[quote=“hsiadogah”][quote=“Ben”]
Most of the active cameras on the freeway now are the mobile units, so you don’t know where they are unless you have a good radar detector or you get a ticket.
[/quote]Those are bastards, and they are very good at camouflaging them. This stealth approach tells you they are more interested in revenue than deterrence/safety. Note that they have to deploy them and collect them, so they have to have a safe area to do so. Thus you never find them on overpasses, bridges or in tunnels. [/quote]
A lot of them are also just radar guns that are attached to the side of a highway patrol car. Of the active radar units on the freeway, I see those the most. Luckily, you can spot those a mile away, because they are white with red candy stripes, and have full light bars. Of the stealthy mobile units, if you have a sharp eye, you can still see them. They only set them up in predefined locations, so if you travel a road enough times, you will slowly know where to look.
The whole setup of the Taiwan traffic ticket system tells you that they only care about revenue, and not actual safety. How else can you have a system that, as long as you pay your tickets, there is no permanent record. There are no points on your license, no license suspensions, insurance never knows how many tickets you got, no traffic school, etc. Theoretically, if you had very deep pockets, and didn’t care, you could speed all you wanted, and just pay the fines every month and be done with it.
I know of at least one car club that goes out every now and then for high speed runs to the south and back (usually at night). As a precondition, each participant has already accepted that he will get several tickets in the process.
A lot of them are also just radar guns that are attached to the side of a highway patrol car.[/quote]
Yes mate, I wasn’t referring to those. Hardly counts as camouflaged! If you can’t see those, or can’t remember where they hole up, you shouldn’t be driving fast anyway
The tripod cameras they often disguise with a garbage sack or something you’d expect to be stashed under the armco… they’re much harder to spot.
The hardcore midnight runners will send a scout car down the freeway ahead of the ‘team’ element to sweep for cop cars and report their positions by cellphone or radio… They don’t just get speeding tickets if a group is spotted, there are extra fines for racing on public roads etc.
As to the fine vs. ban thing, back in day I knew a guy who was heavily into pigeon racing ( ) and I accepted a ride with him from Taipei to Tai\chung one day. He was cruising in his 300SEL at 160 to 200 trying to beat his birds home and we got pulled over maybe 6 or 7 times. Each time he reached into the glovebox for a ready-stuffed red envelope which he’d just hand out the window as the cop walked up, and not a word would be said. We were almost home when we got stopped one last time, but the envelopes were all used up. The cop wanted his license, but he didn’t have one on him, good chance he didn’t have one at all. Cop said he had to fork over some ID and go to traffic school. My friend replied that he didn’t have time for such nonsense and grabbed a manilla envelope out of the glovebox, and fished out about 50 ID cards. “These are my employees, one of them can go” he said, fanned them out like a hand of cards and invited to cop to choose one. I was imagining a trip to the station would follow this suggestion, but the cop just took one and wrote the unlucky employee a ticket for speeding…
Of course I doubt this sort of stunt would work these days, at least I hope not.
Anyone remember the story from a few years ago, busses were clocked going at 150KPH along Taipei streets. If you were changing lanes, the camera would get confused, interference from another camera or summit.
I don’t know if this is just Taiwan being Taiwan but I’ve been studying up for my drivers test and it seems that there is a system for points. It just isn’t used. Aparently when you get a speeding ticket you should get points as well. Get 6 points in a month and they suspend you license. Weird.
It’s hard to enforce the point system for the photo tickets, because you can’t prove who the driver of the car was at the time, so they don’t know who to give the points to in that case. They could try to pin it on the registered owner of the car, but that would cause a lot of uproar, since the driver is not always the registered owner in many cases.
It’s hard to enforce the point system for the photo tickets, because you can’t prove who the driver of the car was at the time, so they don’t know who to give the points to in that case. They could try to pin it on the registered owner of the car, but that would cause a lot of uproar, since the driver is not always the registered owner in many cases.[/quote]
Ben, why, this is precisely what most European countries do, it is up to the registered owner to either pay the fine and accept the points unless they can prove who the other driver was, or that the vehicle was stolen or similar.
To clarify, the US system does carry points also, but Taiwan does not, as long as you pay on time, which is in line with my original statement that Taiwan traffic tickets are more for revenue generation than for traffic safety.
IIRC they have a time limit within which they have to hit you with the ticket. Obviously, the longer it takes you to figure out the location of a camera, the more times you might speed through it, and the more money they can extract from you. Also, the less time you have before the ticket has to be paid, the more difficult (and thus unlikely) it is to find time to go to court and fight the ticket. They have no incentive to get the ticket to you earlier.
With regards to the photos taking a month…there was cop that set up his camera at the exit to a one way road and he’d taking pics of people entering the one way road the wrong way. There was a woman who lived on the street…and a month or two later she got roughly thirty tickets in the mail .
There are some cameras that never work I pass three of them daily…in my car and on my scooter. Never once have they taken my pic. And there are some cameras that don’t take pics of scooters…but will take pics of larger vehicles (or so it seems to me).
Here is a ticket I got:
And another (in the same spot as pic above):
And another:
When I do 70 in a 50 they take a pic…when I do 250 in a 100…no such luck. If they’re going to take my money they might as well give a worthy pic . And btw…70 in a 50 and 250 in a 100 would be the same fine.
it seems the cops have a new “extract even more money from big bikes” program… for the last few weeks they have been cops all over central and northern Taiwan hiding their scooters and themselves on the side of the road along popular bike routes and targeting only big bikes with laser speed guns…
you come cruising down 3 lane, wide open, empty road at 100km/h (even though it’s stupidly marked 50) and before you know it, there’s a semi inbred cop jumping out at you ready to extract another NT$1800 contribution to the police “computer games, gaoliang and high mountain tea” hong bao fund… a mate of mine’s been caught three weekends in a row…
[quote=“plasmatron”]it seems the cops have a new “extract even more money from big bikes” program… for the last few weeks they have been cops all over central and northern Taiwan hiding their scooters and themselves on the side of the road along popular bike routes and targeting only big bikes with laser speed guns…
you come cruising down 3 lane, wide open, empty road at 100km/h (even though it’s stupidly marked 50) and before you know it, there’s a semi inbred cop jumping out at you ready to extract another NT$1800 contribution to the police “computer games, gaoliang and high mountain tea” hong bao fund… a mate of mine’s been caught three weekends in a row… [/quote]
…and not to mention the cop with the dashing smile* we encountered on our way back yesterday…
a mouthful of binlang with some of it dried up in the corners of the mouth…and red teeth that have eroded from a lifetime’s binlang chewing…talk about a good way to represent the law!
) and I accepted a ride with him from Taipei to Tai\chung one day. He was cruising in his 300SEL at 160 to 200 trying to beat his birds home and we got pulled over maybe 6 or 7 times. Each time he reached into the glovebox for a ready-stuffed red envelope which he’d just hand out the window as the cop walked up, and not a word would be said. We were almost home when we got stopped one last time, but the envelopes were all used up. The cop wanted his license, but he didn’t have one on him, good chance he didn’t have one at all. Cop said he had to fork over some ID and go to traffic school. My friend replied that he didn’t have time for such nonsense and grabbed a manilla envelope out of the glovebox, and fished out about 50 ID cards. “These are my employees, one of them can go” he said, fanned them out like a hand of cards and invited to cop to choose one. I was imagining a trip to the station would follow this suggestion, but the cop just took one and wrote the unlucky employee a ticket for speeding…
)
. And btw…70 in a 50 and 250 in a 100 would be the same fine.