How do I add average speed cameras in the UK correctly?

Help and support
1

I locally have some average speed cameras that were missing and they don’t seem to be added correctly and I don’t know how to link them and make them bi-directional. In the Wiki it said to add them using enforcement average_speed (the average _speed part wouldn’t auto populate?).

The road in question is Parkhouse Road in Glasgow Scotland https://www.openstreetmap.org/edit#map=17/55.80711/-4.35785 shown in yellow. The three speed cameras are now showing, however these new cameras catch you in both directions and it is the average speed across the three of them.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

2

The set up of a single maxspeed cam with relations to include the to/from (estimated) points is not difficult. Presume this to be the same for average but you’d need to put 2 cam devices in the relation if that would make sense considering cams are considerable distances apart.

Over here we have ‘Tutor’ on the motorways which was implemented sometime after the maxspeed 130km was made law. The cams (per lane) sit on gantries and portals often combined with led displays to inform drivers of MAW, jams, (temp) speed restrictions etc, even the anticipated time to get from A to B. Never mapped, not found any reference to Tutor in TagInfo either. The cams of course read car license plates and if you managed to exceed the average speed you get a costly message in the snail mail to start planning to fork over some serious Euros. Supposedly this system with the max speed halved the road fatalities.

3

The set up of a single maxspeed cam with relations to include the to/from (estimated) points is not difficult. Presume this to be the same for average but you’d need to put 2 cam devices in the relation if that would make sense considering cams are considerable distances apart.

all these are subtypes of man_made=surveillance, the term “average speed cam” is just newspeak to make it less evident.

4

From what I see on the wiki, the enforcement=average_speed tag should be on an enforcement relation that includes all of the relevant cameras and road segments they apply to.

Editing relation is possible in the ‘default’ iD editor, but it can present them a little “backward” but can be done.

5

Possibly, but it is useful to have highway=speed_camera as a separate or additional tag too as these can automatically fine you.

It isn’t really. It also warns about the automatic fine that you wouldn’t tend to get from a general CCTV camera.

6

Not really. A normal speed camera measures your speed at a single point.

Average speed cameras monitor your average speed over a long distance. Can be several km

It is important to map these in a standard way so that navigation apps can indicate when you are within these sections, in the same way they warn of normal speed cameras.

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7

We do have some mapped examples of cameras in Nottingham and elsewhere in Nottinghamshire, but only a single example as a relation (or for some reason a pair of relations). The enforcement area can be large and very difficult to determine without knowing all the camera placements which is why other relations have not been created.

8

It could be worth looking at how they are mapped in Nottingham.

Nottingham has an active OSM community and has a long history of average speed cameras.

9

Here’s an Overpass-turbo query showing the location of the average speed cameras. It is an interesting exercise to work out how many enforcement zones exist, which are exit/entrance cameras and to which zone they belong. I’m open to suggestions as to how this should be mapped. We have the big advantage that precise camera locations are available as Open Data so the data is complete.

10

Thanks all for your help, these three cameras are the only ones linked together so should be easy to set up once I find a worked example. I’ll check Nottingham and see if I can work out the way they did it :slight_smile: