Battle with .5 seconds into Red Light in Victoria
I was snapped by a red light camera with the time being .5 seconds on the red.
This occurred on the 2 nd of February 2024.
I decided to contest it and was given a court date and at the hearing I was promised a video of the alleged offence. This I got a few days later which turned out to be a 3.00 MB video file in mp4 format . It was compressed and the information data contained 12.44 seconds consisting of 311 frames.
I split the video in 311 individual files using ffmpeg software .
This resolves the time between each image being ( 12.44/311) seconds or 40 millisecond which means that 25 frames equals one second.
By starting at the frame that displayed the yellow for first time I stepped through the frames for 25 X 3 plus 12 frames – that is 3.5 seconds on yellow .
This last frame showed that I was in the intersection – over the two white lines in front the first thick white line but the the light was red.
SO THE LIGHT AND THE VIDEO ARE OUT OF sync. Also the .5 seconds was wrong as it was .048 .
The significance of all this is that the standard for the time on yellow at this intersection is 4 seconds as the speed on this stretch is 60 kph so 3.5 seconds is not appropriate .
In any case I had taken a video of the traffic light in March on my own phone , in this case the time on the yellow was not 3.5 seconds , but less than 3 seconds.
The resolution was better as it was .032 seconds. Would appear consistently incorrect !!!
I have inserted the part from the traffic manual below .
So my advice is to check the timing of the yellow before paying any fine by analysing a video that you have created of the timing of the lights.
In my case the saga continues as they cancelled the infringement after my request for a court date but the letter from Vic Police never arrived . This was in March. Also the fact nobody bothered to check that there was open case for this obligation number when they cancelled it.
I was snapped by a red light camera with the time being .5 seconds on the red.
This occurred on the 2 nd of February 2024.
I decided to contest it and was given a court date and at the hearing I was promised a video of the alleged offence. This I got a few days later which turned out to be a 3.00 MB video file in mp4 format . It was compressed and the information data contained 12.44 seconds consisting of 311 frames.
I split the video in 311 individual files using ffmpeg software .
This resolves the time between each image being ( 12.44/311) seconds or 40 millisecond which means that 25 frames equals one second.
By starting at the frame that displayed the yellow for first time I stepped through the frames for 25 X 3 plus 12 frames – that is 3.5 seconds on yellow .
This last frame showed that I was in the intersection – over the two white lines in front the first thick white line but the the light was red.
SO THE LIGHT AND THE VIDEO ARE OUT OF sync. Also the .5 seconds was wrong as it was .048 .
The significance of all this is that the standard for the time on yellow at this intersection is 4 seconds as the speed on this stretch is 60 kph so 3.5 seconds is not appropriate .
In any case I had taken a video of the traffic light in March on my own phone , in this case the time on the yellow was not 3.5 seconds , but less than 3 seconds.
The resolution was better as it was .032 seconds. Would appear consistently incorrect !!!
I have inserted the part from the traffic manual below .
So my advice is to check the timing of the yellow before paying any fine by analysing a video that you have created of the timing of the lights.
In my case the saga continues as they cancelled the infringement after my request for a court date but the letter from Vic Police never arrived . This was in March. Also the fact nobody bothered to check that there was open case for this obligation number when they cancelled it.
