Quote: hampshireman wrote in post #3

---

I find I am travelling at about 63/64 on the speedo when reading 60 on the satnav and therefore passing all the big white boxes.

---

That sounds about right. As Martin said, car speedometers always over-read, and usually by about 5-7%. They have to over-read by law, and by no more than 10%.

The 10% bit tallies in part with the ACPO guidelines for speed camera trigger points, i.e. if you travel faster than 10% + 2mph more than the posted limit and get caught you can expect a brown envelope (or several burly rozzers wielding a sledge hammer) through the front door a few days later.

It isn't a hard and fast rule though, it's only a guideline to the individual forces. There are stories of Gwent police having adopted a zero-tolerance approach so that there is no leeway whatsoever, but I don't know how true they are. That wouldn't make any sense at all, not least because it would require you to drive with your nose on the steering wheel watching the speedometer so closely that you'd be far more likely to crash into a lamp post that you didn't see.

There are also stories of people having been done for 32mph in a thirty; "that's what it said on the ticket, see", including a bloke down our road who was going on about it in the pub.

Out of curiosity I rang the Chief Super in Worcester (in the days when you could actually do that instead of being sent down a button-pressing cul-de-sac at the behest of a County Council 'hub') and asked him.

He said it was horse feathers, and that there were no cameras in Worcestershire set to go off at less than the posted limit + 10% + 2mph.

He also said that if the geezer down the road was prepared to show him the ticket claiming he got done at 32 in Worcester, the Super would pay the fine himself


.