Gadgetory

the simplest kind of speed camera is basically a radar gun on a stick but those are easy for the speeder to beat slow down for a few hundred yards and then pick it up again so the new trend in u.s. speed cameras may soon be corridor averaging with ALPR cameras those are automatic license plate recognition now if you're one of our UK viewers none of this is new to you having debuted back in Scotland in 2004 here's how corridor averaging in a LPR is used a camera recognizes your car's license plate at one point on the road as you drive down the road further additional cameras recognize your plate again and again and record it each time with a time standard since the distance between those cameras and the times at which they spotted you is known a little simple math results in an average speed and potentially a ticket one of the first major US tests of corridor averaging with a LPR was in Montgomery County Maryland which added the tech to its standard speed cameras in 2012 the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has since used it as a study base and just released a few numbers they estimate these cameras generated about a 30% decrease in fatalities and serious injuries that would mean 21,000 fewer deaths and serious injuries if this was used nationwide and that in Montgomery County fatalities and serious injuries fell 27% even on nearby roads where these cameras weren't specifically being used a spillover effect because I know you're wondering Montgomery County posts the location of all of its speed cameras on a County webpage they're moved regular and you can be sure that drivers share those locations on crowd-sourced nav apps like Waze and there is of course a vigorous debate as to whether some municipalities sneakily deploy traffic cams to generate more revenue than speed reductions and in some states notably California this corridor averaging license plate camera technology is expressly prohibited as a speed trap for now at least it pays to double check what kind of speed cameras are in use where you travel and not give them a reason to notice you at all or car tech demystified right now at CNET on cars.com click on car tech 101