159 Miles per Hour? Not Likely
Here’s a nice little news item to brighten a Monday morning. A trucking fleet owner has one of his trucks captured by an unmanned speed camera at 247 km/h … that’s about 159 mph for the Metrically challenged.
The fine and subsequent insurance problems could have put a real dent in his November profits and the driver .. he probably would have been lucky to get away without jail time.
the ace in the hole was an on board GPS tracker that showed the truck was doing on 80 clicks .. about 50 mph.
You’ll notice the weasel wording about how the court wouldn’t have accepted the proof from the owner unless the device had been calibrated, yada yada yada, but guess what? The charge went away. years before I was in the GPS business I used to calibrate radar speed guns and was often called upon as an expert witness. Even in cases of obvious malfunctions of equipment, courts almost never acknowledge them. They just dismiss the case or find another excuse to let the driver off.
Many GeoTab customers have had the same kind of experience. The use of these speed cameras is rampant in England and other former British colonies and the horror stories about their inaccuracy abound. A simple on board device that tracks speed to GPS accuracy (within a 10th of a mile per hour) can often mean the difference between profit and loss for a month.
Perhaps it’s only coincidence that my flagship GeoTab product originated in South Africa … tracking diamond carriers and gold ore trucks?