Speeding is major problem for society. Not only responsible in about 40 per cent of road deaths in New South Wales alone (according to Road Traffic Authority website) but also costing billions of dollars for economy.

Why? Because speeding basically may cause crash (single vehicle accident or multiple vehicles) and/or injury. Crash requires repair from minor repair to major repair or even write off. Regardless who pays the repair, it costs a lot of money.

The same things with injury. From minor injury to major injury or even fatality, all require money as expense: emergency service, medication, doctor, etc. Not to mention the precious opportunity cost of the time wasted to deal with any speeding incident.

Hence, I would propose for community in general to take the responsibility to minimize – if not eliminate speeding problem as describe below.

Introducing Speeding Officer Society / S.O.S

All healthy member of society may sign-up themselves as “Speeding Officer” who will be equipped with portable or car mounted speed gun. Speeding Officer is authorized to report speeding driver with its speed gun. Once convicted, Speeding Officer will have some percentage of the speeding fine as their “commission” or “reward” to make community a better place.

The Equipment

a speed gun

a speed gun

The speed gun is basically digital camera, GPS and speed radar in one device. Such device will cost less than $200. It comes with 2 versions:

  • Fully portable / hand-held
  • Car-mounted. The car mounted comes with 2 variations: rear mounted and front mounted

So the Speeding Officer can do their action off the street or inside their car.

The detail of speeding can be reported directly to docking station in police station or RTA station or can be uploaded via internet.

The Rules

In order to secure a conviction the following rule must be followed:

  • The speed gun need to be calibrated for every 4 weeks to be a “valid” speed gun
  • At least 2 Speeding Officer required to report the same vehicle with 2 different valid speed gun within 15 minutes. That is, if a Speeding Officer clocked a vehicle, there must be another Speeding Officer around the vicinity that report the same vehicle of speeding within 15 minutes.
  • If there is only 1 Speeding Officer, then the incident cannot received conviction, but the record will be maintain as warning for future incident
  • The speeding need to be reported within 48 hours. (Speeding Officer need to upload the data within 48 hours)
  • The driver may challenge the speed gun for a fee. If the speed gun is being challenged, the Speeding Officer need to submit the speed gun for calibration check. If it is still well calibrated, the report stays. But if the speed gun is out of calibration during the check, or cannot be checked, then that particular speed gun’s report will be forfeited.

The Speeding Officer

Anybody willing to become speeding officer need to fulfill some criteria below:

  • Healthy mentally and physically, but cannot be blind.
  • Citizen or Permanent Resident who eligible for working in Australia
  • Have no criminal report
  • Undergoing compulsory training
  • Put some security deposit of the speed gun or buy it outright
  • Pay for annual license fee. Active Speeding Officer with more than 25 convictions have their annual fee waived.
  • Need to have internet access and mobile phone as communication will be email and SMS
  • Speeding Officer is not employed by anybody, they are independent contractor for society
  • Speeding Officer is not authorized to stop any vehicle. They are basically just like moving speed camera. If the speeding is considered dangerous, dial 000 and report to Police

The Renumeration / Reward

For every conviction, the reward or renumeration need to follow several condition below:

  • 30% of total fine paid is available as pool
  • If there are more than 2 Speeding Officer who eligible for the report, the pool will be equally divided among them
  • The reward money is payable monthly once threshold of $100 has been reached
  • The reward money need to be considered as income for tax purposes

The Positive Side

  • This system is self funded when Speeding Officer will “buy” their own equipment and system maintenance can be funded from Speeding Officer’s license fee. Only initial money to buy the initial equipment and the infrastructure (website and database) are required
  • The system virtually can provide enormous number of people who will watch out our street from speeding driver: the S.O.S (Speeding Officer Society).
  • Easy to implement. Speeding Officer does not require to fill any paper work. Just shoot and upload.
  • Police can be assigned to more critical task than pinging speeding driver
  • The existence of Speeding Officer cannot be predicted, hence the negative effect of Fixed Speed Camera is eliminated (Most people – except morons – will slow down in known location of speed camera but some speed up afterward)
  • One can make the reward money of Speeding Officer as additional income or some people perhaps will make it as Full Time Jobs.

The Negative Side

  • If the detail of Speeding Officer can be somehow obtained by the convicted driver, then there is revenge factor to deal with. But as long as the database remains secure there will be no such problem
  • If there is too many Speeding Officer, the reward money will be less significant and less attractive.

The Cons

I can see straightaway some people who will oppose such system in 2 broad category:

  1. The one who speed.
    If these people thinks that they are allowed to speed if there is nobody around or no speed camera around, then most likely these kind of people is the one who cannot think at all. Remember even nothing happen (no accident whatsoever), these people are already disgrace for community for using the precious petrol recklessly and make inflation pressure (Less money spent, means less inflation doesn’t matter whose money it is)
  2. Some silly civil liberty activist.
    Any person who against such system in the name of civil liberty need to be question whether they really understand what is civil liberty. If civil liberty is “I can do speeding anytime I want if nobody around” then I would prefer don’t have civil liberty. (Really, I pity the obligation for goverment to put warning if there is speed camera ahead in the name of civil liberty. Speed camera should be unannounced to get it’s maximum impact). Or probably the real reason is these people are in category 1 above.

Conclusion

A system to minimize if not eliminate speeding problem is suggested above. Please note that as for now, the system described above is only suggestion and not yet implemented. It’s up to the authority to adopt such system.

Feel free to adopt, modify , enhance or even ridicule my suggestion above. It’s not patented or trade marked. I did the system as concerned citizen who wants to contribute to community. I believe that the system will work and speeding problem will be minimized if not eliminated once the system being implemented generally.