Fast start for LASERcam 4
New solution enjoys sales successes, offers new enforcement opportunities
The new LASERcam 4 digital hand-held camera has made major inroads into the UK’s speed enforcement sector since achieving Home Office Type Approval (HOTA). This fast-selling new solution forms part of a fully integrated end-to-end enforcement system. It also offers a high-performance, cost-effective and adaptable alternative to fixed-site cameras.
LASERcam 4 has already exceeded the sales of its predecessor product, and we are pleased to have many new forward-thinking police forces come and join us, including the MET Police Service, Avon and Somerset Police, Norfolk and Suffolk Police, and Wiltshire Police. Significant additional business is already in the pipeline, says Calvin Hutt, Truvelo (UK)’s Sales & Marketing Director.
He attributes the successes to outstanding performance from a compact device, flexible deployment options and the support of a class-leading, Cloud-based back-office product. Crucially, we are able to offer a fully NEP-Compliant end-to-end solution which presents the most robust evidential trail; we are unique in providing a full audit trail right from the point of capture at the roadside through to export to other police systems.
The LASERcam4 is useable on and off public highways in support of both criminal and civil enforcement activities.
It has a 3.2in colour touchscreen and weighs just 1.7kg with its integral eight-hour power supply. The Class 1 Eye-Safe laser is effective from 3-750m, with a beam divergence of <1mrad. The camera has an acquisition time of a third of a second and speed accuracy is +/-1mph over a 10-200mph range. The LASERcam4 is IP55 certified.
The LASERcam4 can store up to 2,000 offences on its internal memory. These are easily downloadable or transferrable via WiFi. Exceptional day and low-light capabilities, including IR enforcement compatibility, are allied to auto-focus, exposure and zoom features.
“The new camera’s operators value the ease of operation — all a user has to do is point the camera at a vehicle and pull the trigger,” Hutt adds.
“In addition to that, we’ve put significant development effort into the Violation Management System [VMS], a new Cloud-based back office solution which can handle the many types of violations generated by multiple manufacturers’ enforcement systems and provide an ongoing traffic data collection, processing and interpretation capability.
“LASERcam4 is compatible with existing StarTraq and EROS back office processing solutions, but the VMS enables us to provide a true end-to-end solution from a single supplier. Like the camera, the VMS is suitable for use by policing and private-sector organisations and is available as an internal private cloud version which will operate on servers behind customers’ own firewalls or as Software as a Service using, for example, AWS. It is available internationally.”
LASERcam4 also enables enforcement organisations to address the changing nature of speeding.
Hutt: “Pandemic, and lockdowns, gave rise to the phenomenon of ‘super-speeding’ — sports and supercar owners using the back roads like race courses and driving truly recklessly. Portable cameras provide a means of countering excessive speeding on all parts of the network and in a non-predictable manner. This makes them very effective.
“In fact, portable cameras bring with them the unfamiliarity which policing and safety organisations need to move to the next level of compliance. The familiarity of fixed-camera locations can affect their effectiveness over time and safety gains are starting to level off. The ability to pop up unexpectedly in different places helps to counter that.
“And, they’re relatively inexpensive; several portable cameras can be bought for the price of a single average speed enforcement system. Cost is going to be a huge consideration during post-pandemic economic recovery but we can’t afford to compromise on safety. Portable solutions are an effective solution to the problem.”