Strange one Thursday night coming home from Hertford. About 10:30, joined the A10 at the A414 junction, police Astra was stopped in the left lane at the lights on the roundabout as I came round in the right. Lights changed just as I reached them so I didn’t have to stop, went past him, indicated left and went down the slip road, two lanes all the way so no problem there. Saw him in my mirror starting down the slip so did everything right, onto A10, accelerate up to 70, bimble along left lane. After a couple of miles my speed had crept up a little to 75-ish where the motor’s a tad smoother but I was still behaving knowing he was back there. All of a sudden he comes haring up the outside, gives me a single whoop on the siren and one flash of the blues and belts past making ‘slow down’ gestures, pulls in in front so I put the indicator on to go into the approaching lay-by in but he doesn’t stop and I follow him at a sensible distance and at the limits all the way to the lights at Cheshunt where he stops in the right-turn lane. As I pull up alongside and flip up the visor he winds down the passenger side window (only one officer in the car) and says, to my complete astonishment, “Keep the speed down, you were doing over 90 along there.” Bollox was I, I’m not that daft knowing the bill’s behind me! Fortunately I was too gobsmacked to say anything, eventually I managed an “Ok, sorry, thanks ossifer” of some sort and then my lights changed and I went. Still not quite sure what to make of it, he must have been doing 90-odd to catch me up but that doesn’t mean I was. Least he didn’t want to make an issue of it.
Or H is quicker than I think and my speedo’s f*cked.
that would be a wounder, your speedo reading 70 when you’re rocking at 90!
get a mate to do speed tests along side, or grab a tomtom which gives you your speed via satellite positioning (anyone know how accurate that is by the way?)
have had the ol’ ‘we had to do 80mph to catch you’. well of course you fecking did you muppet. you went from a standing start on a side road when i was travelling at 40 when i passed you. if you did 40mph you’d never reached me c0ckbreath
I have checked my car speedo against my satnav in the past and found that it reads about 7-8% fast. So when the speedo says 70 I am doing more like 64-65 real mph.
I think, by law speedos are allowed to read up to 10% over but not under at all. An easy check is to go through one of those electric “SLOW DOWN 30” signs bang on 30 and see if it sets it off. They’re fairly accurate - though beware that they may themselves be set slightly under 30.
Possibly the officer in question was bored, or having a bad day.
If he was in an Astra I doubt it was equipped to accuratly measure your speed. One of our boys in blue may well be able to give you a more appropriate response.
Exactly, it is not a traffic car, so does not have a calibrated speedo, so can only nick you for speeding if you are daft enough to go along with his claim . . .
Some ordinary plods fancy getting into traffic and they may try to get a few traffic type nicks under the old belt to impress the relevant boss plod
Had mine checked on a dyno at the Ace a few moths ago and the genuine sped was 160mph but the speedo was showing 178mph so 10% over read is accurate for mine.
On a quiet stretch get down to 60kph ( about 40 ) if your speedo reads it
start counting to 60 ( you know with the right pauses - 1 elephat, 2 elephant, 3 elephant ) if your speed is dead on you sould pass the 10th marker when you say “60 Elephant”
Or you could do it at 120kph ( 80mph ish ) - of course you need 20 markers ( or 10 if you count for 30 seconds )
If your given a ticket by a standard plod car for speeding you will find that they will go to thier local Traffic base and get thier car calibrated by being followed by a calibrated Traffic vehicle.
This is enough to confirm your speeding.
Not often used but does get used by keen Plod wanting to get onto Traffic.
As for this particular scenario i don’t know why you were accused for doing 90 when your adamant you weren’t…but i suppose you had to be there!
Satnav is ok as long as your on a flat surface…they don’t take into account hills and other uneven surfaces…which will give an inaccurate reading.
(for those of you with Satnav next time your going down hill look at the two speeds…your satnav will be noticeably slower than your speedo)
