getting caught on a moped

Yes. However, if you're with other traffic with a bigger echo profile,
you'll probably get away with it. Your little echo - even if you're going
above the limit will get lost in the big echo of all the traffic going
slower. If you're on your own, the sensor only has you to focus on.

That's not down to the camera.

The speed of passing objects is detected with an echo sounder. (Look up
doppler effect for more info.) If a significant part of the echo indicates
a vehicle is speeding, two pictures are taken with a one second gap. The
speed indicated by the echo wavelength change can be confirm by some bored
bod back at plod HQ by studying the two photos and measuring the distance
traveled between them. If your number plate is visible and your distance
travelled indicated you were speeding you'll probably get a letter.

I ride in bus lanes around London all the time. I've never seen a bus lane
enforcement camera. If they exist they are either scarce or well hidden.
Either way, I've never been nicked for it.

 

They may eventually, the arseholes. I got done on Theobalds Road (Between
Bunhill Row and Goswell Rd) avoiding a taxi pulling over for a fare - on the
second photo you can see me leaning off the bike shouting at him. They were
having none of it, and the fine still stands - I won't pay it, that probably
makes me very naughty, but I get an eyelid twitch just thinking about it.

Neil

 

I got nicked by a camera in one last month.

 

"Dinosaurs, get your lovely dinosaurs here"

 

Not in Bristol you don't

 

That's a bummer. I'd better watch for that then.

Actually, I'm inclined not to GAF. It is stupid that bikes can't routinely
use bus lanes. It's not like we're going to get in the way.

Petty officials making rules without a clue need a poke in the eye.

 

Be aware that bus operators can and do submit evidence of bus lane
infringements taken from the forward and rear facing cameras that are on
every bus in London (and in other major UK cities too). However, this
is normally only pursued in very "extreme" cases (e.g. some fuckwit
parks his car in a bus lane adjacent to a traffic island while he goes
shopping and holds up a bus for 15 minutes) at the moment because it's a
bit inconvenient to get the footage off the buses.

When I've finished developing the wireless-networking functionality that
means hard disk caddies don't have to be physically removed from the
buses and put in PC's, then maybe this will happen more often.

 

you make them out of Perspex and sell then on here

 

Indeed. Fifty quid too. What rankles is that it's permitted in some
parts of the country and not in others, which is *really* stupid.

 

It really does seem odd, especially as the initial trial (Bristol IIRC)
was considered a success.

The problem is one of the symptoms of the country's disjointed transport
policy.

 

Indeed. Fifty quid too. What rankles is that it's permitted in some
parts of the country and not in others, which is *really* stupid.[/QUOTE]

IT's permitted on the Commercial Road, if that helps.

Well, the bit between Limehouse and East India Dock Road, anyway.
--
| ___ Salad Dodger
|/ \
_/_____\_ GL1500SE-V/CBR1100XX-X/CBX1000Z
|_\_____/_| ..78868.../...19540.../..30836.
(>|_|_|<) TPPFATUICG#7 DIAABTCOD#9 YTC#4
|__|_|__| BOTAFOT #70 BOTAFOF #09 two#11
\ |^| / IbW#0 & KotIbW# BotTOS#6 GP#4
\|^|/ ANORAK#17 IbB#4 PM#5 WG*
'^' RBR Clues: 29 Pts: 485 Miles: 1967

 

[bikes in bus lanes]

Trials have been extended

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/streets/motorcycle-buslane-study.shtml

 

IT's permitted on the Commercial Road, if that helps.

Well, the bit between Limehouse and East India Dock Road, anyway.[/QUOTE]

That is *fucking ridiculous*.

As Weggy says, how can something by legal in one bit of London and
illegal in another? Shit.

 

The Older Gentleman wrote

Positive discrimination?

 

They have signs up in the bus lines to indicate that bicycles and
motorbikes are allowed to use them, so there's no ambiguity if that's
what you're referring to. In fact, the bus lanes in Kingston that allow
bikes (which is some but not all of them) also have gert big red
"MOTORCYCLES USING BUS LANE" signs too, after a few nasty accidents (of
a "motorcycle + disembarking-passenger interface" nature I believe).

 

<VBG>

 

It's not, YTC.

It's the fact that something can be legal in one part pf London but
illegal a few yards away, in another part of London.

 

I don't see why that's a problem TBH. It's an experimental situation,
being operated in certain areas to test its effects. Even if it's made
the norm throughout the whole of the UK at some point, I bet there will
still be places where it's forbidden for safety reasons (whether
perceived or proven).

 

OK. You ride down a bus lane in one borough where it's legal and across
the boundary into another borough, say six feet further down, where it's
illegal.

Doesn't this strike you as being ever-so-slightly stupid? I mean, it's
not as if one borough has a 30mph limit and the other decides: no, we'll
make our limit 28mph.

As for experimental, they first allowed bikes in bus lanes in Bristol
something like 15 years ago and it was deemed a success. How long do
they need to "experiment"?

(This reminds me of a letter in The Times I read, some years ago, in
which the writer was having a fume at the Highways Agency for putting
"Experimental lane Closures" on a motorway. "What did they *think* was
going to happen?" he asked, quite reasonably.)

 

I do see your point that it may seem, on face value, to be stupid. But
only if you ignore the fact that it's a trial being conducted on certain
stretches of road to asses the effects in various circumstances. Also, I
don't believe (but am willing to be proved wrong) that there are *any*
instances where you could be thundering down a bus-lane legally and
suddenly within the space of 6 feet find that you've crossed a boundary
and need swerve out of the bus lane because it's suddenly become
illegal. The trial is applied to full stretches of bus lane with signs
to tell you exactly which lanes you can or can't ride in.

18 months in this case, I believe.

I think the concern (or at least one of the concerns) was that having
bikes in bus lanes where bus passengers often wander about shielded by
big buses could lead to problems, and the experiment is being conducted
to find out whether the problems exist, or are worse or better than the
benefits of not having bikes filtering through lines of slow/stationary
traffic.