imperial war museum ncp - anpr cameras seems faulty Options

[sayitisso]

Hi guys,

The attached notice was rec'd thru the post

There's a couple of things I should point out.

First and most importantly, the driver genuinely didn't park there! The driver went into the car park to see if there were any disabled parking spots available and left after a minute or two when there wasn't any available.....
How would the driver go about proving the times given are wrong if that is honestly the case? ie can they ask for footage of the car being parked for a certain period

Secondly, the letter has arrived quite late, (date of incident 15th sep, notice sent 1st Nov), from what I understand there are limits on how long after an incident a notice can be sent, but this may be old info or only apply to council tickets....if it had been sooner the car has a dashcam and it could have helped with footage.


Thanks

This post has been edited by sayitisso: Wed, 10 Nov 2021 - 18:42

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[DWMB2]

First off edit your post so that you do not reveal who was driving - "The driver" drove, nobody else!

Are you definitely the registered keeper of the car? (i.e. it is not a lease/finance car, and you have the vehicle's V5C document with your current name and address on there?)

Did the driver return to the car park at 14:15? If so, this sounds like a 'double dip', if not, it sounds like a complete malfunction of their equipment,

[ostell]

So if the car is yours and not on hire or anything like that then:

Dear Sirs,

I have just received your Notice to Keeper xxxxx for vehicle VRM xxxx

You have failed to comply with the requirements of Schedule 4 of The Protection Of Freedoms Act 2012 namely, but not limited to, failing to deliver the notice within the relevant period of 14 days as prescribed by section 9 (4) of the Act. You cannot, therefore, transfer liability for the alleged charge from the driver at the time to me, the keeper.

There is no legal requirement to name the driver at the time and I will not be doing so.

Any further communication with me on this matter, apart from confirmation of no further action and my details being removed from your records, will be considered vexatious and harassment. This includes communication from any Debt Collection companies you care to instruct.

Yours etc

First class post with a free certificate of posting from a post office.

[Dave65]

As above, is this a mobility vehicle registered to a dealer or such?

[Sheffield Dave]

After a careful look at the shadows, I think I can show that both photos were taken around the same time, at about 14:15 local time.

Google maps shows that the car park entrance is aligned about 22 degrees rotated clockwise compared with a N-S alignment, An astronomical calculator shows that in Manchester on that day, at 13:15 local time (12:15 GMT) the sun is orientated at 185 degrees (where S is 180 degrees), while at 14:15 local time, it is angled at 202 degrees. This has the happy effect that at 14:15, the sun is 22 degrees off from south, i.e. at almost exactly the same alignment as the car park entrance. (Or to put it another way, if you held a stick up vertically there, its shadow would lie in exactly the same direction as the white lane markers.)

Now look at the shadow of the car entering. The car is aligned on the same axis as as the entrance, and there is a small shadow to the front of the car, but no shadow to either side, except that that a small shadow can be seen for each wing mirror. This could only occur if the sun was on exactly the same axis as the car, but behind it - a slight movement to either side and one of the wing mirror shadows would disappear. The car definitely entered around an hour and a bit after astronomical noon, so about 14:15 BST.

A similar, if slightly more approximate argument can be applied to the exit photo. Here, the car isn't exactly aligned with the exit, which makes it a bit harder. But look at the tip of wing mirror and its shadow. The front wheel is on the white centre line, so the wing mirror sticks out (at an estimate) slightly over the centre line. Similarly, the wing mirror shadow is slightly over the centre line. So the tip of the mirror and its shadow are both an equal distance (approx) over the centre line, so the sun's alignment is parallel to the centre line, so 22 degrees from S, so again the photo was taken around 14:15 BST

[Jlc]

That's the best forensic analysis I've seen on here :-)

Whilst there are avenues to get this cancelled easily I'm quite concerned that they are accessing personal information without reasonable cause as it seems one of the camera's isn't synchronised correctly - I wonder if the recent clock change is related?

This post has been edited by Jlc: Mon, 8 Nov 2021 - 16:44

[Sheffield Dave]

That's the best forensic analysis I've seen on here :-)

Thanks :-)

Whilst there are avenues to get this cancelled easily I'm quite concerned that they are accessing personal information without reasonable cause as it seems on of the camera's isn't synchronised correctly - I wonder if the recent clock change is related?

The numbers would make sense if the entrance camera was displaying a GMT/UTC time rather than BST time. Which could be explained by the camera being mis-configured without a time zone being set (so it just defaults to UTC all year round). The real question is how long has it been like this, and how many false tickets have been issued as a result - since it is adding an hour to each visit.
Perhaps this needs reporting to the Manchester Imperial War Museum?

[Sheffield Dave]

And in case anyone is wondering, PPCs often boast in their witness statements how their cameras are precisely synchronised using NTP (network time protocol). However, NTP doesn't supply any information about time zones nor daylight saving time (DST). NTP just gives an accurate value for how many seconds past Jan 1 1900 at Greenwich we are (the Epoch time). If a networked camera in London and one in California both queried an NTP server at the same time, they would both get the exact same answer - that it is 3,800,000,001 seconds (or whatever) past the Epoch.
Only if the Californian camera has been correctly locally configured so that it knows that it's running Pacific time, will the camera's software, when converting that timestamp to a human-readable form, subtract 7 or 8 hours from it depending on the time of year.

[Slapdash]

It seems plausible that the cameras could be misconfigured. There is a 4 hour minimum charge and then additional 2 hour slots. If it were adding an hour it quite possibly would result in few pcns.

However, if this were the case then that would suggest the op was only in for 15 seconds. Which seems unlikely.

[Jlc]

However, if this were the case then that would suggest the op was only in for 15 seconds. Which seems unlikely.

OP said a minute or two. If one of the clocks isn't correctly linked to a synchronised master source (also why the GMT/BST change hasn't happened perhaps?) then that clock has possibly drifted.

Although, I'd fully expect a PPC to reject the notion that their system isn't 100% accurate.

This post has been edited by Jlc: Mon, 8 Nov 2021 - 16:54

[Slapdash]

However, if this were the case then that would suggest the op was only in for 15 seconds. Which seems unlikely.

OP said a minute or two. If one of the clocks isn't correctly linked to a synchronised master source (also why the GMT/BST change hasn't happened perhaps?) then that clock has possibly drifted.

Although, I'd fully expect a PPC to reject the notion that their system isn't 100% accurate.

I think it unlikely.

It is plausible the exit camera is on BST and the entry camera on GMT. That would make it an hour later for half the year.

The issue I have is that if that is the case and the camera are synchronizing (which under NTP should happen frequently) then there should be very little drift. The cameras could use a different protocol of course, eg GPS or perhaps the Windows time service (which is an SNTP derivative) but this should still happen regularly.

It is possible they are misconfigured to use a different device to sync from (*). But I still wouldn't expect drift.

It is possible that the camera clocks are some sort of "set and forget" of course. But then they can't claim any sort of synchronisation.

Sheffield Daves comments would seem to make a double dip unlikely.

Perhaps the route through the car park (at least the bit between the cameras) is particularly short.

(*) I could hypothesise that one camera is connected to a fairly local to it PC and synchronizing from it. The other to a different PC. This introduce further scope for errors.

This post has been edited by Slapdash: Mon, 8 Nov 2021 - 18:12

[Sheffield Dave]

On google maps there is a single block of disabled parking, visible once past the entrance. If the driver was familiar with the car park, then it would only take a few seconds to check that the disabled bays were full.

Anyway, it isn't really the OPs job in court to provide an explanation of how the clocks might be in error - they just need eyewitness testimony that the stay was short, backed up by the photo evidence that the entry and exist were both at 14:15 approx.

[Jlc]

Indeed, all hypothesizing - but I tend to believe the OP knows the difference between a couple minutes and an hour

You'd have thought both camera's were linked to a common time source but stranger things have happened...

[sayitisso]

hi guys

to answer some of the questions raised

yes i'm registered keeper, its not a lease car or mobility car, a disabled space was required for a family member who was a passenger.

the driver didn't exit the car, they just drove around to see if there were any disabled spots and exited when they couldn't find any, and never exited the vehicle.

the time it would have taken was definitely more than 15 secs, the driver isn't familiar with the car park and went around the car park to check, i would say the time was around a minute.....

So if the car is yours and not on hire or anything like that then:

Dear Sirs,

I have just received your Notice to Keeper xxxxx for vehicle VRM xxxx

You have failed to comply with the requirements of Schedule 4 of The Protection Of Freedoms Act 2012 namely, but not limited to, failing to deliver the notice within the relevant period of 14 days as prescribed by section 9 (4) of the Act. You cannot, therefore, transfer liability for the alleged charge from the driver at the time to me, the keeper.

There is no legal requirement to name the driver at the time and I will not be doing so.

Any further communication with me on this matter, apart from confirmation of no further action and my details being removed from your records, will be considered vexatious and harassment. This includes communication from any Debt Collection companies you care to instruct.

Yours etc

First class post with a free certificate of posting from a post office.

hi, is the reason for posting to avoid giving details that are requested if i was to go through the website route?
and do you not think in the challenge it should be stated the driver didn't park there as one of the points?

After a careful look at the shadows, I think I can show that both photos were taken around the same time, at about 14:15 local time.

Google maps shows that the car park entrance is aligned about 22 degrees rotated clockwise compared with a N-S alignment, An astronomical calculator shows that in Manchester on that day, at 13:15 local time (12:15 GMT) the sun is orientated at 185 degrees (where S is 180 degrees), while at 14:15 local time, it is angled at 202 degrees. This has the happy effect that at 14:15, the sun is 22 degrees off from south, i.e. at almost exactly the same alignment as the car park entrance. (Or to put it another way, if you held a stick up vertically there, its shadow would lie in exactly the same direction as the white lane markers.)

Now look at the shadow of the car entering. The car is aligned on the same axis as as the entrance, and there is a small shadow to the front of the car, but no shadow to either side, except that that a small shadow can be seen for each wing mirror. This could only occur if the sun was on exactly the same axis as the car, but behind it - a slight movement to either side and one of the wing mirror shadows would disappear. The car definitely entered around an hour and a bit after astronomical noon, so about 14:15 BST.

A similar, if slightly more approximate argument can be applied to the exit photo. Here, the car isn't exactly aligned with the exit, which makes it a bit harder. But look at the tip of wing mirror and its shadow. The front wheel is on the white centre line, so the wing mirror sticks out (at an estimate) slightly over the centre line. Similarly, the wing mirror shadow is slightly over the centre line. So the tip of the mirror and its shadow are both an equal distance (approx) over the centre line, so the sun's alignment is parallel to the centre line, so 22 degrees from S, so again the photo was taken around 14:15 BST

hey i've seen some of these types of forensic analysis pop up on the internet but to be honest it's a bit beyond me!
would an hour be enough time to cause enough difference to make it a worthwhile avenue to bring up as evidence?

This post has been edited by sayitisso: Thu, 11 Nov 2021 - 00:01

[DWMB2]

Don't reveal who was driving! Edit that line in your last post.

[Sheffield Dave]

hey i've seen some of these types of forensic analysis pop up on the internet but to be honest it's a bit beyond me!
would an hour be enough time to cause enough difference to make it a worthwhile avenue to bring up as evidence?

Yes, an hour either way and the shadows would have been completely different. I happen to have a PhD in 3D computer graphics algorithms, so light sources, shadows, angles etc are bread and butter to me. I am convinced that both photos were taken at about the same time, and that it was around 14:15 BST. I could potentially write you an expert's report (although I don't know the what CPR rules are on that. Anyone know?).

[sayitisso]

Don't reveal who was driving! Edit that line in your last post.

thanks!

hey i've seen some of these types of forensic analysis pop up on the internet but to be honest it's a bit beyond me!
would an hour be enough time to cause enough difference to make it a worthwhile avenue to bring up as evidence?

Yes, an hour either way and the shadows would have been completely different. I happen to have a PhD in 3D computer graphics algorithms, so light sources, shadows, angles etc are bread and butter to me. I am convinced that both photos were taken at about the same time, and that it was around 14:15 BST. I could potentially write you an expert's report (although I don't know the what CPR rules are on that. Anyone know?).

hey, thanks for the offer, it's much appreciated, i'm hoping it can be settled before that if someone working there simply manually checks the camera but i'm guessing that is unlikely.....

does anyone familiar with ncp's appeal process know if they provide access to video clip's if you register an appeal on the website? i'm pretty sure this is the case with council tickets and it might prove useful if perusing this forensic angle

This post has been edited by sayitisso: Thu, 11 Nov 2021 - 00:11

[DWMB2]

There likely won't be a video... ANPR cameras tend to take one still image on entry and one on exit.

[nosferatu1001]

No video clip, anpr isn't video.

[Jlc]

The ANPR itself won't be recording video - but there may be other CCTV camera's onsite. I wouldn't be surprised at the IWM.