The great speed gun scandal
Speed demon? Tests show gun is faulty
This is the heart-stopping moment every motorist dreads. As you drive along the road, a police officer points a laser speed gun towards you.
Glancing at the dashboard, you breathe a sigh of relief: the speedometer reveals that your car is travelling below the 30mph limit. But a month later, a letter drops through your door. You face a fine for speeding and penalty points on your licence.
It is claimed that you were driving at 41mph - not 28mph. Can that high speed really be true? Staggeringly, the answer may be no.
Motorists accused of driving too fast on Britain's roads insist the real culprit is a laser speed gun officially approved by the Home Office and used by almost every police authority in the country. For the Mail has discovered that the LTI 20.20.gun is seriously flawed.
In our tests, it wrongly recorded a wall as travelling at 44mph, an empty road scored 33mph, a parked car was clocked as doing 22mph and a bicycle (in reality being ridden at 5mph) rocketed along at an impossible 66mph.
Imported from America, the LTI 20.20. is used in nearly 3,500 mobile speed units hidden in police vans or cars and mounted on motorbikes.
Speed traps - nearly half of which now use laser gun technology - reap more than £100 million each year in fines. This is shared between the police, the Highways Agency, the courts, the Home Office and local authorities.
Ironically, some of the huge sum is used to pay for even more police speed reinforcement teams relying on exactly the same laser speed gun at the centre of the Mail's investigation.
Rigorous tests
We subjected the speed gun to rigorous tests. Alarmingly, we discovered it was prone to wildly wide-of-the-mark readings, even when set up according to the police's own guidelines and the manufacturer's handbook.
In other tests, we found the equipment was measuring the speed of overtaking cars instead of the one being targeted.
Today, the Mail can expose the scandal of a speed enforcement industry in which the collection of fines is considered paramount - whatever the consequences for innocent drivers caught in police traps by faulty readings.
In the past nine years, an extraordinary one-in-five drivers has been fined for speeding, despite many protesting their innocence.
Lawyers we spoke to say motorists are now rebelling by refusing to pay fines and fighting their cases through the courts.
One voicing concern is Barry Culshaw, a Southampton solicitor currently acting for 15 drivers nationwide. "They complain of huge errors," he says. "Drivers say they were within the speed limit and yet the LTI 20.20. recorded them doing excessive speed."
Another disquieting discovery is that vital video film - often taken at a speed-trap site for use as secondary evidence - is often mysteriously withheld from motorists by the Crown Prosecution Service.
On at least ten occasions the Crown has suddenly dropped the case against a motorist when ordered by a judge to hand over the telling footage.
Michael Morgan, who runs a British website collating complaints against laser speed guns, said: "The authorities often wriggle rather than release the video, which would expose the laser gun to scrutiny in a court of law. No doubt they fear the enormous consequences, including a clamour for fine refunds and compensation over the loss of licences or even livelihoods."
Expert witnesses compromised
Alarmingly, the Mail can reveal, too, that the main expert witness used by the CPS to convict motorists in such cases - a former police officer named Frank Garratt - also makes his living as boss of the company importing the devices into Britain. Perhaps not surprisingly, Mr Garratt, a millionaire, told the Mail the LTI 20.20. works perfectly well.
One of the gun's toughest critics is Dr Michael Clark, Europe's leading expert on laser technology. He is a former company director of a British firm making laser detection equipment for traffic lights and car parks.
Dr Clark was clocked, apparently speeding, by a laser gun three years ago. He fought his case through the courts, proving he was travelling below the limit. He has acted as an expert witness on behalf of many motorists since.
"I was drawn into this controversy because I know about laser science. I do not rely on my court appearances or the speed enforcement industry to make a living," he told the Mail when we asked him to help - without payment - in our experiments.
Dr Clark says that the gun is defective because its wide beam can easily pick up the wrong vehicle. Furthermore, if the device is not held firmly on the target - and this is a difficult task - it can produce an erroneous speed result by "slippage".
Reflections from road signs and from other cars - even one stationary on the kerbside - can also make the laser gun misinterpret the truth.
THIS IS AN ABRIDGED VERSION OF THE STORY THAT APPEARED IN THE DAILY MAIL.
Plus don't forget the tractor in Ireland clocked doing about 80mph
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