Caballero

Up close photos of the device. It may look old, but it's just crudely installed, maybe on purpose so that the finish doesn't look too new. It hasn't been there even a week.

Do you see the camera in this photo? If you do, congratulations. But even so, if you were riding along this road, you would be more likely to notice the 40mph speed limit sign that's 15 meters beyond the camera. You see, the camera is in a 30 limit, and is cunningly disguised as some sort of electrical fuse box.

Not sure how it would work for bikes. Bikes have no front number plate, but this camera type can have rearward-facing image capture, which raises the question of how it would know that the vehicle whose speed has been recorded is the same one that has been image captured. The only foolproof way around it would be to have both the lazer or radar (?) and the image capture camera both rearward-facing. In which case it shouldn't be possible to catch bikes that slow down on approach to the camera out.

It is rather brazen, the way they've posted these theft boxes all over the place. According to some reports, the Watchman is able to send a continuous realtime video image to a control room. It would be nice to figure out how they work.

I don't know, but it's pretty interesting. According to the online descriptions of this camera, it uses radar, similar to a police radar gun, to calculate the approach speed. The camera bit is separate from the speed detector, but may be triggered by the speed detector. It may be troublesome for motorcycles, because even if the speed detector detects an incoming vehicle approaching at a speed in excess of the speed limit, the camera, if facing the opposite way ('rear facing') might snap a different vehicle. This might happen if, say, a speeding BMW approaches the camera at high speed, sees it at the last moment, slams on the brake and does a U-turn or handbrake turn just before he passes the Watchman, and then the motorbike travelling within the speed limit passes that BMW and gets snapped by the rear-facing camera for 'speeding'!

Now that's interesting. Other camera types on that website have been updated more recently (I've seen a 6th July 2016 update), so presumably that means no type approval as yet. Recently there seem to be a lot more of those LED speed indicators on local roads (Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire), which show you your speed inside a circle as you approach. From what I understand, those are Watchman-powered, and check your speed from the front. A couple of times, they have shown me absurd figures, maybe because they were broken or because they have trouble seeing a narrow bike. Figures like 3 or 4 mph while I was doing 30. However, these new ones that are coming up over the past couple of days have no speed advisory LED displays. Their only possible use can be revenue. Perhaps the type approval of Watchman is pending very soon.

Oh OK. Thanks for the info. I really dislike these deceptive revenue collection tactics fatuously veiled as road safety measures. So far, it seems 3 I've seen are painted road-grey, and a 4th is not only painted road-grey but disguised as an electronic fuse box! I'll take a photo some time. It really beggars belief. 21st century highway robbery.

Does anyone know whether these have type approval, and whether they can be used in traffic offence prosecutions? Several of them have cropped up almost overnight around my way. All painted in a grey that matches the road surface. They're very difficult to see. I've Googled, and have found many posts (the most recent of which are from 2013) on various forums, saying that this type of camera doesn't have Home Office type approval. I've also checked the 3 lists on the Home Office website: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/home-office-approved-speed-detection-devices-march-2007" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; "Watchman" doesn't appear in the lists of approved devices, but I don't trust the government website to be updated often enough to be the last word on the matter. If these devices don't have Home Office type approval, why is the local council putting these up? I assume it's the council and not the notorious 'Safety Camera Partnership'. Do you know of anyone having received a fine or points through one of these?

Should the size of the rider affect the choice of bike? Maybe not. The motorbike stays upright because of gyroscopic precession, if that's the right term. In any case, as long as the wheel is put into a rotation about an axis, it produces an angular momentum that causes anything attached to that axis to benefit from outward-pushing torque, which keeps it upright. It's the same principle as a helicopter. It stays upright by its own power, and you don't need both feet on the ground.

1) Could just be normal running, if it only happens when the bike is cold. You've adjusted the idle speed, but you can also try adjusting the idle mixture to make it richer. 2) Chain tension? Not sure, but check anyway. 3) Check the obvious things first. Manifold leak, or leak anywhere around the manifold or air filter? Air filter clean? 4) Don't know, but it's losing current and voltage when the generator isn't spinning. On the YBR, is the headlight connected directly to the generator or to the battery? You might need a new one or the other.

Hoggs is right: Form D9 is what you need. But don't talk to them! Fill out the form, enclose your EU licence and send it to them by recorded/special (signed-for) delivery post. I used to work for a government department and I know what they're like. There's no use talking to them at all. They hear you on the phone, and want you off the phone and to be left alone, and will say anything to achieve that aim. If your form comes in, they will action it and you will get a UK licence. The bureaucracy generally works well here and the people are friendly to visitors. Nice, isn't it.

What my instructor told me was that if you do a lifesaver, a clock starts ticking, and 3 seconds means it's expired. So, he said, on the U-turn you can either start moving forward then do the lifesaver just before you turn the handlebars, or you can do a lifesaver, move forward then turn the handlebars. In the latter case, he said, the safe thing to do is to do 2 lifesavers, not 1. In other words, a lifesaver just before you set the bike in motion, and another lifesaver just before you turn the handlebars, bearing in mind that lifesavers expire. From what you wrote, it seems the examiner deemed the lifesaver you made to have completely expired, rather than having been late. This may be justified on the basis that if you did a lifesaver just before a U-turn on a road with a 30mph limit, you had better start your U-turn quickly, because a car may have appeared in just a couple of seconds, which would mean that although conditions were safe when you did your lifesaver, the situation has changed and it's now unsafe.