MACCLESFIELD Silk Road/Mill Lane fixed RED LIGHT CAMERA.

OK! so I have kind of "Semi-scanned" the Traffipax manual now!

And dont the layout of the camera according to guidelines! and this JUNCTION is AS SUSPECTED BY SIMPLE HUMAN INTELLECT AND INTUATION... - A total screw up!

When you find the proper LAY of the camera, there are major mistakes galore! you have CARS DRIVING to the left of the CAMERA HOUSING WITHIN 10METERS, where CURB is SUPPOPSED TO RUN STRAIGHT & NO PARKED CARS AT ALL (Local parks there as well as cars passing!)

ALSO the RUN-IN to the set up, is completely wrong! you have vehicles literally CROSSING LANES, not straight AT ALL! and there is as suspected a LARGE AREA OF AMBIGUITY where its NO-MANS-LANE as "no true lane divisions exist!" to determine which lane is which!

ALSO, there are NUMEROUS REFLECTIVE OBJECTS IN THE CAMERA VIEW which are NOT ALLOWED! (probably why they arent using the flash) and why the UNDER SIDE of the van is in SHADOW making distance difficult to determine!

The MAJOR THING is that BENT REFLECTINS can result in the DISTANCES between the PHOTOS being WRONG! and that is EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED IN MINE! when I did the calculations!

Its all here! The worst possible set up! Do police Chiefs just like to "break the rules" to see what they can get away with?! Like there is "nothing they cannot do" as a "challenge" ?

Then a "boomerang story in the newspaper as well i read!

Unless it is in fact run off the grid under the road. but requested set up plans have not yet been sent.

The timing on these traffic lights has been changes TWICE since I spoke to the Traffic Light Maagement officers.

And some added points on evidence presented and speedometers

Here, i filmed the traffic lights again on Saturday 02 April 2016.

You can see with the stopwatch... how your constant changes in speed cover slightly different distances (obviously) (by only a few mph (1-3mph even!)and its a constant change in momentum as well. so you could easily guess wrong by 0.7 seconds, especially as the curve of the road by the traffic lights with the camera is deceptive of distance.





And The traffic light times this visit are 3.4, 3.4, 3.3 & 3.1 seconds.

And the video speed appears correct on playback...

So it seems the traffic lights are slightly LONGER TIMES than 3.0 seconds (which the council are allowed up to 3.75 seconds even! of error)

So and error of 0.3 seconds is about halfway into my first photo time of 0.7 seconds!


This is for the stopwatch places on the video of:

17.6-21.3 (3.3s)
5.8-9.2 (3.4s)
17.5-20.9 (3.4s)
and from behind the bus 16.2-19.3 (3.1s)

Also note that on the one when i am driving towards the traffic lights... 4 meters looks a lot shorter from further away..

XL filters

See you can get extra large traffic light filters. Really traffic lights next to all give way filter lanes (Like the Macclesfield traffic lights) SHOULD have bigger filters as well, so as not to confuse drivers. This happens many places when you continue straight on but side lane traffic lights are on red... you can think.. Hmmm should i stop now? err nope thats for right turn!

(NOTE* since making this post I have been to measure the traffic light warning sign accurately at just under the 150yds! But still claim it should be placed 85m which is 71 yds! According to the manual?! I am still looking into this later in the thread now..so bear with me)

Another look into the placement of the traffic light warning sign

I used this example as an evaluation sign... where it seems to question the need for a sign at all.



With my (really slow) look at the manual.. next to the house (by co-incidence) has a "beware rotveiller dog" sign outside and by co-incidence the people had just got back in while i was parked there filming the sign! also a guy walking down the road, with a red top on and strangely one shoulder was larger than the other one!? as if he had something under his shirt, or else a bigger shoulder blade?! lol. anyway..



So, Really this sign is in place because of the parked cars. But doesnt that mean that there should be a traffic light warning sign on every single road before traffic lights that doesnt have double yellow lines or no-stopping?!

BUT, if you notice, they have put ANOTHER set of HIGHER HEIGHT lights up. So why require the sign?! Also.. i dont even know when these lights were placed, because I Think they are quite new!?

The fact that they use YARDS and can place the sign anywhere they want does not add clarity to the placement guides and helping to judge distance. Also you have the curve of the road to consider as well.

With these points in mind, we can go back to the Macclesfield instance... And that Traffic light warning sign of 150yds placed with the POLICE ENFORCEMENT SIGN..

Now.... the Traffic light sign placement guidelines in the manual have different figures for SPEED LIMIT. but the 85 meters distance is clearly in the LOWER catergory. YET, in this instance at Macclesfield the sign is located BEFORE A CHANGE IN SPEED LIMIT!

IT CHANGES PERCENTILE of speed AFTER THE SIGN! And the signs should have been set to the specifications (in my opinion) to be placed AFTER the change in speed limit, NOT BEFORE, because it is a DIFFERENT PERCENTILE of road section!

ALSO the road bends on APEX (as someone has put a mountain sign on the mill wall to point out themselves) and the visibility of (both) left & right traffic light signal is for further back on that percentile.

ALSO if you look from ABOVE you will see that on google maps the road is curved, and this is in fact in a way, a homage to the curve of the mill lane traffic light bent road itself. To measure the distances you need to measure a curved line.

150 yds is 137 meters



202yds?



This is 85 meters, but doesnt look very far at all... the visibility distance is for the next percentile up, though (refer back to manual)

85 meters is 93 yds



Draw curved measurements not straight1 but this is the approximate true visibility distance of the the first traffic lights, depending on exactly where on the "CURVE" you deem either ONE or BOTH signals completely visible from.



AND according to google maps measurements.. that 150yds traffic light warning sign is in fact placed

202yds!! ? from the lights, not 150yds?! so that is another error, besides the fact the sign is placed outside of the 30mph limit percentile area, which ends exactly as you have passed through the Mill lane set of traffic lights further on!





And if you think that was a crap measurement effort for my first attempt in drawing that line to work out the traffic light warning sign visibility distance evaluations then what about THIS slightly curved road, with a straight line through it for RadAr measurements! nowhere near as BENT as Macclesfield traffic lights road, but STILL NOT STRAIGHT!

Here is an American gatso example...

As you see America's roads are newer and straighter than UK roads... Also there seems less attention to security on the cameras. And that is because less people in America walk near freeways or much at all unless around local neighbourhoods. Thus its less likely for America's to even stop near speed cameras.



This is a mobile camera unit, looks like a roof unit, but still no stabilization. See the freeway is straight with multiple lanes




Here, this is the A19 see across the other side a little patch where I talked to a speed camera operator. He shouldn't have really been parked there, but see the road is straight at least.



I am now starting to question the straightness of the road at both Haslingden and Ossett bypass! Because BOTH those roads are BENT exactly where I was speed measured! By Robert Halsted and Callaghan! Thus the DISTANCE could effect the reading because you are not driving a straight line. Most people state that this will reduce the speed reading, resulting in a lower speed because the camera van is positioned at an angle to the side of the road... But I am thinking about the radar squeeze of a longer distance into a shorter length... But the radar effect is supposed to be from the shift of the planes on the vehicle turning. So what about the axis of the actual registration plate? Or entire front of the vehicle? The length of the bumper?

Anyway..I will go check the roads on Google maps.

Here is a example of wheel size... I still need to do an experiment with the Speedo reading and wheel size changes.