Gatso
Encyclopedia
Brand
The American Marketing Association defines a brand as a "Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers."...
that Gatsometer BV use on their traffic enforcement cameras, most notably their speed cameras
Speed limit enforcement
Speed limit enforcement is the action taken by appropriately empowered authorities to check that road vehicles are complying with the speed limit in force on roads and highways. Methods used include roadside speed traps set up and operated by the police and automated roadside 'speed camera'...
and red light camera
Red light camera
A red light camera is a traffic enforcement camera that captures an image of a vehicle which has entered an intersection against a red traffic light. By automatically photographing vehicles that run red lights, the camera produces evidence that assists authorities in their enforcement of traffic laws...
s. The most commonly encountered Gatso speed cameras emit radar
Radar
Radar is an object-detection system which uses radio waves to determine the range, altitude, direction, or speed of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The radar dish or antenna transmits pulses of radio...
beams to measure the speed of a passing vehicle. If it is travelling above the preset trigger speed, one or two photographs are taken (depending on the device's setting, which generally depends on the requirements of the local jurisdiction). These use a powerful flash, to show the rear of the vehicle, its registration plate, and calibration lines on the road (in many jurisdictions). Newer installations used digital cameras which have limited exposure latitude compared to wet film, these installations use an auxiliary flash placed close to the position where a speeding vehicle would exit the radar beam and the first photograph would be taken.
Operation
Gatso installations in the UK and in Queensland, Australia are characterised by a measurementMeasurement
Measurement is the process or the result of determining the ratio of a physical quantity, such as a length, time, temperature etc., to a unit of measurement, such as the metre, second or degree Celsius...
strip on the road surface, which is a series of white lines painted on the road, which are used with two photographs taken by the camera. If the camera is set to take two photographs, with a known time interval between them, this time interval will be 0.5 or 0.7 seconds - 0.5 is better for high speed roads and 0.7 better for low speed roads. The vehicle's position, relative to the white road markings in the two photographs, can be used to calculate the vehicle speed. In the UK, the evidence is only admissible in court if the speed measured by the radar and the speed calculated from the distance travelled between the photographs agrees within 10%. The speed indicated by the radar unit is too unreliable to be used as the sole means of evidence as it is prone to error due to multiple reflections etc. Further, it does not distinguish between multiple vehicles in shot.
UK deployment
The Department of Transport took an interest and a trial was sponsored by that Department involving the Home Office and the Metropolitan Police
Metropolitan police
Metropolitan Police is a generic title for the municipal police force for a major metropolitan area, and it may be part of the official title of the force...
. The operational base was at the West London Traffic Unit. Roger Reynolds a Police Sergeant (later to become President of the Royal Photographic Society
Royal Photographic Society
The Royal Photographic Society is the world's oldest national photographic society. It was founded in London, United Kingdom in 1853 as The Photographic Society of London with the objective of promoting the Art and Science of Photography...
) undertook operational trials of the equipment and, by adjusting the camera controls, managed to use Colour film for the first time replacing black and white film.
The first controlled junction was at the Hanger Lane Gyratory, on the A406 North Circular Road
A406 road
The A406 or the North Circular Road is a road which crosses North London, UK, linking West and East London. It, together with the South Circular Road, forms a ring road through the inner part of Outer London...
southbound at its junction with the A40 Western Avenue. This junction was then followed by the A501 Marylebone Road
Marylebone Road
Marylebone Road is an important thoroughfare in central London, within the City of Westminster. It runs east-west from the Euston Road at Regent's Park to the A40 Westway at Paddington...
at its junction with Gloucester Place. A further installation was commissioned on the eastbound A40 at its junction with Long Lane (Hillingdon). After the camera units were deployed there was a significant improvement in accident rates in their vicinity.
The Police Camera team developed paper handling systems using (then) current process and later laid down systems to incorporate conditional offer fixed penalty systems. The processes developed by the team formed the basis of similar systems, used and modified by other police forces. Also a member of the Team travelled to Hong Kong and assisted in the introduction of cameras there.
Speed cameras were also evaluated by the Metropolitan police team for their speed limit
Road speed limits in the United Kingdom
Road speed limits in the United Kingdom are used to define the maximum legal speed limit for road vehicles using public roads in the UK, and are one of the measures available to attempt to control traffic speeds. The speed limit in each location is indicated on a nearby traffic sign or by the...
enforcement
Road speed limit enforcement in the United Kingdom
Road speed limit enforcement in the United Kingdom is the action taken by appropriately empowered authorities to attempt to persuade road vehicle users to comply with the speed limits in force on the UK's roads...
capabilities before the system was rolled out. The linear markings suggested by the team are now an integral part of the camera site marking.
The Team that introduced the system and the engineers of the Department of Transport, as road safety specialists, were keen to use the equipment to change driver behaviour and thus improve road safety. However strategic control of cameras later moved to the newly created Safety Camera Partnerships who appear to have restricted warnings and reduced prosecution thresholds.
Gatso cameras in the UK previously had deployment requirements, in common with all fixed speed camera types operated in the UK by Safety Camera Partnership
Safety Camera Partnership
A Safety Camera Partnership is a local multi-agency partnership between Local Government, police authorities, HMCS, Highways Agency and the National Health Service within the United Kingdom...
s (SCPs) under the National Safety Camera Programme (NSCP). They had to be marked, made visible, located in places with a history of serious accidents, and where there was evidence of a speeding problem, or where was a local community concern.
Since April 2007 however, such requirements have been removed. It is still recommended that cameras be made visible and roads with fixed ones, clearly signed, but they can now be placed at any location, regardless of its crash history. Cameras operated solely by the Police, outside of the NSCP schemes, do not need to comply with visibility requirements.
The funding arrangements for SCPs also changed in April 2007. SCPs no longer keep the funds from speeding fines, instead an annual 'road safety grant' is given to local authorities directly, who can choose whether or not to invest it in these partnerships.
Concerns have been raised that the powerful flash
Flash (photography)
A flash is a device used in photography producing a flash of artificial light at a color temperature of about 5500 K to help illuminate a scene. A major purpose of a flash is to illuminate a dark scene. Other uses are capturing quickly moving objects or changing the quality of light...
used when the cameras trigger may dazzle drivers travelling in the opposite direction. The flash on the Truvelo Combi is fitted with a magenta gel to obviate this issue.
Gatsometer BV
It is manufactured by the DutchNetherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
company GATSOmeter BV. The company's history started with a device invented by the late champion rally driver Maurice Gatsonides
Maurice Gatsonides
Maurice Gatsonides was a Dutch rally driver and inventor. Gatsonides was born in Central Java in the former Dutch East Indies...
. He used the device to record his speeds as he drove through various curves and other road configurations, so that he could review his line and speed so as to optimise his performance in future races. The company was later formed to market the devices as police speed enforcement tools and remains largely a family concern with two Gatsonides among the five directors.
The company's products, particularly the "Gatsometer 24", have achieved such a high level of market penetration in certain European countries that the term "Gatso" has become synonymous with "speed camera" across a significant proportion of Europe. Historically, the company has had less success marketing its products in the USA, where it operated initially through agents or by selling its cameras to other companies that would integrate them into larger systems for customers. The most notable installed base of Gatsometer products in the USA is that in and around Washington DC. However, Gatsometer BV now has an American subsidiary, in the form of GATSO-USA, which now markets the company's products direct and competes with the other speed/red-light camera companies active in the North American market.