New 3D cameras to check car speed, insurance tax and seatbelt

We know that the government are constantly looking for new ways to improve and catch out bad motorists. New schemes and ideas are discussed on a regular basis but like everything else, research and planning costs money and unless an idea is sure to work, the government will not provide funding. A new speed camera has been unveiled and although it is still at the testing stages, it's set to change the way drivers are caught here and abroad.

As you have probably seen in the news thousands of speeding cameras have been taken down across the country as it has been deemed that it was too expensive to run and no longer an efficient way of spending money. Now it seems there is one camera that will do it all. It will be in 3D and it will be able to use licence plate recognition to check insurance, tax, speeding, check if seatbelt is in use and also measure the distance between vehicles to check if they are being tail gated. Costing around £50,000, the camera can run for 8 hours before the need to charge and images and data are automatically sent to computers as they are being captured so any offence can be investigated and dealt with quicker. All data captured that does not show any offences will be destroyed after one month; if the trial in Finland is successful then they will be implemented in the UK as well as other European countries as early as 2013.

This is the first camera of its kind to capture everything from speeding to insurance; currently the cameras used in the UK have different cameras for recording different offences. The most commonly spotted camera that is in a bright yellow box is the speed camera; on the motorway other cameras are in place to check tax and insurance are up to date. Also at the moment there are no cameras that take pictures inside a moving vehicle to see if everyone is wearing a seatbelt and it is up to vigilant police officers to spot this offence.

The government do not expect this to be another way to fleece motorists of money but simply to deter drivers from committing such offences. These cameras will be harder to spot from some distance away as it is not bright yellow like the current ones. They will be able to capture images from as far as 150ft away. So bearing this in mind, there will be many unsuspecting motorists who will be caught out because they were not able to detect the camera in time.