This is how a tempo control works

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This is how a tempo control works
Bilski

counselor

traffic & business

This is how a tempo control works

This is how a tempo control works
What if it flashes red?

Then comes a ladle or post. And more and more mail for motorcyclists, who previously felt reasonably safe from speed cameras because of the rear license plate. But a southern German company is constantly upgrading the police.

Michael Schumann

06/06/2013


This is how a tempo control works


Bilski

Two cameras monitor both directions of travel. Since the license plate is not photographed to the south, officers immediately wave the driver out. The measuring car is behind the trees.

From the measuring car hidden in a gap at the edge of the forest, the motorcycle was only recognizable as a short, dark wipe. But the two red lightning bolts were clearly visible. Police chief Carlo Stengel looks at the monitor and mumbles: “Measurement canceled, something is still wrong.” The driver of the dark Yamaha XJ 900 – as far as it could be identified quickly – was lucky. At a permitted 100 km / h he rushed past the gray-green “ES 3.0 one-sided sensor”, a high-tech speed measurement system frequently used by the German police, at a speed of at least 115. If everything had already been correct, the Yamaha rider would have received a mail from the fine office with two pretty photos of himself in the following weeks. “Please check the connections again,” Carlo Stengel asks his colleague, Police Commissioner Uwe Kleinmann.

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Sensor can monitor both directions

A few minutes later everything is fine and the control point on the B 463 is ready to fire in both lanes. The officers positioned two cameras and two flashes in front of and behind the “one-sided sensor ES 3.0”. The photo equipment, placed in four separate, weatherproof metal housings on tripods between the grass and young trees, is hardly visible to drivers or motorcyclists. If you drive north from Sigmaringen to Balingen, you also have the system to the left of the lane and therefore no chance of recognizing it in time. Carlo Stengel: “The sensor can monitor from one side of the road in both directions.” The Mercedes Vito measuring vehicle in which the officers sit in front of the monitor cannot be seen from the street.

The manufacturer of the 80,000 euro system used here (price excluding Mercedes) is the southern German company Eso in Tettnang. In their brochures, press releases and catalogs, Eso never tires of emphasizing that “by synchronously triggering all the photography equipment (), speed violations by motorcyclists can also be documented with certainty”. To put it more simply: “ES 3.0” can flash from the front or the side and from the rear at the same time; if the motorcycle is too fast, both the driver’s face and license plate number are recorded – at the control point of Uwe Kleinmann and Carlo Stengel, however, only if the motorcycle is in the B 463 direction North drives. If it drives south in the direction of Sigmaringen and Lake Constance, only one camera is triggered from the front. “For two shots in each direction we would have to set up the second camera on the other side of the street. But that doesn’t work with our wired system, ”explains Inspector Kleinmann.

Technically, of course, that would be easily feasible, namely with the “WLAN wireless photo device FE4.5” offered by Eso. But for his department, the Balingen traffic police, it was “just too expensive so far,” says the inspector. And adds: “Even so, we have enormous possibilities compared to before, when we were still working with wet photography.” For example, the two cameras can be remotely controlled in four zoom levels from the car using a touchscreen monitor. According to the manufacturer, they detect vehicles moving in parallel on up to four lanes at the same time over a lane width of 18 meters, in every direction, even in curves, on motorways, day and night and even in tunnels.

Hard disk can store up to 80,000 measurements

The heart of the lightning system is the computer unit in the measuring vehicle, whose hard disk can store up to 80,000 measurements, and the 4.4 kilo single-sided sensor at the bottom of the road. With its five brightness sensors, it can not only record the speed of a vehicle with simultaneous control measurement – (if the two results do not match, the measurement is canceled at the beginning, as with the Yamaha driver), but also its distance and thus the lane. If a vehicle exceeds the previously programmed triggering speed, it flashes. Since a maximum of 60 km / h is allowed for trucks on federal and country roads, as soon as the vehicle inspector sees or hears a truck arriving, press the green “truck button” to switch to a correspondingly lower release speed – that’s how it happens none of them.


This is how a tempo control works


Bilski

PHM Stengel reports that the motorcycle is too fast to the colleagues with the trowel, who are waiting one kilometer south of the speed camera.

“In summer we normally have around 30 to 50 measurements over three to four hours at an average control point,” explains Police Chief Master Stengel. With the term “measurements”, Stengel, who is outside with the system on four out of five working days, means lightning photos. “On average, about ten percent are too fast for every check. We already had three percent, but also twelve. ”And motorcyclists? “They are usually less noticeable, because the majority are made up of cars and trucks,” says the surveyor, but he qualifies: “The really fast outliers are motorcycles. My top candidate came in at 217 at 100 allowed. Among the drivers I only had one with 201 km / h. ”Two R 1200 GS with luggage drive past on the B 463. Apparently on vacation. Both with allowed 100 km / h, everything o. K. In an Opel Corsa it flashes at 126 km / h, an Audi driver is there at 141 and will probably walk a lot next month. Then light drizzle sets in, motorcyclists are not expected to be very many this late afternoon. But what motorcyclists can expect, namely new, versatile photo technology, now knows who has read this text carefully.

Measurement technology ES 3.0


This is how a tempo control works


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Schematic representation of the sensor head of an ES 3.0.

The sensor does not measure with radar, but with five brightness sensors. Sensors 1, 2 and 3 are each 250 millimeters apart. The speed results from the time that the vehicle to be measured needs for the two 250 mm long measuring sections. Only if the values ​​of sensor pair 1 and 2 match 2 and 3 is the measurement encrypted and saved with a photo. Otherwise it will be canceled, but the lightning bolts will still have triggered – the cancellation cannot be seen by the driver. The sensors 4 and 5 are offset at an angle of 0.4 degrees to the middle sensor 2 and measure the distance between the vehicle and the sensor, which results in the lane being traveled.

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