'Speeding Volvo' on SLEX has erroneous speedometer.

Remember that motorist that was caught speeding on the SLEX recently who posted that viral video of his journey that contradicted the speed cameras? In case you missed it, the video basically shows a couple’s journey along the SLEX with the vehicle’s speedometer showing an indicated speed of 100 km/h, yet when they arrived at the toll plaza, they were apprehended for doing 131 km/h. This didn’t just happen once or twice, but a total of 5 times in the span of a month or so.

The driver, Mr. Dennis Gonzales, was asked to surrender his license (which he refused to do) citing the video evidence that he had on his wife’s cellphone. Even though the enforcers refused to view the video, they continued with the apprehension, which led to Mr. Gonzales driving off in frustration and now having to answer several charges against him, including speeding, failure to cooperate with law enforcement, fleeing, and obstruction.

Yet as clear cut as the evidence seems, since the initial posting of the video, many questions have been raised; questions of course about the accuracy or calibration of the speed radar guns of the SLEX, but also about the accuracy of the car’s speedometer, the driver, his motives, the stretch of road that was recorded and even the tire and rim size of the vehicles. So I decided to spend my Saturday afternoon finding out the answers.

Thankfully, the owner of the car, Mr. Dennis Gonzales, was very accommodating and invited me to drive his car and conduct my little experiment. I also invited the SLEX to use their radar guns to clock our speed so we could compare the indicated speed to the GPS speed and their radar speed, in the hope that we could see where the discrepancy was.

Unfortunately, SLEX declined the invitation. They claimed that Fridays were peak times and they couldn’t afford to assign manpower to me. When I clarified that I would only need them to get a radar reading as I passed by and share the reading with us (obviously I didn’t want to break the law just to write a story) I received no reply. So I asked for Saturday. Up until this writing, there’s hasn’t been any acknowledgement except for one email that says:

“FYI TRB just completed their live tests on our new DOST certified Radar Speed gun here in SLTC. Using TRB’s vehicle and our Patrol vehicle with one TRB official on board.
Speed on the two (2) test vehicles match with our radar speed gun, sometimes our speed gun registered a slower speed than that of the vehicle.
Also, channel 7 witnessed the event.”

So basically, the resources were given to channel 7 and TV Patrol, but not to a journalist that specialises in motoring, and who was offering the proper equipment to clear this all up. But I pressed on with the test anyway. At least to put to rest the questions of the calibration of the GPS speed vs Mr. Gonzales’ indicated speed in his 2014 Volvo S60 T4. I also asked him about the tire size, and upon inspecting it, noticed them to be factory stock 215/50/17 inch Michelins. And finally, I ended up asking him to address concerns that he may have recorded the video AFTER a speed trap in order to attempt to clear his name.

He replied by saying that not only did SLEX confirm that the speed trap was set up at ABI Greenfields, which is after his recorded start at Caltex Mamplasan, but that you can even notice the flash of the speed camera go off in his video as it nabbed him.

So, with that in mind, I set up the camera drove at a steady 100km/h (using cruise control) along the SLEX and Skyway. I recorded a total of 24 minutes of video using the the extremely accurate Garmin VIRB, which records every morsel of GPS data and then overlays it on the video. I did several passes and the results clearly show that Mr. Gonzales’ speedometer is indeed erroneous.

But sadly, for the SLEX at least, it is not only within the tolerated margin of all vehicles (which is somewhere around 7%) it is also skewed to the side of safety––which in other words, means the car is going slower than the indicated speed. This, just so we’re all clear, is completely normal and acceptable; all cars come with a margin of error on the indicated speed.

So now that it has been clearly established that Mr. Gonzales’ speedometer is accurate, his tire and wheels are stock and that the video recording he first posted was before the speed trap, it puts a giant question mark over the reliability of these speed radars and is now up to the SLEX to make the next move to clear it up. Otherwise it’s check MATES.

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