Yet More Speed Cameras On The M25

Oh joy! London’s finest orbital motorway, the M25, has just received its latest batch of speed cameras, on the section I used nearly every day for the best part of 10 years. These new speed cameras on M25 are of the SPECS type, which measure average speed and look like this:

They can be found just between Junctions 27 and 28 on the anti-clockwise section, and are there for the usual old chestnut of ’safety and easing congestion’. Yeah right.

This section is between the junctions for the M11 and the A12 and is regularly at a standstill due to the weight of traffic, and I have seen some spectacular crashes on this section (thankfully avoided) as well as spending many hours appreciating the countryside whilst stuck in a jam. So yes, it is busy and it is congested, but perhaps the most pertinent point is that in the past this style of camera has raised over £250,000 of fines in a single day!

These cameras work through numberplate recognition, and then measure the average speed of your car, over the distance between the cameras. So it is possible to hammer past the first one at 80, as long as you can do the mental arithmetic necessary to get your average speed down across the whole set. Which of course means that people will approach the first camera too fast, jam on the brakes, causing a ripple in traffic leading to jams and plenty of rear-end shunts.

But then, this government is less concerned with our safety and comfort, and far more concerned with fining us all for everything, raising huge amounts of cash to bloat their salaries, and the type of pension funds now denied to the rest of us. But that’s a whole other blog!

This is a sponsored post, and was a particular pleasure!