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POLICE SPEED GUNS DO MAKE MISTAKES, THE GOVERNMENT HAS ADMITTED FOR THE FIRST TIME.
The errors mean that thousands of motorists have potentially lost their licences and even their livelihoods on false grounds.
Almost a million drivers are on the verge of bans after being repeatedly snapped by 3,500 mobile devices across England and Wales.
If the gun was not held firmly on the target, 'slippage' led to faulty readings. A movement of as little as the width of a human hair was enough to create mistakes The Home Office and the police have always insisted that the speed guns - which are held by hand or mounted on a tripod - do not lie.
But that is contradicted by a letter from Geoffrey Biddulph, the senior Home Office civil servant in charge of policing Britain's roads.
In it, he states clearly: "We do accept in certain atypical circumstances a device may be capable of producing inaccurate readings." The letter was sent to Barry Culshaw, a Hampshire solicitor who has defended scores of motorists unfairly trapped by the cameras.
He has sent the Home Office a damning dossier showing how the cameras and their operators make mistakes. He says that the most unreliable guns, which use laser technology, should now be ditched by the Government.
A Daily Mail investigation last year revealed the full extent of the flaws in the devices.
Our tests showed that the most popular of the guns - the LTI 20.20 Ultralyte 100 - gave erratic results even when operated strictly according to instructions.
It recorded a wall travelling at 44 mph, an empty road doing 33 mph and a parked car managing 22 mph. A bicycle - being ridden at just 5mph - was said to have been doing 66mph.
Most of the mistakes stemmed from the gun's wide beam picking up readings from overtaking cars and parked vehicles. Reflections from the road surface, hoardings, fences and even traffic signs also produced errors.
If the gun was not held firmly on the target - itself a difficult task - 'slippage' led to faulty readings. A movement of as little as the width of a human hair was enough to create mistakes.
Our investigation was monitored by one of the country's leading laser experts, Dr Michael Clark.
Only this week, in what is now being viewed as a landmark case, a motorist accused of speeding at 109mph along the M6 toll road in Staffordshire was cleared by a judge because of an error by a laser gun or its police handlers.
Car salesman Stewart Walker, 37, defended himself at Stoke magistrates court because he could not afford the £1,400 in fees charged by a solicitor.
He told the judge that he was driving at exactly 70mph when he was snapped by an LTI Ultralyte last June.
As the officer squeezed the trigger Mr Walker was overtaken by a BMW sports car which then pulled in front of his own saloon.
Mr Walker asked the officer, in court to give evidence, if the reflection of the faster car could have been picked up by the camera's laser beam by mistake to give the extraordinarily high reading. The officer said yes.
Mr Walker, from Norfolk, handed the judge a copy of the Mail investigation, published last October. The judge read it before declaring that Mr Walker should have the case against him dropped. His costs will now be paid by the police.
After the hearing, Mr Walker said: "I told the judge that I thought the gun had taken a reading from another car.
"I have been worried for months about losing my licence even though I had done nothing wrong or dangerous at all." Motoring organisations have consistently said that the cameras are not fault-free.
Some observers have called for speed guns to be scrapped altogether because of the flaws.
Paul Smith, head of Safe-Speed, a group which campaigns against the spread of mobile cameras, said: "This is a huge admission from the Home Office.
"Now the Government has finally confessed that a problem exists, they must withdraw the devices and make arrangements to compensate those convicted or fined on the basis of unreliable evidence.
"Five million motorists have been convicted or paid a fixed penalty in the past five years. Now we know that many have not broken any law at all."
Mark McArthur-Christie, policy director of the British Driving Association, said: "The public are beginning to mistrust the police because of the unfairness of the cameras which trap the innocent." More than two million motorists are expected to receive speed camera tickets this year. If each is fined £60, the total profits from the cameras in 2005-2006 will be £118million.
The money goes to police forces, road safety groups and courts that hear speeding cases.
The Home Office declined to comment.
Ed: Now there's a surprise!
This is the heart-stopping moment every motorist dreads. As you drive along the road, a police officer points a laser speed gun towards you.
Glancing at the dashboard, you breathe a sigh of relief: the speedometer reveals that your car is travelling below the 30mph limit. But a month later, a letter drops through your door. You face a fine for speeding and penalty points on your licence.
It is claimed that you were driving at 41mph - not 28mph. Can that high speed really be true? Staggeringly, the answer may be no.
Motorists accused of driving too fast on Britain's roads insist the real culprit is a laser speed gun officially approved by the Home Office and used by almost every police authority in the country. For the Mail has discovered that the LTI 20.20.gun is seriously flawed.
In the Mail's tests, it wrongly recorded a wall as travelling at 44mph, an empty road scored 33mph, a parked car was clocked as doing 22mph and a bicycle (in reality being ridden at 5mph) rocketed along at an impossible 66mph.
Imported from America, the LTI 20.20. is used in nearly 3,500 mobile speed units hidden in police vans or cars and mounted on motorbikes.
Speed traps - nearly half of which now use laser gun technology - reap more than £100 million each year in fines. This is shared between the police, the Highways Agency, the courts, the Home Office and local authorities.
Ironically, some of the huge sum is used to pay for even more police speed reinforcement teams relying on exactly the same laser speed gun at the centre of the Mail's investigation.
Rigorous tests The Mail subjected the speed gun to rigorous tests.
Alarmingly, we discovered it was prone to wildly wide-of-the-mark readings, even when set up according to the police's own guidelines and the manufacturer's handbook.
In other tests, they found the equipment was measuring the speed of overtaking cars instead of the one being targeted.
The Mail can expose the scandal of a speed enforcement industry in which the collection of fines is considered paramount - whatever the consequences for innocent drivers caught in police traps by faulty readings.
In the past nine years, an extraordinary one-in-five drivers has been fined
for speeding, despite many protesting their innocence.
Lawyers they spoke to say motorists are now rebelling by refusing to pay fines and fighting their cases through the courts.
One voicing concern is Barry Culshaw, a Southampton solicitor currently acting for 15 drivers nationwide.
"They complain of huge errors," he says. "Drivers say they were within the speed limit and yet the LTI 20.20. recorded them doing excessive speed."
Another disquieting discovery is that vital video film - often taken at a speed-trap site for use as secondary evidence - is often mysteriously withheld from motorists by the Crown Prosecution Service.
On at least ten occasions the Crown has suddenly dropped the case against a motorist when ordered by a judge to hand over the telling footage.
Michael Morgan, who runs a British website collating complaints against laser speed guns, said: "The authorities often wriggle rather than release the video, which would expose the laser gun to scrutiny in a court of law.
No doubt they fear the enormous consequences, including a clamour for fine refunds and compensation over the loss of licences or even livelihoods."
Expert witnesses compromised.
Alarmingly, the Mail can reveal, too, that the main expert witness used by the CPS to convict motorists in such cases - a former police officer named Frank Garratt - also makes his living as boss of the company importing the devices into Britain. Perhaps not surprisingly, Mr Garratt, a millionaire, told the Mail the LTI 20.20. works perfectly well.
One of the gun's toughest critics is Dr Michael Clark, Europe's leading expert on laser technology. He is a former company director of a British firm making laser detection equipment for traffic lights and car parks.
Dr Clark was clocked, apparently speeding, by a laser gun three years ago.
He fought his case through the courts, proving he was travelling below the limit. He has acted as an expert witness on behalf of many motorists since.
"I was drawn into this controversy because I know about laser science. I do not rely on my court appearances or the speed enforcement industry to make a living," he told the Mail when we asked him to help - without payment - in our experiments.
Dr Clark says that the gun is defective because its wide beam can easily pick up the wrong vehicle.
Furthermore, if the device is not held firmly on the target - and this is a difficult task - it can produce an erroneous speed result by "slippage".
Reflections from road signs and from other cars - even one stationary on the kerbside - can also make the laser gun misinterpret the truth.
(abridged from the daily mail. 18 March 2006)
Ed: No doubt MCN will try to claim the victory when they catch up with this!
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