May 15, 2017

Speed camera mistakenly fines a thousand cars

Filed under: Automobiles,IT by Orangemaster @ 9:56 pm

A Dutch speed camera in Alkmaar fined cars going through green and yellow lights by mistake because it literally had its wires crossed. Anyone who blew through red lights wasn’t punished at all in the meantime. This lasted a whole week in February, with almost 1300 cars getting fined 239 euro a piece for obeying the law.

After the speed camera was repaired, it simply wasn’t tested and the wires stayed crossed. The speed camera was eventually turned off in February and hasn’t been repaired since. According to RTL, it takes pictures if someone speeds, but does nothing for anyone blowing through red lights. The government has agreed to give people money back in the case of going through green and yellow lights.

Back in 2015 we told you about how rubbish Dutch speed cameras are with foreign plates, and told you that “speeding is dangerous, and apparently the Dutch government doesn’t feel that road safety is a priority.”

(Link: rtlnieuws.nl, Photo by Heiloo Online, some rights reserved)

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April 10, 2015

Dutch speed cameras rubbish with foreign plates

Filed under: Automobiles,IT by Orangemaster @ 10:16 am

Last year a friend asked me to check a series of fines he received from France in French (in error), stating he had to pay the maximum fine for speeding even though he never got the original fines, which were for a lot less. Although an administrative mess, at least French speed cameras can read Dutch license plates. It took the Netherlands until sometime last year to be able to properly read French license plates on speed cameras and stop being the laughing stock of French speed freaks.

However, we’re still laughing stock to anyone that doesn’t have a Dutch, French, Swiss, German or Belgian license plate: the software in Dutch speed cameras can’t read anything else. The Dutch government keeps making lame excuses, while other European countries seem to have figured out how speed camera software works.

This also means that Dutch speed cameras don’t fine the notoriously fast driving Poles, Romanians, Bulgarians and Latvians who probably know all this and not suffer the consequences. It also attracts comments about the Dutch ‘paying for everybody’s mistakes’, as it is easier to nail locals for speeding that trying to decipher a Polish or Latvian address and registration that cannot be easily checked on the side of the road.

Speeding is dangerous, and apparently the Dutch government doesn’t feel that road safety is a priority.

(Link: www.flitsservice.nl, Photo by Heiloo Online, some rights reserved)

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January 18, 2014

Live top speeds on Dutch motorways

Filed under: Automobiles by Branko Collin @ 1:52 pm

best-wel-snelThe site bestwelsnel.nl taps into the National Data Warehouse for Traffic Information (NDW) to bring you the top speeds registered on Dutch motorways.

The NDW registers speeds using over 24,000 detection loop pairs spaced 2.5 metres apart. Bestwelsnel.nl (the name means ‘quite fast’) displays three types of speeds: unconfirmed top speeds (grey), daily confirmed top speeds (green) and confirmed top speeds of all time (red, with all time meaning since 31 December 2013). A value counts as confirmed when it has been registered within the minute by two separate detection loop pairs that were no further than 5 kilometres apart.

In case you were wondering, the Netherlands does have a speed limit which varies depending on which stretch of motorway you are on, but the default (and highest limit) is 130 kilometres per hour. The values you see on bestwelsnel.nl all indicate speeding. The fine for going 39 kph over the speed limit on a motorway is 400 euro, if you go faster than that and get caught you have to appear before a judge.

This is an example of open data slowly getting more traction in the Netherlands—except in some cases it seems.

(Illustration: partial screen capture of bestwelsnel.nl)

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April 9, 2012

Dutch speeders can no longer be fined in Belgium

Filed under: Automobiles by Branko Collin @ 3:31 pm

An administrative change means that Dutch drivers caught on Belgian speeding cameras can no longer be sent a ticket, Gazet van Antwerpen reports.

Since January 1 the traffic authority RDW, which maintains a register of cars and their owners, no longer provides license plate data to the Belgian police.

Police chief Rudy Verbeeck told the paper: “As far back as September the federal police warned us that the Netherlands would switch to a single point of contact at the DIV [the Belgian traffic authority—Branko]. Half a year later the authority still hasn’t completed its transition. That is why we need to have Dutch speeders pulled over these days, otherwise we will never see the money we are owed.”

Apparently this is costing Belgium the fines of 100,000 Dutch speeders—the paper doesn’t mention across which time frame this was measured.

(Photo by Heiloo Online, some rights reserved)

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