The Road Traffic Offenders (Prescribed Devices) Order (Northern Ireland) 2012

Statutory Rules of Northern Ireland

2012 No. 77

Road Traffic And Vehicles

The Road Traffic Offenders (Prescribed Devices) Order (Northern Ireland) 2012

Made

29th February 2012

Coming into operation

2nd April 2012

The Department of the Environment makes the following Order in exercise of the powers conferred by Article 23(9) of the Road Traffic Offenders (Northern Ireland) Order 1996(1).

Citation, commencement and interpretation

1.  This Order may be cited as the Road Traffic Offenders (Prescribed Devices) Order (Northern Ireland) 2012 and shall come into operation on 2^nd April 2012.

2.  In this Order—

“odometer pulses” means the signals derived from sensors in a motor vehicle monitoring either the rotation of a wheel or wheels or the final component of the vehicle which transfers power from the engine to the wheels, such as an axle, at a rate which is proportional to the distance travelled by that vehicle.

Prescribed device

3.  The following device is prescribed for the purposes of Article 23 of the Road Traffic Offenders (Northern Ireland) Order 1996, that is to say, a manually activated device designed or adapted for recording the measurement of the speed of a motor vehicle (“vehicle A”) from another motor vehicle (“vehicle B”) by—

(a) measuring the time taken by vehicle A to pass two positions on the road either directly or by reference to the time taken by vehicle B to pass the same two positions on the road;

(b) recording the distance between the two positions by counting the odometer pulses from vehicle B as it travels between the two positions; and

(c) calculating the average speed of vehicle A over the distance between the two positions by reference to the time recording in paragraph (a) and the distance either calculated in accordance with paragraph (b) or measured manually.

Sealed with the Official Seal of the Department of the Environment on 29^th February 2012

Iain Greenway

A senior officer of the

Department of the Environment

EXPLANATORY NOTE

(This note is not part of the Order)

This Order prescribes a type of speed detection device for the purposes of Article 23 of the Road Traffic Offenders (Northern Ireland) Order 1996 (speeding offences etc: admissibility of certain evidence). This means that devices of this type can be approved by the Department of the Environment and the record produced from those approved devices can then be adduced as evidence in proceedings for certain road traffic offences when accompanied by an appropriate signed certificate as to the circumstances of its production. The Order permits the use of devices that record the time it takes for a vehicle to travel between two points on a road by manual activation and which are capable of measuring the distance between those two points by means of the odometer pulses of the vehicle to which they are fitted.

(1)

S.I. 1996/1320 (N.I. 10); Article 23(2) was amended by paragraph 27 of Schedule 8 to S.I. 1997/276 (N.I. 2); Article 2 of S.R. 1999 No. 435, Article 2 of S.R. 2001 No. 375 and Article 5(2) of S.I. 2007/916 (N.I. 10)