A distraction from you-know-what: A few months ago we had a brief conversation here about whether the public would accept the use of traffic cameras to enforce road rules, and I pointed out that Melbourne, Australia has a long history of doing so.

Now, I get to show you how it works.

During a recent trip to Down Under (bracketed by the bush fires on one end and the virus on the other), we rented a car, and on Valentine’s Day at 11:33am, I apparently exceeded the 40 km/h speed limit by 9 km/h. (That’s 5.4 mph in a 26 mph zone.) Today’s mail brought me a reminder of that day, a fine for AUD 207 (US$ 124). The notice allows you to view the actual moment of transgression.  Here it is:

| Newton MA News and Politics Blog

By the way, they reduce the detected speed by 2 km/h, to 47 km/h, to “allow for tolerance in detection equipment.” That’s the only tolerance that exists in the Victoria zero-tolerance traffic safety environment! I immediately paid up.