Long story short, today I was a bit enthusiastic with my accelerator coming out of a motorway closure and didn't notice that a speed camera was there on a 120km/h road. I was over the limit by some margin but it didn't flash.

I think I was was theoretically over the limit by enough for an eye-watering fine. Annoyed with myself as so far I haven't had any such issues but I guess today was one of those days.

If it didn't flash does that mean that it didn't fire at all?

They don't always flash.

Tom

This is correct. Specially the modern cameras.

One of my friends thought he was safe after the camera did not flash but finally received the fine just a week later (Mobile camera somewhere close to Lenzburg to Zurich autoroute)

Ok cheers guys. Damn it then, I guess I had better mentally prepare myself... looks like 250EUR or so http://www.speedingeurope.com/switzerland/

Self-inflicted of course!

Keep up the hope, not all poles always contain a camera.

There are also cameras automatically taking pictures and cross referencing them with banned driver lists, fines then follow if you get caught. According to the local paper there are four such cameras in Thurgau.

and sometimes it does flash and you dont know why.... I was even 5 to 10 km lower than the allowed speed limit 120 km/h and it did flash. Funny thing is i was the only car at that time, even though just 10 seconds before there were cars overtaking me, but when it did flash, they were already long gone. As far as I could see it flashed only towards to me, no flash behind me.. so far (2 weeks) no fine received...

Did you have your seatbelt on?

Had that as well in Lucerne, never heard anything as I was wearing the seatbelt.

May have been a broken camera. This one for instance flashed every car passing for a while as it was reportedly broken. Not sure if it's been repaired meanwhile.

(mods, there's a sign warning of the camera a couple hundred meters ahead so no problem posting about on here)

Are the motorway cameras not set to go off only when you’re in excess of 130kph? I’ve certainly tootled past many at 125kph without being flashed or receiving a fine.

I was around 140+km/h at the time of noticing it, but as apparently they don't always flash even if they do go off then there is still a very good chance I was banged to rights.

Just because your dashboard shows 125 or 140 km/h doesn't mean that you were driving at that speed, or even that the camera actually measured that speed. Just saying...

Well my good man, in lieu of any alternative evidence I am going to assume, until proven otherwise, that when my speeds says 140km/h that it is reasonably accurate and that potentially I was caught by a speed camera that did not flash. Always assume the worst in these situations, then you are mentally prepared and never disappointed.

Was that on your speedo or measured by GPS?

140 on the speedo will be probably somewhere between 130 and 135 real. Then they will take between 3 and 6km/h off for error in the measurement of the machine so worst case if you were reading 140 is that you get a ticket for 132km/h (12 over) or best case 124km/h so only about 4 over.

Wow, I didn't know speedos were that inaccurate.

Looks like I may be ok then after all... but I will maintain a healthy scepticism.

Really wicked are these pillar cameras that read you plates pull your files and send the fine automatically and untouched by human hands.

They are inaccurate by design. EU regulations require that the speed shown may never be less than the actual speed. Thus manufacturers must take alterations into account preemptively, and of course they want to err on the safe side.

Yup you are 100% correct, I googled it and it's an EU regulation that a speedo must never show a speed lower than the actual speed, so usually manufacturers take away up to 5-10% or so to be safe. Never had reason to think about it before, but nevertheless it's comforting (not that I want to test it too much of course).

10% is a bit much I think. I never owned a car that had over 3% deviation.