Police use tractors to snare speeding motorists

A police force has admitted hiding cameras in farm vehicles to catch speeding motorists on rural roads.

Humberside Police said it was putting cameras inside tractors and other agricultural vehicles and placing them alongside notorious speeding spots to trap people breaking the law.

Previously, the force used marked bikes to catch speeding motorists in a bid to reduce accidents in areas.

See also: Police call on tractor drivers to pull into lay-bys more often

But the force decided that buying a tractor and hiding police officers with hand-held speed guns would be cheaper.

This would appear to defy advice issued by the former Association of Chief Police Officers (now the National Police Chiefs Council), which stated: “Operators of devices should normally do so from positions where they will be clearly visible to the public.”

Officers have also been photographed using hand-held speed cameras inside horseboxes to snare speeding motorists.

Inspector Mark Hughes from Humberside Police’s Roads Policing Unit, said: “At the moment Humberside Police are conducting Operation Kansas in the East Riding of Yorkshire.

“This operation runs alongside the well-established and much publicised Operation Achilles. It is concerned with ‘high-end’ speeding offenders in the East Riding, deploying speed cameras, which are located in a variety of stationary vehicles. 



“Vehicles that are detected travelling at very high speeds are stopped further along the road and drivers/riders are spoken to and dealt with at the roadside.

“Although the majority of offenders are motorcycles, a number of cars are also dealt with in this operation.

“We regularly record speeds in the high 90s and more than 100mph and this on country roads where the national speed limit of 60mph is in force. 



“It goes without saying that such speeds on these roads are inherently dangerous, particularly when you consider how many side roads and field entrances there are.

“Someone pulling out on to the road does not expect a vehicle coming towards them at such high speeds – the likelihood of a catastrophic collision is raised considerably.”

Insp Hughes insisted the operation conformed to national guidance around the use of speed cameras within unmarked vehicles.

It was aimed at the small percentage of riders/drivers who drive at dangerously high speeds on country roads, endangering themselves and other innocent road users.