Road Angel with laser alert

...at the side of the road and takes a photograph of your car from the rear. This camera uses a radar signal bounced off the rear of a travelling vehicle to determine speed and takes two photographs of the moving vehicle; on the road, white lines are painted and are used to ensure the calibration of the camera is correct. The ensuing photograph shows the rear of the car and its number plate, the date and time of the offence and the speed of the travelling ...
...at the side of the road but facing towards the car this time. It doesn't use radar to track the vehicle, but two 'pads' secreted beneath the surface of the tarmac, with the offending vehicle's speed timed between the two over a very short distance and the photograph being taken a few feet further along (look out for several narrow white lines painted across the road just in front of the camera for your opportunity to smile politely). Rapidly growing ... more

Speeding is naughty, let's not make any bones about that, but all of us at one time or another have broken the speed limit, either deliberately or inadvertently. Some believe it is legal to break the speed limit in order to overtake a slower moving vehicle (it is not) and others believe that speed limits are put there simply to be broken (they are not) - but whatever your take on speeding, these days it's very easy for all of us to get caught doing it.

Reports vary, but predictions have shown that at the current rate more than 90% of drivers will have some form of speeding endorsement on their license by the end of 2006, so if you have a clean license you've only got a couple of years left to prove the statisticians wrong; but of course, we all know that over 84% of statistics are made up on the spot, so maybe our licenses will remain unendorsed forever.

Today, the motorist is one of the most beleagured demographics in the UK - let alone worldwide - with some of the highest rates of fuel tax, running costs and insurance costs bestowed on a market place. Speeding is treated as a criminal offence in the courts but is becoming more widely known as just another tax on the car owner as more and more cameras appear on our roads and more and more of us pick up penalties. At the moment, the standard penalty for a speeding offence is three points on your license and a £60.00 fine as long as the driver was within 30mph above the speed limit and other offences such as dangerous driving etc. were not taken into account as well; the maximum number of points on your license without getting a ban is twelve and if you already have nine then a court appearance is mandatory for your next offence, no matter how minor. Effectively, four speeding offences and you're banned for anything up to a year.

That is set to change, with new proposals for the number of points to be introduced based on how far above the speed limit the motorist is travelling, starting with two points and rising to four for the most serious of offences. Of course, the number of cameras on our roads are also set to increase...

So what can be done about it? Not speeding is the obvious answer and this review does not in any way condone speeding or the use of excessive speed on public highways, but in order to better protect our licenses and ensure that we can keep our motoring freedom and - for many - our jobs there are a multitude of devices out there to help spot speed traps.

Let me explain first the different types of trap a motorcar driver is likely to face on the road. Firstly, the traditional Gatso, a camera we are all familiar with that sits at the side of the road and takes a photograph of your car from the rear. This camera uses a radar signal bounced off the rear of a travelling vehicle to determine speed and takes two photographs of the moving vehicle; on the road, white lines are painted and are used to ensure the calibration of the camera is correct. The ensuing photograph shows the rear of the car and its number plate, the date and time of the offence and the speed of the travelling vehicle. Second, the other most common site on our roads is the Truvello: like the Gatso, this sits at the side of the road but facing towards the car this time. It doesn't use radar to track the vehicle, but two 'pads' secreted beneath the surface of the tarmac, with the offending vehicle's speed timed between the two over a very short distance and the photograph being taken a few feet further along (look out for several narrow white lines painted across the road just in front of the camera for your opportunity to smile politely). Rapidly growing in use are the SPECS system, cameras mounted high on gantries above the road and positioned usually two or three in a space of approximately one mile. SPECS take a photograph of each and every car that passes, regardless of the speed, and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software is used to identify the number plate and, apparently, check on the validity of that car's tax disc as well. As you pass the next SPECS camera your average speed between the two is calculated, and again the next one depending on how many are in use. A minimum of two SPECS cameras are all that is needed for a prosecution and if you sped up between the two this will be spotted and a Notice of Intended Prosecution will swiftly be on its way to you. The Mobile Laser trap: a common site on roads, speed camera departments regularly deploy white and yellow vans and park them on top of bridges, sides of roads, anywhere a clear shot at approaching vehicles can be obtained. The camera inside the van tracks vehicles speed using laser and if a vehicle is travelling above the target speed then a photo is swiftly taken and processed.

These are the most common form of camera you will come across, though Speedkerb and Watchman technologies are currently going through the approval process and may soon be on our streets alongside the above.

Traditional radar detectors are becoming less and less useful in a motorists arsenal. The X- and K-bands often detected by these devices are no longer regularly used by law enforcement agencies and are more likely to be triggered by motion detectors on traffic lights and automatic shop doors than on any speed trap. This often results in false alerts being emitted and drivers ignoring potential warnings of speed. Of the above, only Gatso cameras can be detected by traditional radar detectors but often not until the driver is upon the camera itself, or mobile laser vans, though to be fair by the time your device has warned you that you are being tracked by a laser camera the chances are your photograph has already been taken and the ticket is already being processed. Laser needs just a second to complete its actions, during which time the driver needs to have reacted to the warning and slowed down significantly to prevent prosecution; sadly, an unlikely event. The other methods of detecting speeding mentioned above don't eminate any form of radar signal and are therefore undetectable by traditional methods.

Road Angel is different. Rather than searching for archaic signals that are likely to produce false alerts than positive results, this device uses Satellite Navigation to identify your location and compare it to a built-in database of known camera and speed trap locations. If you are approaching an area known to have a camera in it, the device will start to alert you as you approach, within pre-defined distances of 1km, 500 metres or 250 metres, which you set yourself to your preference. Personally, I find that 250 meters is plenty of warning for me to slow down on approach to a camera. The device also knows where the most common serious accident blackspots are and alerts you to those as well, allowing you to slow down or be more cautious before you have a serious accident.

Sitting in the middle of your dashboard, the Road Angel is able to detect your speed from the satellites and gives a more accurate representation of your speed in a digital format on its display than your speedometer usually will. The display is a calm green usually matching the interior display of your car but as soon as the device knows you are in a danger area the display turns a bright red and you are given audible warnings to identify that you are getting closer to the danger zone. When you are in the area itself the display will flash to attract your attention as well. During the alert process, as well as the increasing audible alerts, the display also shows a bar representing the distance from the camera, and across the top of the display it will tell you what type of danger you are approaching: fixed camera, average speed camera, known mobile camera zone, accident blackspot.

So how easy is it to use? Well, straight out of the box the device needs registering online. If this isn't done it won't work, but the advantage is that if the device is ever stolen Blackspot.com can disable it if you provide them with the registered serial number. It also needs to have the database installed, which is done via software downloaded from Road Angel's website; you connect the device to your computer via a supplied USB cable and then the software does the rest. However, I did find this process a little awkward and the instructions are not clear; if you aren't familiar with computer software you might find yourself having to talk with Blackspot's support department for help, especially if - like me - you have a conflicting driver problem the first time you install. Fortunately, I was able to rectify this problem quickly and the device then downloaded the database without any problems.

It is recommended that if you drive regularly you update the database at least once a week; just repeat the initial implementation process to get up-to-date information. Should you discover a new camera whilst driving along, or find one has been taken away, two buttons on the device (STORE and DELETE) allow you to easily change the database in the device at the press of a button and the next time you synchronise this information will be checked by Blackspot and then replicated to other users of Road Angel.

The device does also come with a laser detector which you can choose whether to have or not - as mentioned above, sadly when a laser alert is detected there is precious little that you can do about it, but it is always better to be aware that you've been caught than find an unexpected prosecution notice in the post a few days later. Sometimes you might get lucky, though, and detect a stray signal from the car in front who's being targeted, and get your speed down in time...

The Classic Road Angel is coming down in price now and costs roughly £349 for the unit itself including one year's subscription to the database; competing units are typically starting at £400 and above, including Blackspot's newer Road Angel, which is a similar device but looks a lot slinkier and includes the time and a compass on the digital display. Additionally, rather than 'beeping' an alert, the newer unit can alert you using the pre-recorded voice of television's Tiff Needell. Personally, apart from the look of it, I'd rather stick with the classic unit...

After the first year you will need to renew your subscription to the database, which costs £49 per year, £75 for two, or £99 for a lifetime's membership. If you're a heavy road user I don't think that's a large price to pay to safeguard your license.

For those worried about the ethics of such a device, owning and using a radar detector or speed camera detector has been legal since 1998 and those statisticians reckon that this device helps reduce accidents by 50% and speeding offences by 74%, making us better, safer and more aware drivers.

Ironic, then, that I got my Road Angel *after* I got rid of my Subaru high-performance vehicle and replaced it with a lumbering four-by-four! 

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