted unit tends to wobble slightly as the car goes over bumbs so mounting it on the sticky pad would be best. In normal driving conditions it displays a compass heading, the time and your current speed on a light blue display (all calculated every second via satellite)

Taking it out on a test drive the unit clearly warned of oncoming speed cameras by changing the display colour to red, giving a voice alert ('Warning, fixed speed camera ahead') and then bleeping as the display counted down to the camera in question. The unit displays an icon for the type of camera ahead whether it's GATSO, SPECs, etc

Because of the proliferation of cameras in London I personally found the bleeps very annoying but you can adjust the volume to a more comfortable level. So far it's been very accurate and picked up all my local fixed camera sites. This has allowed me to concentrate more on the road conditions rather than constantly looking down to check my speed in fear of speed cameras.

The unit also includes a laser detector at the front and rear of the unit so you can tell if someone is pointing a laser speed gun at your car. However, the concensus of opinion is that by the time the unit has warned you of the laser it probably too late anyway.... I haven't come across any mobile units so haven't been able to confirm it's effectivness 

...less