Speed traps the focus of German motorists' rage
- From: . <.@.org>
- Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2007 08:12:27 +0800
Speed traps the focus of German motorists' rage
OSTERODE, GERMANY
29-Mar-07
IT SEEMS the fury of a German driver caught speeding knows no bounds and the
roadside devices used in the country to catch the culprits can come in for some
harsh treatment. Motorists bent on revenge have been known to set light to the
pole-mounted speed cameras, to shoot at them with firearms, pelt them with rocks
or even set about them with power saws.
Many drivers see the cameras not as a deterrent to speeding, but as a way for
local authorities to line their pockets.
And some speed demons will go to extreme lengths to avoid prosecution, as police
in the Harz mountains town of Osterode discovered recently.
In order to avoid being charged, one driver who went too fast on a stretch of
road restricted to 70kph simply ripped out all the speed limit signs he could
find and tossed them into a nearby ditch. Officers came across them several days
later.
"It was probably someone caught by a camera while speeding," said a police
spokesman, admitting that countless other speeding motorists had probably
slipped through the net in the days that followed since they could rightly claim
that no speed limit signs were visible.
Police have not given up hope of catching the sign-basher who will face a heavy
fine just like the one handed down to a 75-year-old pensioner convicted recently
by a court in the city of Goslar. Despite a previous conviction for firing
bullets at a radar speed trap in Fulda, the elderly man hurled stones at a
pole-mounted camera after it had snapped him while driving too fast.
Unfortunately for him, the outburst was recorded on film too.
Meanwhile, an unknown driver destroyed a speed camera in the Harz region by
dousing it with petrol and setting it alight.
The culprits behind these acts of highway vandalism are still at large, as is a
Goettingen man whose method of avoiding a speeding prosecution was exceptionally
thorough. He dismantled an entire surveillance camera system installed at a
traffic light and took the device worth ?20,000 away with him.
A 22-year-old man from the Peine area had to wave goodbye to his driving licence
and was fined heavily after repeatedly hurtling past a speed camera while making
an obscene gesture with his middle finger.
A speed trap installation on the A44 highway near Kassel became a hate object
for a number of motorists. The first device was stolen by traffic rowdies while
a 19-year-old took an axe to its replacement, eventually burning it to the
ground. Police found the perpetrator by matching the DNA of blood traces left at
the scene of the crime. A total of 140 suspects were probed.
Fining motorists for driving too fast is a lucrative source of income. In
Germany's Hesse state, the fines amounted to more than ?1 million a year.
The speed traps also pay for themselves quickly, as evidenced by one which was
recently installed on a highway at Heyersum near Hildesheim. The camera
registered more than 5,000 speeding motorists during its first two months,
triggering an income of ?45,000 in fines. DPA
.
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