If they can’t see you, it ain’t speeding. . .
11/18/2006 @ 8:00 pm
I normally travel by car on my relatively frequent trips between Tokyo and the Japundit Media Complex nestled high up in the hills of the northern Kanto Plain in beautiful Tochigi Prefecture. Along the way on the outrageously priced tollway (4,000 yen one way) are a number of speed cameras.
Though I have never been caught speeding on the tollway (though I will confess to being ticketed once in the middle of a bunch of rice fields where there was not another single vehicle or living soul for that matter in sight), I take care to remember the location of each camera and to ensure that I am not speeding when I pass them.
After watching the video below, however, I think I may simply need to get a faster car. . .
That’s a subject that need discussing! Memorizing works on a known route. But what about a road you are unfamiliar with?
I don’t think I can clock 160mph on my CRV. I do, though, wait for someone brazen enough to go all out and then try to stay close behind them. The theory is that the camera that catches them won’t have time to reset and catch me.
The other tidbit is that I have been told that the cameras are usually set to go off at 139kph in a 100 zone. This, of course, is not reliable info, but seems about right. And any time the prefecture wants a little extra revenue, they could simply knock it down to 129 for a week or so.
November 18th, 2006 at 9:15 pmAre there 100kph zones in Japan? The highest I’ve ever seen is 80.
Also, some of those cameras might be N System cameras.
November 19th, 2006 at 10:50 amOn the train in Tokyo I’ve seen people who have a plastic sticker on their cell phones that prevents people next to them from reading the screen.
Perhaps we could get someone to make a similar item for your license plate and the camera would not get a clear shot.
November 19th, 2006 at 11:58 amIn most countries, obscuring the license plate in anyway is illegal.
But then again, so is driving at upward of 170 mph…
November 19th, 2006 at 2:02 pmCharles,
That is indeed the case in Japan. But the law does not stop some people from using plastic “license plate covers” that are a grayish smoked glass kind of color, which is said to make it impossible for the cameras to read the numbers.
November 19th, 2006 at 6:58 pmJP, you are a fountain of information here! Do they carry those at the usual auto supply stores?
November 19th, 2006 at 8:21 pmI don’t think so, since they are illegal. I imagine you have to get them from a car magazine ad or something like that.
Some places to start looking on the net are here and here.
The hot product seems to be something called “N-killer” (N kira-), but I could not find any information about where to purchase it.
Another place you should check, again in Japanese, is here, where the police outline what they will do to you if they catch you with one of these covers on your plates.
November 19th, 2006 at 9:00 pmFor what it’s worth, I found an anti N-system site (on a Korean server?), but the links to N-Killer were broken.
They are thoughtful enough to provide this map of road camera locations, though!
November 20th, 2006 at 8:23 amI have seen the plate covers in North America…viewing the plate from anything but straight on obscures the view. That was 10 years ago.
November 20th, 2006 at 10:47 amDon’t most good radar detectors in Japan (or is that good Navi systems) have the location of radar cameras programmed in. These can be connected to the Internet and updated at regular intervals.:cool:
November 20th, 2006 at 10:50 am