The Road Safety (General) Regulations 1999 require that all fixed digital cameras are regularly tested and maintained by licensed testing officers. This is to ensure that all cameras are functional and operate within the requirements of the regulation.

The certificates contain personal details about the person testing. These include details like name and signature. These have been blacked out in accordance with the Privacy Act 1998. This is standard practice with all documents released under the Freedom of Information Act 1982.

This is because fixed digital cameras only have compliance certificates while point-to-point cameras also have survey certificates. Point-to-point cameras are only found on the Hume Highway in Victoria.

A survey certificate is assigned to a pair of point-to-point cameras. They certify that the camera sites chosen are the shortest distance a vehicle would travel between the two points. Survey certificates are only given to camera locations along the Hume Highway in Victoria.

All fixed digital cameras (excluding point-to-point cameras) contain speed measurement devices. Compliance certificates are the certificates assigned to each camera by the licensed tester describing whether the camera was operating in accordance with the regulations (functioning correctly).  

A speed measurement device (SMD) is the component in all fixed digital cameras (excluding point-to-point cameras) that detects a vehicle’s presence and accurately measures its speed.

The Road Safety (General) Regulations 1999 currently require that a fixed, digital speed measurement device be certified within two years from the date of its activation.

When an SMD is due for re-certification, the device is removed from the site and taken away for testing. That particular SMD is not necessarily returned to the same camera site. The new SMD would then have a different certificate, this is to ensure that an accurate camera history is kept for that particular camera location.

Other reasons why an SMD may be removed causing more than one certificate to be displayed at a location include road re-surfacing, electrical or hardware repairs. Finally, some sites have more than one fixed safety camera. In these instances, the compliance certificates relating to each SMD for each camera at the site are published.

Therefore, over time, sites will have a number of certificates displaying their SMD history.

No. The regulations require that all sites have certified SMDs at all times that they are switched on.

Victoria Police and the Department of Justice use different laboratories to perform the testing and hence the certificates look different. Regardless of which laboratory is used, the tests are carried out and certificates provided in line with the requirements of the Road Safety (General) Regulations 1999.

Yes. All fixed digital speed cameras are required to be accurate within a set tolerance, which is within a limit of error not greater than 2kmh.