Speeding is illegal. Uploading evidence of that offence to YouTube is obviously a bad idea, as it can be used against you.
Obscuring your speedometer takes away an obvious piece of evidence, but it is no guarantee. The clip in >>3448 shows a continuous shot, with the car passing some identifiable markers (road signs, telegraph poles etc). Calculating his average speed between those points is a simple matter of sending someone out to measure the distance and dividing that by the time it took to cover in the video.
The acceleration shot in the clip by Robert Llewellyn is sailing very close to the wind, but I don't think it would be sufficient to secure a conviction.
I don't really know where OP is going with this. Speeding is against the law, it's a traffic and criminal offence. By filming it and uploading it to Youtube, you are documenting that offence for the world (and police) to see. And I am not sure how blurring out the speed reading on your instrument cluster will help you; you would still be creating circumstantial evidence, and probable cause for police to question you and demand that you hand over the raw footage of your edited clip. And even if you've deleted that clip, the charge can still be reckless driving, no matter if you did 90 or 130 mph.
You wouldn't do this with an armed robbery, would you? You wouldn't point your gun at a service station employee with a GoPro camera strapped to your forehead and then upload that clip, right? And blurring out the face of the guy wouldn't make it alright, would it?
There was a case in France a few years ago where police actually nicked somebody for posting a video of themselves speeding on a French motorway, and they were made to pay a fine of several hundred euros for speeding, which even stood up in court.
I had my boy racer days, and I did some speeding, and got fined for it. These days, you will never catch me doing more than just over 70 mph. It just isn't worth all the trouble. Grow up, OP.
>>3453 The rules of evidence are a bit more complicated than that. To make out a speeding offence, the prosecution has to name a speed and offer conclusive evidence of the vehicle attaining that speed. For a camera, they have a calibrated device taking a reading. For a speedometer, there is an allowance for overread in the Construction and Use rules, and even then AFAIK an analogue speedometer reading isn't up to scratch for use as evidence (the police use calibrated devices and get a digital readout on systems like ProVida on their vehicles). More importantly, the 14-day rule might preclude action on a lot of those cases.
As you say, they can get you for other offences, such as careless or dangerous driving - for the latter in particular, the very fact that you recorded it could serve as evidence that you intended to drive in that fashion, which is a required element for "dangerous" above "without due care". The other feature of the dangerous driving offence is that it's not subject to the 14-day rule, so the police and CPS have the full 6 months to bring the case.
>and even then AFAIK an analogue speedometer reading isn't up to scratch for use as evidence
True; but it can give them a general idea how fast you were actually going, and thus help determining just how dangerous your dangerous driving really was. Also, perhaps they could have your car tested and clocked as to how fast it actually goes when the speedometer needle is in the position which can be seen in the clip.
And besides, if you upload that clip right after you've recorded it, then there's still ample time for police to take action and not let the 14 days pass. Police do have special units which patrol the web for possible evidence of crime, which to my knowledge also includes keeping an eye on recent Youtube uploads.
Also, speedometers aren't that terribly inaccurate. There are international car industry standards which require that with tyre and wheel sizes approved for the car in question, the speedometer reading must be within 5 percent above the actual speed. Even at 120 mph, that equals only up to 6 mph which you were actually going faster.
Many upmarket modern cars also rely on GPS speed calculation, or at least they let you display your GPS speed on the instrument cluster display.
Interestingly, it's also industry standard that conventional speedometers, both analog and digital, must always be "fast"; they must not show less speed than you are actually doing, presumably to avoid getting nicked for speeding if you thought you were obeying the law by going 70 flat according to the needle.
I can't comment on the car industry's own standards, but UK/EU regulations are significantly different; when actual speed is 25-10mph, the maximum reading is 110% of actual speed + 6.25mph.
And more importantly, at these speeds, the speedometer must NEVER show a reading lower than your actual speed.
This also applies to a car with brand new and fully inflated tyres, as your tyres wear down or deflate, or if they're still cold, you'll be travelling even slow still than your indicated speed.
>>3456 >True; but it can give them a general idea how fast you were actually going, and thus help determining just how dangerous your dangerous driving really was.
A "general idea" won't secure a conviction for speeding. It might also be difficult to tell from the video just how fast you were driving anyway. Other aspects of how you handle the car and your attitude and demeanour in the car would serve to tell them whether they can make out DD or DWDCA though.
>Also, perhaps they could have your car tested and clocked as to how fast it actually goes when the speedometer needle is in the position which can be seen in the clip.
Not without a suitable chain of custody, they couldn't. Unless they impounded the vehicle on the day and could vouch for it being as they found it, with no modifications made (right down to being on the same tyres) there's no useful information they could gain from the speedometer.
>And besides, if you upload that clip right after you've recorded it, then there's still ample time for police to take action and not let the 14 days pass. Police do have special units which patrol the web for possible evidence of crime, which to my knowledge also includes keeping an eye on recent Youtube uploads.
Do you have a source on that? I doubt they'd be interested in expending effort (and therefore taxpayer money) on scouring the web for "paper crimes" like speeding when they have things like videos of violence, damage, theft and "My Tram Experience" to deal with. Alternatively, you could simply wait 14 days before posting the video. The time limit applies from the commission of the offence, and is absolute. The police lost a number of challenges when NIPs arrived on day 15 as a result of poor weather and postal strikes.
>Also, speedometers aren't that terribly inaccurate.
I once compared a GPS to my speedo in my last car. I got around 34 when it read 40 and barely over 70 when it read 80 (which explains why people were blasting their horns when I slowed down for camera vans on the motorway). The simple fact of the matter is that you couldn't secure a speeding conviction by doing a 5% mark-down and running with the speed you get, because you have no evidence that the speed was achieved. (A canny defence lawyer could argue that you're looking at evidence of a faulty speedometer leading to a non-endorsable C&U offence which has now conveniently timed out.)
It might be arguable that seeing how fast the vehicle can go may be a "trial of speed", which is another offence that doesn't have the 14-day limit, though it's not clear that this can be charged on a single vehicle.
All that said, I would think that if you're planning on doing something legally dubious, filming yourself doing it is in general not a good idea, if only because it may give the police an opportunity to uncover something else you may have done.
>>3462 Seems fucking daft, it's like ordering a steak and having it pumped full of artificial flavour.
The times are changing, if we are heading towards only electric cars then some obvious differences should be accepted. It's not like we moan about the fact that cars don't have cigarette lighter sockets because it "doesn't complete the feel".
If everyone bought cars for purely rational reasons, most car companies wouldn't exist. BMW or Mercedes aren't selling you a functional means of getting from A to B, they're selling you a complicated psychological experience that you happen to be able to use to get to work.
Most of the engineering effort in modern cars is about psychology. Psychoacoustic researchers carefully tune the resonance of the door structures so they make a satisfying 'thunk' when you close them. Many cars have suspension systems that are deliberately heavily sprung and slightly over-damped to make them feel subjectively sportier, at the cost of both ride quality and traction. The feel of the steering, of the buttons and switches, the view over the bonnet, they're all designed to evoke a certain feeling.
Before electronically augmented engine noise, manufacturers still artificially fiddled with the engine noise by tuning the exhaust system. In a sense, engine notes have been 'fake' for decades, because they have been deliberately engineered to sound a certain way. Electronic augmentation has come about largely because of widespread turbocharging - as any F1 fan knows, an efficient turbo soaks up most of the natural exhaust noise.
>>3468 >The feel of the steering, of the buttons and switches, the view over the bonnet, they're all designed to evoke a certain feeling.
And this is often achieved with surprisingly simple means, because after all, even if a button feels like it was chiseled from a block of solid metal, it needs to be cost efficient. A lot of this is done simply by sound deadening; for example, I once had to remove a door card of my Audi A4, a car on which the doors would clunk with the sumptuous sound of a padded safe door. But most of this was simply done by sticking a sheet of rubber mat on the door frame, and by putting a 2-millimetre layer of closed cell foam right under the door card. Other than that, the door frame was no different from the doors of my brother's '98 Renault Espace, which sounded like a monkey shitting in an empty tin bucket.
>Before electronically augmented engine noise, manufacturers still artificially fiddled with the engine noise by tuning the exhaust system. In a sense, engine notes have been 'fake' for decades, because they have been deliberately engineered to sound a certain way. Electronic augmentation has come about largely because of widespread turbocharging - as any F1 fan knows, an efficient turbo soaks up most of the natural exhaust noise.
True; but then again, even on naturally aspirated engines, there have always been people who fiddled with the exhaust to give it a more wholesome sound. I'm not sure where fakery really begins; it is nearly impossible to design an exhaust system which will not affect the sound of an engine in one way or another. Because most of the sound does come out of the exhaust, and only part of it is emitted by the engine block itself, and because your engine is tucked away under the bonnet, you hear even less of it over the exhaust.
