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Speed Eraser

You have to love the irony.

Up went the Gatsometers, the Dutch brand that dominates the speed camera industry. Named after founder Maurice Gatsonides, a famous race car driver who developed the first speed monitoring system more than 50 years ago to help himself improve his speeds around corners, the early Gatsometers were rudimentary — cars ran over a wire, triggering a stopwatch that shut off after a second wire was tripped.

From a reasonably measured piece in the Washington Post.

More on Gatsometers at Slate.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 1st, 2009 at 7:14 am and is filed under Traffic Engineering, Traffic Gadgets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “Speed Eraser”

  1. Carlton Reid Says:
    October 1st, 2009 at 8:09 am

    “I guess the cameras don’t lie,” said Rubin. “I was speeding. I did it. You don’t pay attention for one second, you are talking to your kids or something, you’re driving along, and then, there you go, you’ve killed somebody else’s child. I do try not to speed. I really do. I’m not a fast driver. But it’s hard. Everyone has somewhere to be. Today I was caught speeding going to the cemetery.”

  2. fred_dot_u Says:
    October 1st, 2009 at 8:19 am

    That quote stood out to me too. Why do drivers believe that they do not need to pay attention while operating a multi-ton vehicle? Probably because they’ve gotten away with it so many times before.

  3. Bill T. Says:
    October 1st, 2009 at 1:43 pm

    “Everywhere has somewhere to be.” Hmm, how about traffic court?

  4. aaron Says:
    October 2nd, 2009 at 6:51 am

    A lot of time and fuel wasted for probably no safety benefit.

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Traffic Tom Vanderbilt

How We Drive is the companion blog to Tom Vanderbilt’s New York Times bestselling book, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), published by Alfred A. Knopf in the U.S. and Canada, Penguin in the U.K, and in languages other than English by a number of other fine publishers worldwide.

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