Will Americans be ticketed by speed cameras on highways?

Most photo radar systems can't keep track of more than one car at a time. But the descriptively-named "Cordon multi-target Photo Radar System" can. If these bad boys get deployed across America, you can be insurance companies and politicians will be seeing dollar signs.

The device is able to generate both a wide-angle image and a close-up of the car's license plate, keeping track of up to 32 cars across four lanes of traffic. The camera tracks each car's license plate and shows how fast they're going, showing green for below the speed limit, yellow for within appropriate speed ranges, and red for speeders.

It's about as big as a large video projector and can be mounted in a variety of locations, like a tripod or a road-sign, which makes them harder for motorists to spot.

The device's video and website didn't clarify how the license plates would be correlated to individual drivers, as their faces were not discernible in the video. In some municipalities you can't give a ticket to a car, you have to give it to the driver. Without additional verification it would be hard for these tickets to stand up in court as they would have to prove you were the driver of the car at the time the image was taken.

You have a little bit of time to train yourself to be a slower driver - minding the speed limit and leaving yourself enough travel time so that speeding isn't necessary - as the distributor won't start selling them in the US until the beginning of 2012.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/31/cordon-multi-target-photo-radar-system-leaves-no-car-untagged-v/

http://www.peakgainsystems.com/en/cordon.html

http://consumerist.com/2011/11/no-car-will-escape-this-future-now-speed-cam.html