Australia: Daylight Saving Time Confuses Speed Cameras

Article: Australia: Daylight Saving Time Confuses Speed Cameras

Police in Western Australia have provided false information to the public regarding the deployment of speed cameras to cover up the fact that the devices are confused by daylight saving time. Western Australians must turn their clocks back one hour on March 30 following a 2006 government edict. The twenty-five Multanova speed cameras used in the state were pulled off duty Friday so that technicians could manually reset the devices' internal clocks to account for the time change. Despite this, Western Australian police published a list of about forty locations for camera deployment on Friday, Saturday and Sunday -- even though all of the machines will be in the shop. View the falsified police list in a 75k PDF file.

"We wanted it kept quiet," Police Inspector John Vivian told the Perth Sunday Times which uncovered the deception.

Police said it was an "oversight" to provide media outlets with the false information regarding the locations of photo enforcement this weekend. The daylight saving snafu will cost the state millions in revenue as about 5000 tickets would otherwise have been issued this weekend.

The West Australian public has long opposed daylight saving time. Daylight saving was first imposed on Western Australia in 1974 but immediately rejected in a referendum in 1975. Additional efforts to impose daylight saving were rejected by voters in 1984 and 1992. A fourth referendum is scheduled for 2009. Source