Transport authority to buy speed guns

Tickets-happy wardens will have a new toy - speed guns - with which to annoy motorists, with the Malta Transport Authority (ADT) aiming to invest heavily in them to curb over-speeding.

The Speed Detection and Data Collection System, as the speed guns are known, is a hand-held device giving pinpoint target identification, and allowing the operator to select specific target vehicles from a group up to 550 metres away, a spokesman for the authority said.

The maximum speed limit on the roads is 80 kilometres per hour, unless there are signs indicating otherwise. The spokesman said motorists have to watch out for signs laying down the speed limit in effect in an area.

The spokesman said the speed gun operates in all weather conditions. It works by transmitting a continuous stream of laser pulses. She explained that when each pulse is transmitted, a clock starts, and this measures the time taken for the beam to reach its target and reflect it back. She said these times are relevant to the range using the known speed of light as a constant.

"As a target moves in relation to the gun, the change in range is measured hundreds of times a second. The gun determines the speed of travel from these data and displays it with the range on a constantly updating display and in the viewfinder," she explained.

The guns will be manned by authority enforcement officers, and eventually by wardens, she said.

To date, the spokesman said, enforcement cameras were put up at a number of places in Malta, and the authority is holding discussions with local enforcement systems for the installation of speed and other enforcement cameras in various other roads.

Speed cameras in the UK have until recently been placed only where there have been a minimum number of injury-causing accidents - at least four deaths or serious injuries, or eight injuries of any severity, in the previous three years. The casualties must have happened within one kilometre of the site.

But the policy has over the past months been modified, with police and local authorities secretly allowed to place hundreds of speed cameras at locations without a history of road casualties, according to The Times of London.

A new, unannounced policy is also to give consideration to a community's demands for a camera when there is evidence that speeding is worrying residents. But the Association of Chief Police Officers has urged ministers to announce the revised guidelines, The Times reported.

"We need to get it out into the public arena because otherwise we can be accused of trying to hide something," association camera liaison officer Ian Bell said.

Excessive use of speed cameras is thought to be destroying the relationship between the police and Britain's 32 million motorists. The Police Federation, representing 136,000 officers, said it believed that some roadside cameras were being used simply to raise money.

Officers are bearing the brunt of a public backlash against cameras and are regularly called money grabbers by the public, the federation said, according to The Times. The AA Motoring Trust said speed enforcement policies risked alienating the public, when the public's support for traffic policing was essential.

The Malta Transport Authority spokesman said about the policy followed here: "Speed cameras are installed in areas where there is a tendency for motorists to over-speed. It is hoped that the introduction of speed cameras in Malta will reduce casualties and fatalities."

Asked whether there were any guidelines stating that cameras should be installed in places where a number of accidents have taken place, the spokesman said the cameras would not necessarily be placed in "accident black spots".

Questioned about whether it is laid down that there should be signs indicating the presence of a speed camera, the spokesman said it was mandatory to have warning signs on the approach to a speed camera coverage area. She said the sign indicating the approach to a speed camera was standard.

The cameras, the spokesman said, took pictures of over-speeding vehicles showing the number plate of the offending vehicle.

The aim of having the cameras, the spokesman said, was to curb over-speeding and reduce the number of accidents.

Whether that will be the laudable aim of wardens, when they get the speed guns, remains to be seen.

Wardens are not well liked by the Maltese driver, who is however somewhat indisciplined. But wardens, said to be bound by a tickets quota, which has always been denied, issue tickets somewhat erratically, closing their eyes to offences in one area, but going on to ticket offenders for other infringements in the same area.

They are only emulating other law enforcers, however, as, for instance, residents in many streets in Malta who have strings to pull often have "Reserved" painted abusively in front of their house, which gives them permanent parking room on the public road, when other car-owning residents have to drive around seeking parking space.