Smart Phone Gets Driver Out of a Speeding Ticket 254
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Sahas Katta writes in Skattertech that a traffic cop pulled him over while driving home and gave him a speeding ticket but thanks to his Android, he ended up walking out of traffic court without having to pay a fine or adding a single point to his record. "I fortunately happened to have Google Tracks running when an officer cited me for speeding while heading back home from a friend's place," writes Katta. "The speed limit in the area was a mere 25 miles per hour and the cop's radar gun shockingly clocked me driving over 40 miles per hour." Once in court Katta asked the officer the last time he attended radar gun training, when the device was last calibrated, or the unit's model number — none of which the officer could answer. "I then presented my time stamped GPS data with details about my average moving speed and maximum speed during my short drive home. Both numbers were well within the posted speed limits," says Katta. "The judge took a moment and declared that I was not guilty, but he had an unusual statement that followed. To avoid any misinterpretations about his ruling, he chose to clarify his decision by citing the lack of evidence on the officer's part. He mentioned that he was not familiar enough with GPS technology to make a decision based on my evidence, but I can't help but imagine that it was an important factor.""
The smart phone got him off? (Score:5, Insightful)
Guy gets a ticket, goes to court dressed respectfully, treats the judge with deference, geeks out to a clueless judge about his nifty new GPS toy, asks the cop something he heard a previous defendant's lawyer ask about lack of evidence that worked, and is found not guilty. The judge goes out of his way to note the GPS evidence played no part in the decision. How is this a story about a smart phone getting someone out of a ticket?
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Guy gets a ticket, goes to court dressed respectfully, treats the judge with deference, geeks out to a clueless judge about his nifty new GPS toy, asks the cop something he heard a previous defendant's lawyer ask about lack of evidence that worked, and is found not guilty. The judge goes out of his way to note the GPS evidence played no part in the decision. How is this a story about a smart phone getting someone out of a ticket?
None really; this is just another "but with a computer!" type of story. The only notable aspect to it is that the judge was willing to consider both sides and didn't instantly assume that anyone who contradicts a cop must be a liar. That is, most traffic violations do ultimately boil down to your word against the cop's especially when it's something other than speeding.
I wonder if the guy had to pay any fees. In my state, they have a nice racket going. Here, you have to pay a "court fee" that's sometime
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In general you don't pay any court fees if you are found not guilty, or the case is dropped or dismissed.
If you lose (i.e. you just pay the fine, you take defensive driving, you go to court and lose) then you pay the court fees, and whatever other fines are imposed on you.
Not that I even know what state you're in, but I've never heard of one where you had to pay court costs when you prevail in court.
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I live in a state similar to the previous poster. Why should I have to pay "court fees" when I don't contest the ticket? If I chose to simply pay it and move on with life there are no court costs and therefore no justification for "court fees".
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I live in a state similar to the previous poster. Why should I have to pay "court fees" when I don't contest the ticket? If I chose to simply pay it and move on with life there are no court costs and therefore no justification for "court fees".
I think a judge still has to sign off on it in order to make it official. I can see how there might be some non-zero cost for that.
What I don't understand is why I am paying state taxes if that money isn't for basic government functions like the court system. I should either pay usage fees or taxes. Requiring me to pay both is double-dipping.
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It's a shakedown, pure and simple. In my corner of the world, "court fees" have been around 4-8 times the fine, and are applied whether or not I go to court. There is simply no way disposing of my case cost anywhere near that. Judges don't make that kind of money, even if it take them an hour or two to "sign off" on my case. The difference between just paying the fine and hiring a lawyer to go deal with it for me ends up not being much.
You pay the money because if you don't, they'll fine you even more.
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Maybe I wasn't clear ... when you just pay the ticket, you basically plead "guilty" and waive your right to a trial. You have lost, and the "court fees" are part of the fine you have to pay.
But ... if you go to court and win, or you get them to dismiss the charges somehow, then you've won, and you do not have to pay court fees or anything else. (Any money you paid for a lawyer or expert witnesses is gone, of course.)
Perhaps it's not fair that you have "court fees" if you never went to court, but the court
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>>Maybe I wasn't clear ... when you just pay the ticket, you basically plead "guilty" and waive your right to a trial. You have lost, and the "court fees" are part of the fine you have to pay.
Here in California, you have to pay the ticket in advance if you want to go to court. IIRC, it says it is not an admission of guilt.
Been a while since I got a speeding ticket... maybe 2004? It might be different now. I was doing 55MPH in a 65 (severe dust storm blowing across the I-5), got cited for 87MPH in the
Re:The smart phone got him off? (Score:4, Insightful)
Its a story about how no judge is going to establish a precedent wherein evidence not under the court's or police department's control will be admitted. Its the same sort of hissy fit they throw when you video some cop doing dirt [slashdot.org].
Its their game and we are not allowed to play.
Re:The smart phone got him off? (Score:5, Insightful)
Its a story about how no judge is going to establish a precedent wherein evidence not under the court's or police department's control will be admitted. Its the same sort of hissy fit they throw when you video some cop doing dirt [slashdot.org].
Or it's a story about a judge who is presented evidence that could very well be fabricated but didn't need it so ruled as he would have ruled anyway and ignored the piece of information which would then have to be vetted, analyzed and contested by expert witnesses.
"Your honor I wasn't speeding because I had the particular Radar Gun re-calibrated by a certified repair facility and it was 15mph fast. Also I have tinfoil underwear which gives me the illusion of looking like I'm moving faster than I am."
"I dismiss the speeding ticket against you... but I do so ignoring the claim about your underwear."
"OMG IT WAS THE UNDERWEAR!"
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Where can I purchase this underwear you've described?
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Re:The smart phone got him off? (Score:5, Interesting)
I went through a similar thing here in Las Vegas about ten years ago when I was working a paper route. I was driving a '92 Buick, sitting in the left turn lane of a major intersection at about 4AM. I sat through three complete cycles of the traffic lights without ever getting a left turn green light.
I had four choices:
1. Wait until the intersection was clear and safe and then carefully make my left turn.
2. Go straight on the green light for straight, but doing so from the wrong lane.
3. Back up to where I could get in the proper lane, but breaking the laws regarding reversing more than 150 feet on a public roadway or breaking the law regarding changing lanes within 150 feet of an intersection.
4. Abandon my vehicle and find a pay phone to call 311 (non-emergency police number) for advice and to report the malfunctioning signal.
I chose option one. Cross traffic was stopped as my direction had a green light for straight ahead.
Of course, there was a police office sitting in traffic to my right, who promptly hit the lights and sirens as I turned and pulled me over.
"I can't believe that you did that in front of me!" he yelled.
I explained what happened, he handed me a ticket for making an illegal turn and failing to obey a traffic control device, telling me to "Tell it to the judge."
It took me three appearances at the courthouse before I could see a judge just for the arraignment AND I had to pay bail BEFORE the arraignment because I was pleading not guilty.
When I gave the judge my plea, he called me to the bench and offered to convert it to a no point parking ticket. I refused and told him "I'm not guilty your honor, taking the deal would be admitting guilt."
He sighed and said "Ok, I'm not supposed to hear testimony at an arraignment but tell me your story".
I did.
He then said "And you want me to make a ruling regarding which was the proper choice? You're not getting from me. CASE DISMISSED!"
He then told me quietly, "I'd have done the same thing in your situation."
Yes, it cost me more in time off than the fine would have been, but it was the principle of the thing. Plus I really wanted a judge to rule on the situation.
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So neither you, the cop, nor the judge were aware of the actual Nevada laws on broken traffic lights, eh? Basically, you treat it as a stop sign. Most states have similar laws, and often require waiting through a certain number of cycles or minutes. http://www.ehow.com/list_6847632_traffic-laws-nevada.html [ehow.com]
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Most jurisdictions treat a broken traffic light as a 4-way stop. But broken means either the lights are out completely (power failure), or the lights are on a 4-way flash. Not that the signals are working, but the turn signal is not signalling.
As my understanding of traffic laws goes (and admittedly, it depends on jurisdiction and may be very illegal in yours), what he should have done is wait for the straight through traffic to have cleared, and then gone straight through the intersection while the light w
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Sir –
The great problem, in my opinion, with the police doling out tickets like this is that there is neither feedback nor consequence to the police officer. He puts out a ticket, you have enormous cost to access justice, and he has absolutely no deterrence from causing you and others the same cost to access justice in the future. This is economic waste and impugnes the reputation, validity and motivation of the justice system.
In my humble opinion, every ticket that's dismissed at Court should be made
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In my humble opinion, every ticket that's dismissed at Court should be made known to the police officer, it should be recorded against his record, and it should be made an offence to systemically issue tickets that are dismissed – the offence being a species of barratry.
I agree with that so much it hurts.
Cops are constantly making charges they know won't stick solely as a form of punishment. Plus, they have the incentive of getting a day's pay for just sitting around in court surfing the web on their laptops until the case comes up and gets dismissed. It's disgusting.
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Its a story about how no judge is going to establish a precedent wherein evidence not under the court's or police department's control will be admitted....
It's a (non-)story about how no judge is going to establish a precedent wherein evidence derived from a device not tested or examined by the court or by expert witnesses is implicitly assumed reliable. The court wasn't willing to accept radar gun evidence where the operator couldn't prove he had been appropriately trained or that the device had been properly calibrated; why would the court accept the (putative) output of an untested smartphone app?
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Would this create a precedent? I don't now abut US law but in a lot of places, the lowest courts don't set precedent.
So the judge keeps the case from being appealed.
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This doesn't even have anything to do with the GPS itself. You're pretty much always going to get out of a simple speeding ticket if you take it that far.
The one time I was ever cited a speeding ticket, I jumped through all of their hoops (so-called mayor's court twice for the tiny village before finally getting to the real court) before being told out in the hallway that the case was being dismissed because they "wouldn't have time for it today". Of course, I showed up on time on each occurrence, was well
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I had a situation where I got pulled over as part of a speed trap (this was perfectly legitimate one that I shouldn't have gotten caught in, but I was just a little bit out of it that day and it didn't register what the presence of the cop cars up ahead meant). I was driving for a living at the time, so I contested it to get out of the points. They scheduled 15-20 of us on the same day at the same time. A police department representative showed up and offered us a deal, no poi
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My schedule worked out to the point that I only had to take one day off of work. Of course... the entire thing took several hours, over the course of about five days, which ran for two months. It probably wouldn't have been worth the time or trouble for most people, and that's exactly what the cops count on. Personally, the satisfaction I had afterward made up for it all. But that's just me, and I love sticking it to the government, and especially to cops. Never mind that the circumstances were highly que
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He also may had prayed the previous night, proving God is not only real, but that he can get you out of tickets.
Seriously, a judge going out of his way to clarify something is not part of the ruling is not just to avoid precedent. Officers failing to calibrate the radar gun alone can lead to bad readings and will get a ticket dismissed.
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Just because the smartphone has GPS doesn't mean it's 100% accurate or that the software is reading it properly.
He let Katta out of the ticket because he was in a great mood and he put up a fight. I pay an attorney $45 to do that for me and I "get out" the tickets too without a fine. I have bette
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"Exactly. The Judge could have asked Katta the last time he attended GPS training, when the smartphone was last calibrated, or the unit's model number — none of which the Katta would be able to answer."
He didn't get off because the judge was in a good mood. The judge didn't ask him those questions because the burden of proof is on the state, and its witness (the cop) not the defendant. Katta had no obligation to prove innocence but the state DID have an obligation to prove guilt.
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The state had both evidence and an eyewitness. The defendant cant just pull out a pad of paper that claims he is innocent and get off; he must either discredit the states proof and witness, or provide evidence which does so, and unvetted GPS data wouldnt cut it if it were my decision.
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and unvetted GPS data wouldnt cut it if it were my decision.
But the defense argument was that the state could not provide proof that the radar gun was ever vetted either. Thereby eliminating any real evidence.
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According to the judge's statements, it didn't really have an impact on his decision either.
Katta challenged the validity of the state's evidence, asking the cop to prove when he last had training with the speed gun, when the speed gun was last calibrated, and what model of speed gun it was. The cop could not answer any of these questions, and the validity of the evidence presented by the state was called into question. In the absence of other evidence supporting his guilt, he was found innocent.
Eyewitness
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The judge's statements are carefully worded to maximize ass-covering.
It could have played a HUGE factor in his decision. Why would he admit that, and open a very nasty can of worms that he would then have to deal with?
Don't forget - it was hardly the only thing influencing his decision.
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He didn't get off because the judge was in a good mood. The judge didn't ask him those questions because the burden of proof is on the state, and its witness (the cop) not the defendant. Katta had no obligation to prove innocence but the state DID have an obligation to prove guilt.
And, in the scheme of things, a speeding ticket for a few MPH over the limit isn't worth getting the court's panties in a knot. Plus we don't know if the cop has a history of writing questionable tickets. That does happen and judges can't stand a cop that wastes their time.
Re:The smart phone got him off? (Score:5, Informative)
The GPS is irrelevant. There are legal requirements for radar training and gun calibration. This is the standard way to get out of a speeding ticket. You know the whole innocent until proven guilty and the burden of proof is on the state thing.
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The GPS is irrelevant. There are legal requirements for radar training and gun calibration. This is the standard way to get out of a speeding ticket. You know the whole innocent until proven guilty and the burden of proof is on the state thing.
Doesn't always work. My wife was in for a ticket when one cop on a bridge did the radar and another did the intercept, and she asked how he knew he got the right car. He said he just knew. She asked about how the constitution requires the burden of proof, and the judge said "This is traffic court, the constitution doesn't apply here!"
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That's because it doesn't apply. Notice that it's always state and local cops that write speeding tickets, and not federal cops...
You need to use local laws to get out of speeding tickets, not federal ones. If the cop is required to be trained every 6 months by state law, then you ask if he's been trained within that period. But that has nothing to do with the US Constitution, barring the provision where these rights are given to the states.
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That is the most uninformed comment I've ever seen.
In every constitutional democracy the constitution is ABOVE everything. If a law, local or otherwise contradicts the constitution, it can be declared unconstitutional and derogated. If you have broken a law, and you can prove that the law was unconstitutional, you won't be prosecuted.
You don't need to ask permission to follow the constitution, and while following it, you can (in most countries) disregard laws if they conflict with the constitution.
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Only if it contradicts it directly. Remember, it also reserves anything not explicitly enumerated to the states, meaning that (for example) Illinois could pass any law it likes, as long as it does not directly contradict any of the basic rights enumerated in the document. Many Americans forget that point when screaming "UNCONSTITUTIONAL" at some law or another.
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I'm not from the united states, and I wasn't talking specifically about them.
But you were responding to a comment that DID specifically refer to the US Constitution, and you called it "the most uninformed comment I've ever seen". You owe the author some evidence for that statement.
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I'm sorry, what?
By that same logic, city, county, or state prisons can legally beat and torture their prisoners, unless local law specifically prohibits it. No. Just No.
All those rights provided to citizens of the United States by the constitution and its amendments apply equally in every jurisdiction in the country, it doesn't matter if the police involved are local or federal.
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So could the records of the radar gun in all probability.
In which case, it's your word against his, and the cop wins by default.
It's not just that GPS records can theoretically be falsified -- this is a smartphone app. It would be easy.
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A "GPS" app that takes a starting location and a maximum speed and calculates the "average" speed, "maximum" speed and timestamps necessary between that point and your current location to not have been speeding would sell like hotcakes. "But officer, I couldn't have been speeding, my Android GPS says so."
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The GPS unit in your phone or car only receives signals from the satellite, it's not a 2 way communication.
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you're an idiot.
cower some more, feeb.
you're completely pathetic.
Do you use Vim macros to store your boilerplate insults in? It would probably save time in the long run.
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I fully agree, but given the average age of judges, he probably doesn't know what the word "upload" means. :-)
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Don't feed trolls, man...
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you certainly cowered as commanded.
the causality is you're completely pathetic.
At this point I am beginning to feel sorry for you.
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No, no, don't stop!! Poke him some more - this was fun watching - and besides, the popcorn is ready now...
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I've worked it out. Michael Kristopeit is an Eliza bot!
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I've never seen Eliza quote one of the founding fathers.
[sniff] Our little AI is growing up!
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Re:The glossy phone got him off? (Score:4, Informative)
That's "Bible tracts".
Love,
Grammar Nazi
No, bible tracks. It's tank tracks made out of Bibles and barbed wire. As a tank with Bible tracks drives over an unbeliever demonstrator, there's a chance that they'll repent and be saved, when they can read the Bible while lying crushed in the ground and bleeding to death.
You'd better get your facts straight before you correct spelling errors of other people!
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cool story bro (Score:2)
Dunno about your phone, but my Droid's GPS is /not/ a precision instrument; it's routinely off by dozens of feet.
Dozens of feet over a quarter mile (Score:2, Interesting)
gives you a 2% error in speed, or 25 +/- 0.5 mph
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The absolute positional accuracy of a GPS sensor is not important in this case. Any error present tends to remain the same, or nearly so, from sample to sample (high precision). This keeps the cumulative error small for relative measurements like when computing the mean velocity between sample points.
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Presumably the navigation data is filtered intelligently. A talented undergrad can write a decent Kalman filter, so I'd assume the one Google uses is decent also.
Taking the precision into account, knowing that cars move in straight lines and curves (not jaggies), and that the velocities change relatively smoothly, you can get a much better estimate of the velocity than simply taking the difference of two positions and dividing the time. It won't account for constant biases, but those won't affect your ve
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GPS doesn't measure speed by looking at how your position changes; it uses the doppler effect, which is fairly accurate.
http://gpsinformation.net/main/gpsspeed.htm [gpsinformation.net]
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Jesus FUCKING Christ!
Quit saying that!
While GPS *could* use dopler shift, most do NOT! You can't make a blanket statement that they all do. It is utter bullshit.
I emailed garmin on this question:
Dear xxxxx,
Thank you for contacting Garmin International. I'd be happy to help you with your Legend.
The unit determines speed by using the track log data and calculating time/distance between those points.
Please let me know if there's anything else I can assist you with.
With Best Regards,
Debbie B
Product Support Specialist
Outdoor/Fitness Team
Garmin International
Here is something from google groups on the issue:
http://www.mail-archive.com/android-developers@googlegroups.com/msg57902.html [mail-archive.com]
It is pretty easy to show that consumer GPSR's aren't that accurate, speed-wise. I can easily break the speed limit and slow back down with my Android or eTrex being none the wiser.
So please
Clocked at 40? KM/hr perhaps... (Score:5, Funny)
25 MPH happens to be approximately 40KMH.
Me thinks the cop was incompetent or malicious and had the setting on Metric....
Do police radar allow you to choose units?
(Imperial police should not use metric units)
Re:Imperial Police? (Score:2)
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I've seen the inside of a lot of police cars: I wire them up to do what they do, and have for years.
I've never been requested to integrate a radar (or other speed indicator) into a video system. Many video systems these days do have GPS, and will record the officer's speed plainly on the video, and some of them allow some manner of interconnection to another speed-measuring device, but again: I've never seen that. In fact, I've never even done much radar installation: Usually, the officer takes care of
Phone got him off -- Judge avoided precedent (Score:3)
I'm going to guess that, yes, the phone got him out of the ticket, but only because the judge wanted to avoid setting a precedent by expressly ignoring it. I'd say his evidence was clear enough, but the judge wanted to avoid being the judge to rule that an app on someone's mobile device constitutes indisputable evidence, and the lack of evidence on the officer's part gave him the necessary out.
Re:Phone got him off -- Judge avoided precedent (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd say his evidence was clear enough,
Really? I use Google Tracks on my cycling trip to work. I typically come to a full stop for about 10-40seconds at 2 red lights during my half an hour commute, and average about 25km/h moving speed. Yet when I look back on the graph of my speed vs distance traveled the graph never shows that I come to a stop, only that I've slowed down. I've also got a hill on the way to work. My record going down this hill is 56km/h for a few seconds according to my bike trip computer. Google Tracks never shows me as having reached 50 on that same trip.
Was my bike computer mis-calibrated? Unlikely since the last 200km bike trip Google Tracks and my bike computer both showed the total distance traveled to be within 1% of each other. So I ask you, do you think that time averaged samples of speeding data is evidence to be used against a specific point sample?
Where did that happen? (Score:3)
The DA saw I had a spotless record, and gave me a deal where I paid a lesser fine, and no offense was reported in my name provided I was not pulled over again in their county for at least 1 full year. I took that deal because I didn't want to go back there, and have never been in that county since.
Nonetheless my understanding is that my experience was fairly typical. I have heard that few jurisdictions place a speeding ticket in front of a judge immediately.
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Around here you always want to protest the ticket and put up whatever evidence you can and hope the officer doesn't show. You can do it via the mail as well (just write your facts, again, hope the officer doesn't send in anything). So long as you don't incriminate yourself, and the officer presents no evidence, you must be found not guilty.
Plus, even if you are found guilty, you can still opt to go to traffic school and have it removed from your record (but you have to pay the fine), so long as you haven'
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Around here you always want to protest the ticket and put up whatever evidence you can and hope the officer doesn't show. You can do it via the mail as well (just write your facts, again, hope the officer doesn't send in anything). So long as you don't incriminate yourself, and the officer presents no evidence, you must be found not guilty.
Plus, even if you are found guilty, you can still opt to go to traffic school and have it removed from your record (but you have to pay the fine), so long as you haven't been to traffic school in the last 18 months.
And this would be false. If the officer doesn't show, the judge will issue a continuance if he so chooses. Just because someone doesn't show up doesn't automatically mean the case is dismissed. More of then than not, the judge will set a later court date. Now, if one of the parties habitually misses the court date, then yes the judge is likely to dismiss. However, there is no law requiring the judge to dismiss a case because one of the parties didn't show up.
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Around here (Canada) if the officer doesn't show the case is dismissed. I have a relative who has it all figured out. You go to court and someone will call out your name and ask if you're there. They aren't calling your case yet, just asking if you're there. When they ask the first time say nothing. When they ask the second time they are actually calling you're case so then you go in and you see the officer isn't there and the case is dismissed. See the reason they ask the first time is because if you're th
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/sunday morning quarterbacking that nobody would probably actually do:
Should have played hard ball. If you point out that the reduced fine would be smaller than the Judge's time then you could point out that by their own admission your crime was worth less than meeting with the judge and should therefore be $0, or they could spend the extra. Leave on the probationary clause though to make them feel like it's a fair trade. ;)
Racket (Score:5, Insightful)
You participated in a racket and were ripped off and now you are proud? Its clowns like you who don't fight that encourage them to continue the racket.
I had my car towed across the street once... a construction crew wanted to dig up my side. I have no problem with that. What I didn't like was the ticket for parking in the no parking zone. The issue is the no parking zone showed up probably at 7 am in the morning after I left.
You better believe I fought them! racket. Ont he way home from winning (for the wrong reasons... racket remember) I met my neighbor who had also been parked. I asked him why he didn't get a ticket. He said he did and he paid it.
Its people like my neighbor who encourage this abuse by paying.
Rule of thumb. Fight ALL tickets. Never allow them to profit from the racket and we'll hopefully get the racket more under control.
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Not necessarily all...
I got a ticket that was blatantly my own fault. I had parked directly under a no-parking sign.
I missed it when I parked (this was on Wilshire in the Westwood area, where there is ZERO parking).
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Wilshire in Westwood?
Just how small is your Slashdot?
Re:Racket (Score:5, Interesting)
I've mentioned this incident a couple of times on Slashdot so apologies to anyone who has read it before.
I was given a ticket for driving in an incorrectly-marked bus lane. The police officers knew it wasn't marked correctly, but they had been orderd to give tickets to everyone. Months later I received a threat of a court summons, or I could pay a fine. A lawyer advised me to just pay the fine. Why? If I didn't then I'd have to go to court TWICE in a city hundreds of miles away, which would cost a couple of hundred £££, and in the unlikely event that I won I wouldn't be able to recover expenses. And, the worst part, because it was the police that had issued the ticket instead of the council, I would get a criminal record. After all the research I had done, and my lawyer's advice, I was sure that the court would rule against me, and I couldn't risk the criminal record.
Yes it's a racket. Yes I'm ashamed that I didn't fight it. But I was scared that a criminal record would prevent me from working abroad.
Motoring fines have very little to do with justice or upholding the law. They have become a revenue source for governments desperate to create the illusion of low taxes.
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You participated in a racket and were ripped off and now you are proud?
I had to drive an hour and a half each way to get to the courthouse where I had to go to contest the ticket. I was not inclined to do it twice. Had I gone a second time the money saved would have been less than the cost of my time and gas; and the one trip kept the ticket off of my driving record which prevented my insurance from going up.
Sure, if I was independently wealthy and had nothing better to do with my time, I could have gone back and probably had the ticket thrown out completely. But I neede
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Well yeah, of course he'd do that - if the ticket wound up in front of a judge, you wouldn't have paid anything. This way, the county got some money and you got less hassle. Broken windows stimulate the economy, a
My judge throws these out automatically (Score:5, Informative)
If an officer testifying in my jurisdiction's traffic court can't say when they were trained in radar, when their radar was calibrated, and what model of radar they use, the citation is automatically dismissed. I have certifications for all three of those that I present in evidence immediately after giving general testimony. The smart phone is completely irrelevant to this case.
Essentially, lacking the predicate to introduce the radar into evidence, the officer was saying "he was speeding because I said so, and therefore I wrote him a ticket." Of course the judge threw it out.
New Jersey Traffic Court version (Score:2)
I was once in a traffic court in New Jersey dealing with other matters, so I got to watch them do the easy cases first. The officers all start off saying "Here's my radar gun, model X, I calibrated it first thing that morning, here's the results, blah blah." I have no way to tell if they're telling the truth, but they've at least got the story down to say they're doing everything by the book.
Last time I actually got pulled over for speeding was years ago, out in the Colorado mountains. Cop stopped me, sa
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Essentially, lacking the predicate to introduce the radar into evidence, the officer was saying "he was speeding because I said so, and therefore I wrote him a ticket." Of course the judge threw it out.
You must not work in Ohio, where an officers "estimate" [daytondailynews.com] is all that's needed, with no corroborating evidence.
Lack of evidence, not presense of the GPS (Score:2)
The key was challenging the officers training and the calibration of the radar. The GPS was completely unnecessary. That fact that the officer could not validate his radar reading meant that, in the eyes of the law, he had no evidence. No evidence = case dismissed. If the calibration date were given but it was a little old, *then* the GPS data might have been useful. If the radar were calibrated recently, the defendant probably would have lost. An officer of the law wielding an official, calibrated ins
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Generally cops only get training once or twice in their entire careers for using a radar gun, with re-certifications every year or two(pointing a radar gun isn't that difficult). Gun calibrations should be done everyday or every week depending on the size of the department and the internal policies. And this all should be noted on the record of service. Meaning, when it's taken out of service, and noted on the record of service card that goes out with the gun. And any issues(if any) that there were with
Nope, it was the lack of evidence. (Score:3)
The GPS data is no better than your word; it could be easily faked.
It is not from an independent, trusted third party.
Basically the whole story about the smart phone and the GPS data is a long-winded way of entering a "not guilty" plea.
I've seen an inexperienced, young cop in traffic court lose something like eight cases in a row because he could not produce evidence.
Everything from speeding, to red lights, to parking more than 30cm from the curb.
I had a brilliant defense planned against my charge of running a yellow light, but I didn't get a chance to present it; the judge asked the officer for evidence first, and since there wasn't any, all I had to do was enter my plea of no guilty.
I don't understand why he bothered to show up that day, other than to get paid.
Re:Nope, it was the lack of evidence. (Score:4, Insightful)
I've seen an inexperienced, young cop in traffic court lose something like eight cases in a row because he could not produce evidence...
...I don't understand why he bothered to show up that day, other than to get paid.
That was an inexperienced young cop turning into an experienced young cop. No doubt a painfully embarrassing lesson.
Doesn't always go that way, though (Score:4, Interesting)
Imma get that app! (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the state couldn't prove its case, and judges tend to respect people who at least try to put up a decent defense (road was empty and relative in ER) — showing up with an app that showed your top speed and avg speed, that's more impressive than a sob story any day, imo.
(I always have to delete my in-car computer data when pulled over... my top speeds fall in category of wreckless driving, and I'm paranoid cops will check it out. But good for this guy staying @ or under speed limit... or 'adjusting' the data before the trial.)
Its not the smartphone. (Score:2)
In Germany its a standard recommendation that if if the police catches you when speeding to ask for the calibration protocol of the device. There is a good chance you never will hear again from them.
And as a physicist: i agree. A meter which you have not calibrated and tested as prescribed in the instructions is worth nothing - there is no evidence that anybody was speeding; i would agree that he was speeding if the difference of measured vs allowed exceed the calibration range.
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In the UK... (Score:2)
Smart phone calibrated?? (Score:2)
This had nothing to do with that telephone, but all with the uncalibrated radar gun.
"To avoid any misinterpretations about his ruling, he chose to clarify his decision by citing the lack of evidence on the officer's part."
If Sahas accidently farted in court, would the title have been "Smart Phart gets ......?
Reasonable something-or-other (Score:2)
There's this concept called reasonable doubt. You might have heard of it? You introduced it. As the defendant, that is ALL you have to do. That's why you skated on the ticket.
Speeding Fine Story (Score:2)
a friend of mine worked for a vehicle manufacturer, on engine control management and calibration. he took a car out for a drive one day, and was asked to obtain the figures on the engine's highway performance. so he rigged up a dot-matrix printer (1980s...) to a laptop, which dutifully printed out the speed and fuel economy figures every few seconds.
whilst driving down the highway, with cars zooming past and honking him on either side due to his religious adherence to the posted speed limit of 55mph, a po
Speed traps are unethical and ineffective (Score:3)
They have nothing to do with safety and everything to do about scamming money from the public in order to support irresponsible bureaucrats.
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I do this, too. My phone sits on the passenger seat, where I don't look at it while driving.
While there are laws about using phones while driving, and generically "distracted driving", having a phone turned on in the car is fine, and most people wouldn't consider it "using".
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Wouldn't you need to accelerate and decelerate exceedingly quickly for you to have an average speed of 25 within the, let's say, 3 seconds it takes your GPS to update if you went 40 for, at least, an instant during that time?
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I use Google Tracks on the way to work and I come across 2 traffic lights which each stop me for 10-50 seconds. Yet when I look at the graph of my bicycle commute to work Google Tracks never shows me going below about 5km/h. Cardio Trainer running at the same time produces yet a different result.
I guess it would be possible to defend against the ticket using the GPS if