PSA: NSW Average Speed Cameras Only Track Heavy Vehicles

Ever driven past an average speed camera and stressed that it had caught you going just a little too fast? Turns out you never actually had to worry about it at all.

While I don’t seem to remember learning this in any of my driving tests, average speed cameras in NSW actually only target heavy vehicles, as they are disproportionately involved in road fatalities and are more likely to be travelling long distances. In this case heavy vehicles are classified as having “a Gross Vehicle Mass greater than 4.5 tonnes.”

Don’t believe me? Here it is on the Transport NSW website: “Measuring the average speed of vehicles over long distances, average speed cameras in NSW are only used to monitor the speed of heavy vehicles.”

I was curious as to whether this was common in Australia, but it turns out NSW is the only one. Every other state that has average speed cameras, or point-to-point cameras, will pick up speeding in any kind of vehicle, including ‘instantaneous’ speeding at either individual camera.