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Using Google Maps to Get Out of a Traffic Ticket
Michael Nguyen writes "Edwin uses Google Maps to prove to the judge his traffic ticket was wrongly issued, saving himself some cash and points on his license. During his testimony, Edwin whips out a notebook, loads up Google Maps and upstages the offending officer with some quick Google Map searches." I wonder if anyone's gotten out of a ticket by showing how inaccurate most speed-check methods can be.
The problem with small fines like traffic tickets are that you need to prove that you are innocent of the crime vs. having to prove that you are guilty. If more and more people can prove their not guilty then the police will need to provide evidence that you were indeed guilty of the crime. And stop making traffic violations a means to subsidize taxes.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Oooh, cop got pwned by a laptop
A lawyer friend of mine who specializes in getting people off of speeding tickets does it all the time
Now the guy can be charged for unauthorized access of a computer network, like that guy in Florida that /. mentioned last week.
down already and there's only 1 comment
no comments, slashdotted christ
wow just posted and the site doesnt respond.
you can always tell it's a dupe when the article link is already visited ;)
I read this yesterday when it did its round through the blogosphere, and from my understanding he simply made the judge doubt the memory of the police officer and not prove his innocence. There is a big difference between taking advantage of a loophole and actually having done no wrong. He simply found a flaw in the police officer's story and proved it, although the flaw, from what I could tell, was not directly related to whether the offense was committed or not.
Here's a brief tale of my experience..
A few years ago, I was involved in a bad traffic accident. The time was well before dawn, and I was starting on my morning commute to Lansing. I turned out from my subdivision onto a main street, and was broadsided by a car whose driver had failed to turn his lights on. After the accident, I asked the other driver if he had his lights on. "No.", he blithely replied. "Don't you think you should have???" I said. In response, he gave only a shrug.
Fast forward two and a half hours later, when the police finally arrive at the scene (that's right, two and a half hours). The policeman asks what happened. I reply that I pulled out in front of the other car, but I was unable to see him as it was pitch black out, and the other driver had neglected to turn his lights on. The policeman asks the other driver, "Did you have your lights on?" "No", he replies. The policeman then writes him a ticket for driving without headlights. Then, he turns around and writes me a ticket for failure to yield! "How exactly was I supposed to yield to a vehicle I couldn't see, Officer?", I ask testily. His only reply is "tell it to the judge".
So now, in addition to having to get my car towed, and the hassle of opening a claim with my insurance company, I get to miss a day of work going to court. Before the court date, I compile a stack of data from various sources on the internet, all showing that the time of sunrise at the exact latitude and longitude of the accident, on the date of the accident, was a full two hours after the time of the accident, thus proving that the ambient light was zero, and that I had no chance to see the light-less car heading my way.
Fast forward to the court date. I walk into court with a thick sheaf of papers under my arm, determined to absolve myself of any blame.
The case lasted exactly twelve seconds. The officer failed to show, and the judge dismissed the case.
To this day, I still remember the odd mixture of relief and indignation I felt as I walked out of the courthouse.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
In January of this year, I was pulled over by a traffic officer for "disobeying a steady red", a.k.a. running a red light. I pleaded "Not Guilty" to the charge, and today - nearly six months later - I went to court to find out the fate of my ticket violation. Check out how Google Maps saved me some serious cash - and points on my license! There I was on a bench waiting for my name to be called at the Downtown Manhattan DMV hearings bureau. After hearing several testimonies from other drivers, I knew this Judge wasn't going to be sympathetic to my troubles. So driver after driver, all but one had a happy ending. So now I'm worried because being found guilty would mean a 150 dollar fine, plus 50 in penalties, and worse of all points on my license. I began to contemplate how it all happened since it had been so long. I jotted down some notes on a small piece of paper, and then the moment of truth arrived. After my name was called, I gathered my belongings and made my way up to the stand where the offending officer joined me. The judge swore her in and asked for her testimony. The officer did what I expected - after all, I had been listening to all of those prior testimonies - and began to describe the scene of the violation. In her story I noticed one fatal flaw, which I had planned to exploit but I had no proof whatsoever. The officer stated the street I was on was a one way westbound street and I was turning onto an avenue that was at a two way street separated by a concrete divider. Only thing was, I was on a two way, not one. So it came time for my testimony and I stated that I was in mid-turn when an oncoming vehicle was coming toward me very quickly and I had decided not to make the turn until that SUV passed me. The Judge stopped and asked me how could there be an oncoming vehicle if the street was only one way. I stated that it was indeed a two way street. The officer reiterated that it was only a one way. So who was the judge to believe? I was desperate for proof so I did the unthinkable: I whipped out my notebook. I was very lucky to find an extremely bad connection via Wi-Fi. I pulled up Firefox and when to maps.google.com. I typed up the intersection and zoomed in as close as possible: Description As you can see, Cathedral Pkwy (110th street) has no arrow indicating the traffic directions. However, 109th and 111th do. I mentioned this to the judge that this means that 110th is indeed a two way street. The traffic officer begged to differ. She said perhaps an arrow was just missing from the equation. So I called her bluff, and researched a new intersection, Times Square: Description I asked her honor if she was familiar with 42nd Street. She nodded and I continued to mention how all of its neighboring streets have indication arrows of the direction, with one exception: 42nd Street. Everyone knows that this is a two way. The judge said that due to lack of memory of the officer she will have to dismiss the violation. Thank you Google Maps, you rule. Go here for the pics http://www.networkmirror.com/eImYJ9RHQxDLQcPZ/www. gearlive.com/index.php/news/article/google_maps_he lps_fight_traffic_tickets_07160942/index.html
Helping criminals like this seems suspicous - in an almost Napseter/Grokster/BitTorrent way. Perhaps google should be outlawed too.
The easiest way to get out of a speeding ticket is to ask the officer technical questions like "When was the last time the radar gun was calibrated?" and "What type of software does your system use?" Then hit them with the grand finale to get out of the ticket "May I see the code?"
"Your Honor, as you can clearly see via Google maps, I was simply minding my own business eating some fine swiss cheese, when suddenly this large craft came down and hit me..."
http://www.networkmirror.com/eImYJ9RHQxDLQcPZ/www. gearlive.com/index.php/news/article/google_maps_he lps_fight_traffic_tickets_07160942/index.html
Sounds like everything worked out perfectly for both you and society. Society didn't have to pay the officer to show up while he could be saving the world from criminals. The court's time was not wasted with a case that has no merit.
...of google maps. Depending the search, they might be accurate, or they might be much less accurate than the speed check.
About the time I saw this pop up on Slashdot, I was searching google maps for "smithsonian air space" in "washington, dc". Pretty simple, right? It gives 2 results, neither within a mile of the real answer. (One answer looked like it was in a residential neighborhood perhaps 2 miles away, the other about a mile away - in the median strip of a highway.) I've had a case looking for a place in my own area where the google map was miles off, and another time searching for a particular restaurant in Concord, New Hampshire with similar inaccuracies. Sometimes google maps are right, too.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I don't know if it'll be as impressive to the court going forward if everybody does it, but when I walked in a couple of years ago and pulled out my printed satellite photos from yahoo of the intersection where I allegedly ran a red light, the magistrate just said, "Not Responsible" without even looking at it or hearing any other evidence.
This is getting to be a joke.
The story about tusk-free elephants? On Boing Boing first.
The story about the nine year-old geek girl? On Boing Boing first.
The story about the Death Star subwoofer? On Boing Boing first.
And now this story comes from Boing Boing too?
These are only the stories I've noticed from the past couple of days reading Boing Boing. It's one thing to aggregate geek news from a variety of sources. It's another thing entirely to simply copy everything Boing Boing does. Slashdot is going downhill faster and faster.
Mirrordot saves the day.
'Every story, if continued long enough, ends in death.' --Ernest Hemingway
Speeding tickets always include a) the speed, and b) the location. Both cannot be known with arbitrary precision, therefore the ticket must be bogus.
The small stakes and mechanical nature of the process of traffic court work in your favor if you choose to be one of the fraction that actually bothers to show up and contest the charges. Everything is weighted in favor of the officer, obviously, but they have an incentive system similar to AOL's technical support -- if the matter can't be disposed of within 6 minutes get off the line, its a loss. So if you present anything which bears even a cursory resemblance to an adequate defense the judge is likely to say "OK, whatever, be careful in the future. NEXT." Or you can pay a lawyer for the privilege and he'll do the exact same thing, except you'll be out more money than the fine was worth (incentives work both ways).
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
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Presumably before the defendent was allowed to do anything with that laptop the judge must have admitted it as evidence.
If an item is admitted as evidence, the court has to believe that it is accurate. It is assumed that it is because it is approved by the judge (of truth).
The only way the officer could argue that Google Maps is crap enough to disprove the defendent's case is to suggest that it not be included as evidence.
Does a police officer that responds to traffic accidents know anything about how to do that?
http://www.networkmirror.com.nyud.net:8090/eImYJ9R HQxDLQcPZ/www.gearlive.com/index.php/news/article/ google_maps_helps_fight_traffic_tickets_07160942/i ndex.html
. gearlive.com/index.php/news/article/google_maps_he lps_fight_traffic_tickets_07160942/index.html
http://www.networkmirror.com/eImYJ9RHQxDLQcPZ/www
I heard of someone who tried. My government teacher in high school told us of a friend who contested a speeding ticket under the premise that the radar gun wouldn't tell the correct speed of his car when measured from the side. So, he paid for a jury trial, and proceeded to go on at great lengths on how the radar gun wasn't accurate. Everything was going fine until the cop took the stand.
He asked the cop, "So, is it true that radar guns do not measure the correct speed when used from the side instead of straight on?"
"Sure," the cop answered, "they register a lower speed."
Needless to say, the guy wasn't too happy about turning a relatively cheap speeding ticket into an expensive embarrassment.
The trouble is that if you and the cop tell different stories, the judge will almost always believe the cop. The judge will say that the cop is doing his job and has no reason to lie whereas you do. So if it's the cop's word vs. your word, you lose.
If there is any evidence, for instance if you have an independent witness, then you stand a chance. A case like this would be if the cop said that you didn't come to a full stop. If your boss is in the car and he says that you did come to a full stop, you will usually get off. If the evidence conflicts, you get the benefit of the doubt.
The guy in the story presented evidence that the cop's evidence might not be accurate. btw. A map that you get off the internet is not real evidence. It proves nothing. On the other hand, if you show the map to the cop and say, "Does this map show the way the streets are laid out?" and he says "yes", then the evidence is his testimony.
Judges are also human and therefore come in all types. One of my friends pled guilty to a traffic charge saying that he didn't see how he could defend himself. The judge asked him for his story, told him to plead innocent, and tossed out the charge.
A cop ticketed me for doing 60 in a 40 - I saw him, checked my speed (42) and figured I was OK. I took pictures of the car where it was stopped and his view of the road from where they were parked, got aerial photos (acme.com) and did the calculations that showed that for him to catch me and stop me where he did then either I couldn't have been doing more than low 40s or if I was doing 60 he had to get his car backed out of a parking spot, get going and on the main road in under 2 seconds. The court looked at it and since I said I was doing 42, gave me a $25 "sign violation". Not a bad morning's work.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Dude: Oh yeah, I see your CSI effect and raise you a goolge maps.
...And the geek shall inherit the earth...
Cop: Oh yeah, I see you google maps, and raise you a slashdot effect. Ha!
Dude: Oh yeah, well I see your slashdotting and...
Judge: That's it. Pissing contest over. Boys will be boys. Case dismissed.
it is a con, to try and get people to think of a good use for an intrusive technology. my property, its maps, and what it looks like is my business and nobody elses.
anyways... here is my court story:
what most people don't know is the traffic court judge is not there to be a judge. he is more lika an administrator for the city, whos job is to collect as much money as possible.
in my town the traffic court judge is not even a lawyer. i went to court for a ticket because i did not have my insurance card in my car. i was late to court, and the judge would not hear my case, i was fined $550.
before i continue, i should mention the reason i was late to court. the county changed the court from the building where the court has been the past 25 years, to a different location. while i was pulling on locked court doors, on the opposite side of town court was in session.
so i went to see the clerk of the court. this is the man who has ALL the power. well, the chief judge is the true power, a real lawyer, and has administrative power over all judges, but it is the clerk who is is gatekeeper. the clerk cleared out the conviction, reset a court date and all was dandy, so i thought.
next time, i showed up at court a good hour early. i had everything i needed to prove my case, a letter from my insurance company stating i had insurance the day i was pulled over, and my current insurance card.
they call my name...
me: your honor, i have a letter from my insurance compamy...
the judge inturrupts me
judge: wait, i am not here to listen to your insurance case, i'm going to first decide why i should hear your case. i don't know if i am the right court to review a conviction.
me: your honor, you are the court of original jurisdiction, and the clerk vacated the past conviction.
judge: i am not convinced. motion to rehear denied.
so, there i was, a judge who fucked me in under 15 seconds. before i could say another word, the court called the next case. i went back to the clerks office, dejected and ready to pay. somehow, the clerk remembered me. he asked, "how come you still have the fine, you showed me your insurance letter last time, the judge should have dismissed the ticket". i explained to him what happened.
and what happened next blew my mind. the clerk took out a pink colored pad of paper, about 3 inches by 4 inches, scribbled his signature on it, told me to go to office 427 and haand it to the woman, who would then get me 5 minutes with the chief judge. i started by handing the chief judge my insurance papers, because i know these guys are busy and would rather quickly skim evidance than listen to me for half an hour. in under a minute i explained what happened.
the chief judge went in his computer, reset my court date again, this time telling me who the judge was going to be and that he would call the judge to tell him about my case personally.
next time i showed up to court, there was a different judge. my case was dismissed. the judge even appologized for my wasted time.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
I've been told by numerous people, including my college roomate who went to court about a traffic ticket, that most of the time, just because someone is willing to go to the court about getting a ticket, they almost always win. Like, just being willing to spend the time to go is enough for reasonable doubt in a lot of situations.
Luke
----
Help your boss understand what computers are before making decisions: ChristianNerds.com
My high school calculus teacher liked to tell the story of how a speed trap setup tagged a former student of his right after he had taken this teacher's calculus course in high school. If I remember correctly, the student basically used some basic calculus to prove that he would have had to accelerate from 65mph to 100+mph and back down to 65mph within a pretty short distance (too short for an average car to achieve) in order to have actually been going as fast as the two cop cars at each end of the speed trap had said he was going when they clocked him. Don't know if that was a true story or if he was just trying to get us to learn our maths, but it could certainly work.
In a related, albeit less positive story:
My sophmore year in college one of my friends was majoring in astrophysics, and was finishing up a course involving thermodynamics and friction or some crap like that. Anyways, we were attending ERAU in Daytona Beach, and the cops there were pretty much clueless morons. My friend was driving at the approved speed limit (35mph I think it was) and was going through an intersection where it was basically like driving over a hill. Some moron pulled in front of him and he had to quickly, but safely, apply his brakes. Unfortunately, due to his velocity over the hump of the intersection he squealed the tires as his car did not have enough down-force to keep the tires from locking up as he went over the hill of the intersection. The way he tells it, after about 30 seconds of trying to explain this to the cop who had just pulled him over for squealing his tires, the cop's eyes glazed over, he got perturbed, and wrote my friend a ticket - just for squealing his tires. (which of course proved nothing of my friend's ability or inability to yield to the traffic laws at that moment) I think he ended up just paying the ticket, figuring that any other government official in Volusia County, Florida would be no better at understanding the physics involved in his traffic incident than the cop that pulled him over.
Which is why you should never RTFA!
Except in California. They're nasty about that. This is especially so when you ride a motorcycle in California as a great number of my friends have discovered. If you are in one of the "annoyance to society" minorities you have a much bigger hill to climb for the judge to rule in your favor.
He stole a wireless connection while he did that. Just like that guy who sat in his van outside that guy's house.
Quick question. I've always read that when the officer asks do you know how fast you were going that you are supposed to not say because this is used as a confession in court.
However, I've wondered what the correct answer would be?
I don't know? I wish to remain silent or fib and say you were going at or slightly above the speed limit? I mean what is the most legal route.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I just received a letter telling me I had a citation for illegal parking in San Francisco. I never go to San Francisco during the day - I neither live nor work there. So my first response was to go into my email to see if there is a 'paper' trail for what I was doing that day. I found that I was at a meeting in another city at the time. This won't provide proof in court, but at least now I know where I was and I can be 100% confident that unless we're dealing with a corrupt cop the handwritten citation won't have my license plate #.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
A lot of judges don't like "smart-asses"!
-psy
Works even better for trivial misdemeanors:
"My dog was NOT barking too loud. I would like to proceed to jury selection."
sadly not the case, I have contested (rightfully) two bogus speeding tickets, and lost because a lot of the methods told to people that courts let you off on (cop not showing, radar maintinence) dont mean squat to a judge. your pretty much guilty as soon as you walk in the door of wasting his time.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
i have been to court many times. i went a couple times because i was given a traffic ticket, a few times with friends who were given traffic tickets, and for entertainment.
i would say that 85% of people who go to court are convicted or plead guilty. here is why...
the very first words the judge will tell everyone is this. "if you plead not guilty, i will send you back to your seat. i will hear all other cases first. your case will be last. we will then have the officer give his testimony, which i will consider truthful and accurate. if i convict you in a trial, then i will not give you any lenancy. if you plead guilty, and you don't have a criminal history, i will most likely give you supervision, which means your conviction is sealed and after 1 year it is removed. if you are found guilty, i will not give you supervision".
what that means, if you get supervision, your insurance company will not know you had a ticket, and will not raise your insurance rates. that could save hundreds of dollars.
here are other reasons people never win...
My personal opinion is traffic court should be run like a real court. All judges should have law degrees, which most do not. There should be public defenders in traffic court, everyone who can not afford a lawyer should be given access to a public defender. In most cases, 10 minutes with a public defender before going in front of the judge is all that is needed, he can tell you your chances. If you are innocent, maybe he can talk you into pleading not guilty and not being intimidated. And for God's sake, judges should spend more than 20 seconds per case. I know they often put 150 people on a docket for one day, but how can a judge really hear that many cases. It is more like a long line to pay the bouncer his cover charge.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
That was long time ago. With the current revision of the scientific method favored by the present administration, you could claim that while in theory you were doing 80 mph in a 30 mph zone, that doesn't prove that you actually were.
According to the court in Florida that recently found a gentlement guilty of hijacking a WiFi connection. Could this guy have committed a felony to get himself out of a misdemeanor? Oh the irony.
Offender (defendant): So, in conclusion I would argue that thereto and therefore the officer could not have accurately observed my vehicle with precision given that the uncertainty priciple means that
Judge: Sir, you not a particle.
Offender (defendant): (Silence)
What a jerk. I was still reading it.
Don't Panic.
A former coworker of mine in electronic countermeasures went to court to prove his innocence in a speed camera case. His argument was over the inability of a radar gun with a 15 degree beamwith to accurately distinguish between two moving cars at that far of a distance. At the beginning of the hearing, the judge "suddenly noticed" that the calibration log book was incomplete, and therefore he got off. Seems like a little smudge in the book from the justice system so that an engineer couldn't disprove their technology.
Parent might be an AC, but he is right. I've seen very strange outcomes from traffic accidents.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Or you can pay a lawyer for the privilege and he'll do the exact same thing, except you'll be out more money than the fine was worth (incentives work both ways).
Except that the fine is only a small part of the cost of a speeding ticket. The real cost can be thousands of dollars due to increased insurance premiums over the next 5-7 years. If your insurance only goes up by $50/quarter that is still $1,000 over the next 5 years. For a lot of people - young, male, single - it would not be unheard of to see your insurance rates increase by $100-$200/quarter. Auto insurance is legalized robbery.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Care to go into detail? I've just move to CA and I'm about 2 months away from having enough money to buy a bike.
Thanks!
--
lds
In Israel, someone claimed in court that the speeding ticket he received was invalid since the measuring equipment wasn't accurate. The judge consulted experts and did a bit of investigation on his own, and in the end he ruled in favour of that man.
Traffic court is fast food court. It is like AOL tech support. Like the call agent, it's the judge's job to move cases through as fast as possible. I think any time-wasting or stalling tactics would just piss him off. If there's ever a he said/she said situation, they always believe the cop's side. So hard evidence is absolutely necessary.
With that said, wasting the court's time is still not a bad idea. Traffic tickets are about revenue, not public safety. Make them burn up the profit on your ticket in court time. If everybody fought their ticket, traffic tickets would become unprofitable.
I've been feeling a sense of deja vu every time I read Slashdot for the past few weeks. The problem is that one or two posts a day have been culled directly from Boing Boing, like this story which was posted there yesterday. I recognize that not everyone actually reads Boing Boing in addition to Slashdot, but it gets really old to keep seeing the same stories over and over and over again (and that doesn't even count the dupes ;-).
No, but I used to work for Microsoft.
Many years ago, maybe 25-30, when radar was first being used by law enforcement, I got stopped for speeding. When the cop came to my car he commented on my 'strange' tags which had my ham license on the tag. This was before New Jersey started issuing 'vanity plates'
When the cop was looking over my license and registration I said, very politely, "Would you please produce for my inspection the Federal Communications Commission license for your radar transmitter?" I told him federal law requires that all transmitting equipment be licensed and I wanted to see his.
Needless to say, he didn't know what to do. He called in another cop who was quite belligerant saying I had no right to ask. They gave me the ticket anyway.
In court, I produced the FCC regs which clearly stated that a license was required. I beat the ticket!
Unfortunately, this will no longer work. The FCC regs have been changed to allow for a 'blanket' license for specific multiple uses such as radar guns.
But that doesn't mean you folks can't give it a try. You may be able to intimidate the cop enough for him to not write the ticket.
Your comment suggests that government should be all things to all people.
If the court hadn't convened, what would have happened?
1. He just has to pay the ticket.
2. He is just let go, free to live his life however he wants.
Point number 1 is unfair for obvious reasons.
Point number 2 disregards the possibility that the poster is guilty.
Doing this is known as impeaching a witness. Witnesses that are impeached have their testimony thrown out and ignored, since they've shown that they can be wrong but are willing to state false information as fact. It is not a loophole, but a critical aspect under which common law operates, one of the checks to make sure that a witness presents the truth, whole truth, and (especially) nothing but the truth. Under the circumstances, the sole witness on the prosecution side was impeached, meaning that the prosecution had no evidence to present. Since there is (ostensibly) an innocent until proven guilty system in the US, without evidence, an individual will always be found not guilty if the prosecution presents no evidence.
Sigs are like bumper stickers.
For radar: use the cosine error in your defense (the more offset you are, the more inaccurate the speed).
:)
For vascar: use operator timing error in your defense (it all depends on the officer's reaction time).
For laser: get a lawyer you plead it down...you're toast
look, you can talk about loopholes.
you can talk about high priced lawyers.
but the american system of justice, when it works the right way, is that all people are innocent until proven guilty.
it comes down to one question. would you rather let a guilty person go free, or lock up an innocent person. in the usa, we have a system where we don't want to lock up the innocent.
look at what happened in illinois a couple years back. when the state did some dna testing on inmates, they found out they had over 100 people on death row who were innocent. these people got conivected because they had bad lawyers, the police needed to arrest someone, so they picked up a crack head or someone unemployed.
people should be free. we don't want the patriot act. we don't want people being arrested and held without being charged. we don't want the police going through reading lists, casting fishing nets, and without having any reason, looking for anyone to arrest. it is like a cop who decides to go by the local highschool, see who graduated in the bottom 10%, figuring the dumb ones are the troublemakers, and then following them around until he finds one of them in the woods smoking a joint.
then again, with cities like boston and chicago putting up 3000 cameras that can look inside of cars, that is the direction we are going.
i feel sorry for the people without any money. if they ever get charged with anything, they are fucked. look at the husband of the wife who dissapeared. the police started interviewing him, there were reports he was the #1 suspect. then one day, his wife shows up in las vegas. she got cold feet. if the police wanted to, they could have strung up that man and ruined him. there was a story about a man who worked for the usa, at a wepons lab, around the time the anthrax was mailed to the senate. he was the #1 suspect. the fbi tore apart his house, they tore open his mattress, they put holes in his walls, all looking for evidence. the fbi then went to his girlfriends house, and did the same thing. they could not find nothing, but they still call him the #1 suspect. he is free, but always followed. and the police keep threatening him, of more searches, of harrasing his friends.
i'll give one last example. look at monica lewinsky. people should read about what the fbi did to her. they grabbed her off the streat, forced her into a hotel room, and told her if she did not describe her relationship with the president (the blowjobs), they would arrest her and she would never be free again. one fbi agent told her, i think i should call your dad, to let him know what you did. talk to us or i'll call. and for the first 6 hours, when she asked for a lawyer, they would not give her one, and instead threatened to call her parents, friends, and to let the media know what she did. they put her through hell, and never charged her with anything.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Depends on the judge and the situation. I hit a woman several years ago, technically it was my fault, but logically it was hers. She had stopped at the top of an exit ramp, then proceded into the intersection, I had pulled up, looked for oncoming traffic, then proceded into said intersection. Only problem was she had stopped in the middle of the intersection for no reason! So I went to traffic court and pled no contest (she had retained a lawyer and sent out a letter about possible whiplash so a guilty plea through paying the ticket was not wise) and explained the situation as quickly and courtously as I could. The judge let me off with just court costs and no points.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
My brother always gets out of his tickets. He contacts the prosecuting attorney and asks if he can plead civil. That is, pay the find without incurring the points. All they want is the revenue anyway.
Also, the reason why it seems we're guilty until proven innocent is because it's a strict liability crime. All they have to do is prove you did it. And, cops spend a lot of time doing this.
If your jurisdiction has speeding as a misdemeanor, piss them off by demanding your Constitutional right to a jury trial. They can't deny and the cost will be so high as to make the ticket not worth it.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
We both used to work in a place who, among other things, supported this product called Microsoft Streets and Trips. He was leaving work one day, and a cop pulled him over. The cop told him that he was 'pacing' him and didnt even use a radar on him.
He went to court, printed out the map of our area in streets and trips, and presented that evidence. He pretty much told the judge that his car is incapable of accellerating to 65 (i think thats what the cop said he was going) in that short amount of time.
The judge was so impressed, that after he dropped the charges, he asked my friend what program he used to make that map. My friend got out of a 675 dollar ticket because of that..
Looks like Boing Boing is just a news site. What's wrong with the poster opening up this item to discussion?
And the judge did do anything bout him 'stealing' Wi-Fi signal from somebody else? Wasn't there a story on /. about this a few weeks back?
I am currently using Google to help me with a traffic ticket. I was pulled over by an officer who claimed that I was "weaving" left of center.
The only problem is that where he claimed I was "weaving" there is a concrete divider!
I pulled up google, and was able to show that sure enough that had I been weaving left of center, I would have hit the divider!
Problem with that is that in many (most?) states, you have no right to a jury trial for a misdemeanor. Most rights we associate with the courts only apply to felonies.
I managed to successfully contest a ticket back in the early 1990s, by invoking the laws of physics... or at least the plausibility of a 4-cylinder Ford Festiva and a police cruiser both accomplishing the feats of acceleration the officer's testimony required.
According to the officer, I had pulled onto the highway and accelerated from on-ramp speed to over 75mph, then he managed to accelerate from 55mph (the speed limit on this stretch of highway) to first overtake me, then match and clock my speed... all before I noticed him directly behind me (lights flashing), and pulled off onto the shoulder, only a mile away. Given that this would have had to happened in less than a minute at the alleged speeds involved (not bloody likely), and the fact that my personalized license plate ("GAY") suggested a motive for this officer to wrongfully pull me and my boyfriend over on our way home from the local "gay pride" festival, the magistrate threw the ticket out.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
There was an accident on the highway, so all the traffic was getting off and driving thru my little residential neighborhood the 4 blocks to the next exit.
Anyways, the light was red, it's was raining (mostly a drizzle) and a cop cruiser was across the street. Several minutes pass - no change in light. I decide to take a right turn instead of going straight. But the two times I try I almost get into an accident. (You see I am stuck on an arching overpass and unable to see what is behind me due to the elevation of the bridge.) Deciding that it is more prudent to simply wait then risk an accident - I wait.
Still no change in the light. I try to peer into the police vehicle but find myself unable to see inside due to the rain. Okay, this is getting excessive. I've now been at this light several minutes (and I mean approaching 10 minutes) without an iouta of direction, no light change, nadda.
Finally, I see the police crusier roll forward toward the light control box. I am like "finally". So I wait for a while longer. A few more minutes....nothing!
After what felt like over 10 minutes (and I later realized was probably closer to 15) I decided that either the "light" or the "officer" was not functioning properly.
So I treated it as one is specified to treat a broken light. I treated it as if I had a STOP sign and the oncoming had right of way. I waited for a pause in traffic and "proceeded with caution".
So I get a block down and what do I see but colorful lights. The cop is in a whole tiff. I am like "Is there a problem officer..." He responded "You just ran a read light." I told him the light was not functioning. His response was he was manning it remotely. Which I believe - I just sincerely doubt if he was actually awake for most of the time. I told him I was going to fight it in court. He refused to give me his badge number - told me it was on the ticket. However, it was only partially written out.
(oh, might I add as I was driving back down the street a minute later the light turned red as soon as my truck reached the intersection...thankfully, 30 seconds later it was green and I could finally get on my way to work)
So this leads to court dates. Now we are really !@#$% up here in Connecticut.
First off, you have about 2 weeks to mail the ticket. Which I did promptly. It would over 6 months before I received any notification that they even received it.
Then, I called the DA office. I told them I did not want any plea bargain and that I wanted to go straight to trial. Doesn't matter of course.
They give you a court date or so you think. In truth, you take 1/2 day off from work and wait only to be called up and offered a plea bargain. If you turn down the plea bargain they give you another court date. When you ask them why? they inform you that they must get your record first.
WTF?
6 months, and they assign you a court date and do not have your record for the case?
So you come back a second time....they offer you a plea bargain once again. I turned it down....guess what? Yup...you guessed it!
They give you another court date (the excuse this time is that they have to subpeona the officer). Wait, okay no record the first time, no opposition.
So finally, I get a court date (on the third trip to the court). I argued my case on the following points:
- the purpose of the officer being there was to guide and direct traffic and minimise confusion, the officer clearly failed this role and in fact furthered the confusion at hand
- if the intent was to not change the light a detour should have been erected instead
- my last main point was a technical argument on justice. if one were stopped at a light and there was a no turn on red (and we all know full well a U-turn is illegal on a bridge). What is one to do if that light never turns green? You cannot justly tell me that I have to remain at that light forever? or commit a violation of the law? so please tell me - in that
Gotta love the chest-beating that police agencies love to do over their speed-measurement technology. Got cited for 88.3 mph (that's right, they got it down to the 10th of a mile, more precise than the rental car's speedometer) in Philly by an officer using a "Tracker", which is basically a really sophisticated odometer they use to pace you (also known as VASCAR). As such, to intimidate the public during our mass trial, we were all informed by the police prosecutor that "Tracker" was apparently 99.7% accurate and that we'd better come in with scientific evidence to disprove them. Guess those cops have laser rangefinders in their bumpers - because I was ready to argue that a police officer who tracked a car for .3574 mile and closed the distance by merely 200 feet (something that a police car could do in a second), my actual speed would be only 78 mph.
The biggest argument against "Tracker" and other VASCAR systems is that the chief of the Pennsylvania association of chiefs of police put out an impassioned plea on the Internet for radar guns to be legalized for non-State Trooper LEOs.
Unbelievable the racket these guys pull. Fortunately the assembly-line justice of Philadelphia manifested itself in a $6 fine with no points. I was so ashamed of myself that I sent the extra $109 that I should have been fined for to Doctors without Borders.
I was plotting my way for an interview a couple weeks ago using google maps, noting the one way streets that were one way. When i actually took my selected route, I learned that the one way roads that i had selected to travel on were in reality two way. I think google maps is somewhat out of date.
In May, I was hit by a hit-and-run driver. Long story short, I made it rather obvious that I got his plate number afterwords. He wouldn't stop, so after 2 miles I bumped him in the rear and turned around. So, the dickwad went to the cops right away and told them a different story.
I'm 19. He's 57. Guess who the cop believed. Even though I got his plate number and he didn't get mine (he said that when he hit me, I ran from him. Yeah, right.), I got a ticket for failing to yeild. Yeild to what? There was nothing in the intersection when he pulled out. He was going almost double the limit.
Needless to say, the dickwad said he tried to stop at a hunting club up the road. He didn't, but I went to TerraServer and got good images of where the accident happened and the road afterwords. The look on the judge's face was priceless. I asked the other driver to point out where the accident happened. He did. I then dropped the other seven pages attached to it (all taped together in a fan) and showed the judge where he said he stopped, 3 miles away, and the road the entire way there, with its 15 foot shoulders, and rougly 15 driveways beforehand. Not Guilty. Now his truck isn't being fixed, and is going to be reposessed soon (loan without colission coverage = nono), and mine is.
Of course, the cop was pissed off that I won. He still refused to press charges against the other driver for hit-and-run.
I had an illegal turn that was, simply, impossible for me to have made, or even attempted to make, given the direction I was going. Basically, I'd been accused of driving on a road that does not exist. It was in writing, and had the DA not dismissed the ticket when I explained this, and had the police officer sworn to the facts as detailed in writing on the ticket, I was already prepared to ask that he be fired from the police force and to demand an investigation into a charge of perjury. It helped that I had a city council member on my side and had written letters to the council and the mayor explaining my position before I went to court. I believe the DA knew about this and had already been directed to dismiss my ticket. Yes, I was ready to go nukular over a $60 ticket, damn right. I still wish I could have been responsible for taking the badge away from a corrupt, lying cop. And don't you dare tell me anything about how his goddamned family has to eat.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
You must not have read the end of the post! DID get fined, he just didn't have to pay the fine. All three of you: parent, parent of the parent and your post as well, are all more intent on throwing insults than saying much of interest. BTW smeggy sounds British, are you guys trying to start a cross Atlantic flamewar of what?
Doesn't always work that way.
... despite me arguing points that proved the cop was unsure of what happened (the cop explained that I was in the left lane when I was actually in the right lane, etc - he did not have the facts straight).
... like another 2 or 3 months later. The cop shows up again - I am his only case that day as well, and this isn't traffic court anymore. The first time was traffic court, this time around I am in the court room with prisoners accused of assault charges, theft, etc. So I start talking to the prosecutor to see what we can negotiate, and the cop can't even remember the circumstances of the ticket. He didn't even remember where it had happened. So I went ahead and explained everything to him and why the situation he presented was doubtful (the cop seemed a bit slow, heh). In the end he still wasn't sure of what had happened or why he made his final decision, but he just stuck to his guns anyhow.
I got a minor ticket (like $130 and less than 2 points). It was a moving violation that was not related to speeding or anything. The cop must have had a vendetta for me or something. The first court date was 3 months after the ticket and the cop showed up. I was his only case that day. There were other cops who had like 3 cases and didn't show up: all those people got to walk free. I argued my side well and was able to get the judge to doubt the situation the cop presented (he spoke words along those lines). Yet, he ended up siding with the cop because he said "I was not there, so I have to trust the officer's judgement of the situation"
So I contested for a second trial
I decided to negotiate with the prosecutor down to "impeding the flow of traffic", the lowest violation possible that meant no points but $130 in fines and court costs.
That cop was an ass. He even threatened to arrest me when he was giving me the ticket because I was asking so many questions and not leaving down the road (this was my first ticket ever in my 7 years of driving).
In the end it was better to spend the time than to have points on my license. But for any small ticket (less than 20 over or something) if you fight it long enough you can probably get it to "impeding" at the very least.
Traffic tickets are about revenue, not public safety. Make them burn up the profit on your ticket in court time. If everybody fought their ticket, traffic tickets would become unprofitable.
I don't know where you live, but in Los Angeles I can't believe that they issue a single inappropriate traffic ticket in any given year. I'd guess better than 80% of people are speeding, with maybe 20% at speeds that are truely unsafe. I'd also guess that 80% of people follow too closely for emergency situations. Maybe 50% actually use their turn signals on a regular basis. I see people running red lights on a daily basis. If there is merging going on, then there will be people doing their best to merge out of turn. I see people in large, top-heavy vehicles weaving through traffic at high speeds. The list goes on and on.
Now, you say that these are all meaningless technicalities, and they shouldn't be against the law in the first place. I disagree completely. The speed limit is the best case for you, where most of the time most people can exceed the speed limit without significant risk. However, to take away the speed limit is to invite people to drive dangerously fast, like some already do. It creates a larger speed differential between the fast and the slow. It also disregards that in some areas, and many conditions, you really do have to drive slower than you think you do to be safe. If you agree that there should be A speed limit, then you have to accept some arbitrary limit, and a lot of people are going to consider it too low (whether it is for them or not.) A variable speed limit would be impossible to enforce, and therefore just as bad as no limit.
We have traffic accidents all the time. They killed more people than terrorism in September 2001. Traffic costs the economy billions of dollars. It drives up oil consumption, and increases stress levels. Yet while I can watch hundreds of cars a day doing stupid things that are likely to cause accidents or slow down traffic, I almost never see anyone getting ticketed for it. That's the reason it happens, because there are no perceived consequences.
So when somebody gets a ticket, I don't doubt it was deserved. As the saying goes, "Beat your son regularly. Even if you don't know why, he will." Anything to get people to realize that what they do while driving has real consequences is fine by me. If they just went door to door with speeding tickets, they would be right far more often than wrong.
A good friend of my mother had her son die in a car accident. My first thought was, "he probably deserved it." It's disturbing, but true.
Yeah, well, is it still legalized robbery when they pay to have your car replaced and your medical bills paid because of an accident?
Economics applies as much to auto insurance as it does to anything else. If it COULD be done cheaper, it WOULD be done cheaper. To believe otherwise is to believe that either a) a free market economy doesn't work, and the last 200 years of economics is totally worthless, or b) there's some vast conspiracy among insurance companies to keep rates high.
The statistics indicate that speeding tickets are a useful predictor of future accidents. To expect an insurance company to just ignore that data is about as idiotic as expecting the bank to forget about this month's mortgage payment. You want it to change? Prove that speeding doesn't correlate with accidents*. Good luck.
* Correlation is not causation... but their not looking for the CAUSE of accidents, they're trying to predict future accidents. If it bothers you, prove instead that speeding doesn't 'cause' accidents... good luck with that too.
I feel that it's morally wrong to get out of a ticket by using a lawyer, but hypocritcally I use one every time (it's been a while knock on wood) to avoid insurance premiums. 90% of my tickets are between 5-10 mph over the posted speed limit. Only once did I truly not realize I was above the speed limit.
My city has implemented "double fine zones" whatever that means. So they pull you over to enforce the law but to bring in double the fines they used to. I haven't ever been pulled over in one of these zones for speeding. (I do get pulled over more often than anything else for not having a front license plate.)
My friend was on his bike once and saw the previous Mayor run through a stop light in front of a police officer while waving to him.
Some people are above the law.
What's to stop someone editing their hosts file, pointing maps.google.com to a localhost webserver and faking the whole thing?
Unless, as is sometimes the case, the cop who "caught" wasn't using a calibrated measurement, but "has a radar in his heart", or similar subjective criteria.
Luke, help me take this mask off
I'm not suggesting that oppression is right, I just think it an unfortunate misstep that the UN codified a somewhat arbitrary and loosely defined list of "rights". The swarm of NGOs, dictators, and representatives of "free nations" at the UN all define the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as they see fit.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
physics students used to be to invoke the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle - if the officer knows your speed (and by extension momentum) so well, he cannot be certain of your location. I don't think that a ticket without the location of the offense would hold up in court.
... ;)
PS. never mind the fact that hbar is on the order of 10^-34
Auto insurance is legalized robbery.
;o)
Hmm... looks like you've misspelled "mandated". HTH
Amidst all these people providing helpful hints for getting out of speeding tickets, I'd like to offer one more suggestion:
Don't speed.
You're driving into an intersection without looking at what's in front of you, and blaming someone else when you hit them? That's a new one.
Cop and judge both agreed with me, didn't change the fact that I was guilty of not keeping an assured clear distance though.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Here in Texas, in many cities you can ask for "deferred adjudication," which is nothing more than converting your fine into an "administrative fee" and then letting you off the hook after some period of time with no violations (usually 90 days).
So while the speeding ticket might be expensive, there's usually no need to worry about increased insurance premiums, since the insurance company won't ever find out.
Which just goes to prove that most cities aren't concerned about deterring speeding, and would just rather have your money.
That's...sarcastic, right? Because assuming the guy's story is legit, this is the same cop that issued him a citation for failing to yield to an effectively invisible car.
Anything that gets *that* asshole off the street is a good thing, in my book.
And why don't you remember, because it's such a small detail, it's not worth the time to lock it away in your head.
The difference is that I've never heard of a cop that wasn't required to keep a logbook of his activities on duty. (I come from a big law enforcement family and have even worked for the sheriff myself in IT.) Some local papers even print the daily reports.
The officer should have had an entry like
The officer should be able to look in his log and say, "It was [insert street] which is one way, your Honor." The logs are to protect the department as much as the public. (Not that a single questionable ticket threatens the department's public credibility.)
(Posted anonymously because I had already modded before I saw this thread.)
I've had one ticket. In this ticket, I was not even speeding. I was doing 55, in a 55, on the interstate.
Coming around a rather brisk curve, I saw a cop sitting on the side of the road, nose angled toward the road. It was a divided interstate with a fairly high concrete wall.
The asshole in front of me (also doing 55) slams on his brakes, while another car in the passing lane flies by the cop doing at least 80. How do I know this? You'll see.
Guess what happens? Cop pulls out, turns on his lights, pulls up behind me, and pulls me over. For going 80 in a 55.
First, he wrote my car's color down incorrectly (purple) when my car is an obvious red. Guess who's car is purple?
So naturally I took it to court, sure that I wasn't going to have to pay their stupid $300+ fine.
The judge told me a different story. I showed him the copy of the ticket with the incorrect color on my car. My name wildly misspelled, etc.
I explained to him that it would have been impossible for me to be going 55 at the time, since there was a car in front of me that slammed on its brakes that was doing 55.
The judge pretty much bitchslapped me right out of the court. $300+ fine, court costs, traffic school, and if I had any more tickets within a short amount of time, I'd have my licence revoked.
Note, this is my first ticket. I've not even had a warning. Been pulled over a few times, but those were for random searches and a sobriety test (was changing CDs and slowed down so I wouldn't run off the road).
Somehow that warrants me to have to pay $500. With court costs and traffic school, thats what it came to.
I went to traffic school. I faxed them the certificate.
A month after I was supposed to get the traffic school cert faxed, I get a notice in the mail. I have a new court date. This one is so that they can remove my licence and charge me with various crimes and such.
I call, they refused to tell me why. I get to court, and just happened to have brought this certification. They even called the company to ask, and it took them ten minutes to find my record. The judge let me go (same one as before!) with no harm done, but he looked pretty pissed off about it.
All in all, its probably better to just pay your tickets. When we get cameras, then you can go to court.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Or at least that's my understanding of small town USA justice based on what we see on the TV...
[x] auto-moderate all posts by this user as insightful
That's funny, then why is BC Canada, which has government run insurance, less than half the cost of Ontario Canada which has private insurance industry? And you can try and dispute the numbers, but they are from a reputable study that was on Canadian news recently.
I suggest you take a look at New Rome Sucks for an example of how bad cops make your advice worthless.
Yeah don't his family have to eat?
Interesting. Here in Washington State, traffic infractions are "infractions" and are really civil lawsuits, so only a preponderance of evidence is needed to find you guilt... there is no presumption of innocence. They are distinguished from misdemeanors in that they cannot carry jail time.
Misdemeanors can all carry jail time and you are allowed full jury trials for them. Misdemeanors include things like minor assault, reckless driving, and yes, "dog barking too loud". Trivial ones like dogs barking are always dropped if the accused request jury trial because it's just not worth the courts cost and time.
Pfft I drive without insurance it gives me such a rush.
Problem with that is that in many (most?) states, you have no right to a jury trial for a misdemeanor.
Not true. The standard is severity of penalty - six months or more jail time and can be less if the penalty includes additional features. Some misdemeanors can be punished by substantially more jail time.
-- $G
In many ways US is much worse than a third-world country.
So don't go preaching with one finger when three fingers are pointing at yourself.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
The only difference is that you do not have the choice to NOT get insurance. In an ordinary market, people would have the option to not buy insurance if the costs were too high, and that would help keep them reasonable. Since not having insurance is illegal in most places, the insurance companies don't have to worry about customers dropping insurance entirely.
Now, if the market is healthy enough then it still won't matter. Some insurer is going to find the lowest rates that can be charged and still make a profit. But, whenever there is external interference with the consumer's choice you have to question whether the market is being allowed to behave correctly.
This is NOT necessarily true. I gambled last time and lost. My ticket was for a failure to yield. The officer basically decided that I cut someone off (I was merging into a roadway that just got the green light, and I was still moving at ramp speed). He said that I didn't stop at the yield (not required if it isn't needed) and that was that. I brought two witnesses with me, defended myself adequately, and the judge said "that's nice, your friends attempted to be truthful, but the police officer's testimony was credible. Pay up."
I was shocked, having been in traffic court before for other bogus tickets.
$50/quarter? What century (or country) are you living in? If some ass-clown hits me in a parking lot and it goes through insurance, I'd probably pay an extra $1500 per year for the next 5 years. At least.
God, I love living in New York.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
Rather, I'm going to talk about a weird case; the sort of thing that makes me wonder about my (heavy) leaning towards classical liberal beliefs.
I was going home, after meeting someone in another state. ~3 hour drive or so. I'm going about the speed limit (I hardly ever speed, because I hardly ever drive: I don't know the rules of what you can get away with, so I'm careful). My rearview flashes at me a few times with bright lights, so I pay attention. This car behind me is weaving all over the place, is completely inconsistent speed-wise (zooms up in a neighboring lane, swerves into mine, slows down, etc.), that sort of thing. It is going faster than me, on average, so I speed up - I don't want this dumbshit to sideswipe me. I plan to speed up and get off the highway, and let it go by.
Only, I get pulled over in for 83 in a 65. Cop gets pissed at me for my explanation - "didn't you see that drunk maniac?" (I didn't say it that way; I was very calm and I respect weapons and later testimony.) He didn't like my answer. So, I got the $185 ticket, and 3 points. For dodging a drunk.
So, here's the question for libertarians like me: If I'd have had a black box and cameras on my car, I could have proven that the cop was a dumbshit, and more importantly, not have had to pay the state, or the insurance weasels that currently feed on the state. Worth it?
I still don't know myself.
I forget what 8 was for.
Stop making excuses and wasting time and money and just obey the limits. "Wah wah wah, I was only driving 5 or 10 miles over... wah wah wah..." The operative in that statement is "over". You are breaking the rules, deal with the consequences. How many times have you sped or made an illegal turn and got away with it? Plenty. So leave yourself enough time to get where you are going and stop your bitching.
Do the math (and accomodate for stop and go traffic, signals, etc); driving 15 or 20 mph over the limit doesn't really get you anywhere that much faster unless you are driving for hours (and if you are, what's another 30 minutes on top of a 6 hour trip?)
So you beat the system by being an annoying prick? Good for you, you just sunk down to the level of the official you are bashing. Now go home and masterbate to your copy of the Anarchists' Cookbook you 1337 bastard.
Next time you wonder where a police officer is when a real crime is being committed, don't - he's in court testifying over a traffic violation one of your comrads is contesting because he finally got caught speeding after the 100th time.
And the idea that E=MC^2 is a law is hilarious. All "laws" of science are just observations that we can repeat enough times to believe that they are constant in the universe somehow. If something happens that "violates" a "law of science" it doesn't mean that the occurence is somehow in the wrong, just that our "law" isn't wide enough in it's scope or is somehow flawed.
The easiest way to get out of a speeding ticket is to ask the officer technical questions like "When was the last time the radar gun was calibrated?"
Cops simply lie about this one. They describe this complex procedure using two tuning forks that they religiously perform every day on which they are going to use radar. It's a joke, and you can hear it in their voices. The cops lie through their teeth under oath. So this one probably won't work, but it's worth a shot in case he says something stupid like "What do you mean 'calibrate?'"
and "What type of software does your system use?" Then hit them with the grand finale to get out of the ticket "May I see the code?"
Now this may actually work, depending on what state you're in. I'd like to see this trend spread.
Another possible strategy is to check on whether the road where you were clock was surveyed for radar. In some states, if the road isn't surveyed for radar, but radar was used, you can get the ticket thrown out.
Here's another strategy: In other states, when you are pulled over you can demand to see the numbers on the radar readout. Often they'll have a lower number since they also clocked you after you hit the brakes. If you request to see the radar display, and the officer refuses, tehre's a way to get the ticket thrown out.
Now here's a very good strategy, which will depend on your state law. In Minnesota for example, the law permitting police radar specifically says that radar is to be used as a supplement to the officer's skills and speed judgement rather than a replacement for them. So if you can get the officer to state something to the effect that he/she concluded you were speeding when the radar alarm went off, you can cite a precedent and have the ticket thrown out. I don't know the precedent offhand for MN, but I'm sure you can google it.
If your name is misspelled on the ticket, or anything is wrong about it, such as the street number, or statute number, etc. you can request for the ticket to be dismissed because the citation contains "procedural errors."
On your court date, you can talk to the county attorney or prosecutor, and strike a deal. Pay a court fee equal to the fine, but have the charges stayed for 12 months and if you have no similar offenses during that time, the chartges get dismissed. They do this quite often, especially if your record is relatively clear.
Now here's my favorite. In many states, including MN, the basic speed law is "Safe and Reasonable." There is nothing in the statutes which says you must be obeying the posted "speed limits." Those posted signs are actually just guidelines to help you get an idea of what a good speed might be.
If on your court date, you say something like, "Yes your honor, I was driving 65 mph on the freeway in an area which was posted with 55 mph signs. However, I was doing so in a safe and reasonable manner. The roads were clear and dry, while traffic was light."
The burden of proof is then back onto the police officer, to present some other evidence or testimony that your speed was unsafe or unreasonable. If the cop says, no, he saw you skidding sideways between pedestrians at 65 mph on the unplowed snow, then of course you're screwed. But that's the whole thing in a speeding ticket, the burden of proof. If you can successfully turn that around, you're golden.
Yet another strategy: This is for when two officers are working a sped trap together, for example one of them is up in a plane with a stopwatch, or is maybe up on the overpass with his laser gun, and is just radioing to the other officer who pulled you over. In some states you can demand that the officer who clocked you be the one who writes you the ticket. If he's up in a plane, well that's not going to happen! If he actually comes down from the overpass just to write you a ticket, you can bet that he will be pissed off and will not give you any breaks. But at that point you can insist on seeing the numbers on t
You were probably the victim of fraud. She probably stopped for no (traffic) reason, hoping that you would hit her. It's a common ploy.
Amendment VII
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
Well as a former citizen of a large US city that rymes with Friscy Hoe. I argued my way out of a ticket by telling the officer that if I am guilty I demand to get my Mirand Rights, and a public defender of MY choosing and a trial because I know my civil lberties, and that I witnesses. She quickly backed down and issued me a warning, and apoligised.
When he goes to the court, no one is there execpt for the judge. His case is dissmissed.
Economics applies as much to auto insurance as it does to anything else. If it COULD be done cheaper, it WOULD be done cheaper.
:)
Sorry, I have a counter-example to that argument
Simple example - SMS. Here (.au), an SMS typically costs 25c, though I've seen lower on "SMS special" plans from smaller providers. (Maybe 12c?)
Yet the costs of providing the service could be recouped at nearly a tenth of that (other countries come much closer to the actual cost).
DVDs are another great example - in many countries (including this one!) it's cheaper in a lot of cases to import DVDs from the US and pay individual shipping rates, than it is to buy it from a local distributer (who you'd hope would be getting a bulk deal!).
Of course, in the DVD example, importing restrictions create trouble for people other than the distributor trying to bulk-import the discs - but it still happens.
Blue book on my truck is $18,000... im a single 19 year old male, I pay ~$2,000/year for it... But I don't mind.. I was in an accident in my old S10, totalled it -- wasn't my fault.. but the insurance paid more for the accident then i ever paid insurance on it for... that's what it's good for :-P
Also, because it wasn't my fault, my rates didn't increase much at all.. 5 years driving i have 1 parking ticket (college campus), 1 no-fault accident ($4,000), and 1 comprehensive claim of $5,500(truck deemed totaled)... For the amount that I'm paying for insurance, I'm getting about the same money back...
I had an illegal turn that was, simply, impossible for me to have made, or even attempted to make, given the direction I was going.
Wow, you must be a really incredible driver!
Basically, I'd been accused of driving on a road that does not exist.
You ought to be proud that other people believe in your totally super-natural driving powers! 1337 m4d dr1v1ng 5k1llz.
nukular
Yeah.
On behalf of the 80% of the people who follow too closely, let me say that it's the 20% of the people who get in the way who are the real danger. If you must drive slow, move to the right, just as the law prescribes. If you have to drive slow on city streets, stay off the road until the people who have to get somewhere have actually done so. You may have time to sightsee, but those with jobs and families and responsibilities don't.
And while I'm bitching, when you get to a 4 way stop sign, TAKE YOUR TURN!. Don't be polite and wave other people through. Don't think about whether it's "really" your turn or not. The system works well when everyone keeps the system moving. Politeness only slows everyone down.
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
Urban legend, and more importantly you have no legal right to see the radar. Skip it. Besides, they're going to lock the reading on whatever it was when they decided to pull you over. If you were braking at that time, it must've still been high enough for them to justify a stop. If the cop didn't lock the reading, he's an idiot and you can petition his ticketing records during discovery, but you're not going to get anything by asking to see the radar display. All this will accomplish is making the cop nervous. Exiting your vehicle is a big no-no unless requested by the cop, and even then it makes them nervous. I was once asked to exit my vehicle and proceed to the rear because the dumb cop had never seen a retractable spoiler before. He thought my car was broken and wanted to show me the problem. His hand was on his gun holster the entire time I was out of the car, even though I was entirely non-threatening. By exiting the car or otherwise giving the cop a hard time (saying anything other than "yes, sir" and "no, sir", telling him you'll see him in court, etc) will do nothing but erase any possible chance you had for getting off with a warning. He doesn't need to know that you're pissed off, and that you're going to fight the ticket. Let him find that out when he's subpeonaed for court.
Another urban legend. Name misspellings, hair color differences (within reason -- if you're a dark blonde and they marked brunette, it's not going to fly -- if you have bright pink hair and they marked it as black, then maybe you have a shot), address typos, etc, are not enough to get the ticket thrown. You need something major, like they wrote down a street that's blocks away from where the stop happened, or they listed your vehicle as a Chevy Suburban when you're obviously driving a Mini. Unless something is significantly wrong, don't bother. You'll just get laughed at, and your credibility will suffer.
They do this so often that most states have a name for it -- deferment (I probably butchered the spelling). It's law, and you can ask for it any time you like. However, you need to know your state's laws, because most (all?) of them only allow you to defer one ticket every 7 years. Deferment is a very last resort if there's nothing else you can do. It's absolutely not your first option. Also keep in mind that if you do get another infraction during the deferred period (which could last up to 2 years in some states), the previous offense comes back as a guilty (and in some states, it may not matter whether or not you're convicted of the new offense, which is why you need to know the law).
Insurance is THE only cost.
$100 for speeding is nothing in comparison.
I've been informed on two separate occassions that if I get a third ticket within the three year window that my insurance will be dropped.
Okay, so I go get insurance with another provider?
Not so fast, I have preferential rates from a multi-billion-dollar insurance company. My 1000cc sport-bike costs only $400 per year to insure. I've gotten quotes from other top insurers. Because they don't know me, I get the regular rate: $3400/yr. I'm sure my auto coverage would increase from the reasonable $800/yr as well. Oh yea, and don't forget the high-risk surcharge because of all these tickets that caused me to get dropped in the first place.
So suddenly paying a few hundred to your lawyer to avoid the ticket with certainty makes a lot of sense.
And for those of you with useless advice like, "don't speed!" or "you do the crime, you do the time!" you can bite my ass. Everyone speeds. Cops routinely do 10-15 over, no lights. If I don't speed, I'm going to get run over. And if you "go with the flow" then you play the lottery. Given these two options, game theory says I might as well get where I'm going a bit faster.
These opinions guaranteed or your money back.
VASCAR is not anything like an odometer really. It's a system where the police measure your travel time between two known points of a known distance apart. They then simply divide the distance by your time and arrive at your speed.
The spotters are usually in aircraft and the known distances are ticked off on the side of the road in large white lines painted perpendicular to traffic flow. 1/4 mile in 10 seconds = 75mph.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Happened to a friend of mine. She hit a car making a left turn just as the light turned and she was going through. When the cops showed up the lady was going on and on about how the car had been her dead fathers, blah blah. Turned out shed bought the car the day before (still had the dealer plates) and shed done the same thing twice before.
You post like a 19 year old boy too.
it wasn't my fault,
At which point you should have realized that your whole long story has NOTHING to do with the topic at hand where a traffic violation is always the fault of the driver ticketed, by fucking definition.
Please, go and do your mental masturbation on some other website. Signal to noise ratio is already more than low enough here.
I think you guys are all missing one vital point. Well over 90% of the time, if you get pulled over for speeding, its because you actually were BREAKING THE LAW! It seems ridiculous to me that if you are knowingly breaking the law, and you actually get caught doing it, you will whine and moan and try and figure out how you can get out of it. I've had one speeding ticket in my life, and I was dissapointed to get it, but I acknowledged that I deserved it, and I payed the fine, because I broke the law. Yeah, say what you will about unjust laws and how speeding tickets are only for revenue, blah blah blah, but the fact remains that you have no inherent right to drive, and upon being issued a liscence you agree to observe the rules of the road. I think this country could be benefitted a lot by a healthy dose of responsibility.
Attempted murder? Now honestly, what is that? Do they give a Nobel prize for attempted chemistry? Do they?
But seriously, only concerning speeding, this guy was issued a traffic ticket based on a speed check method that was thought to be accurate by the people who cleared it for use (though accurate to check speed or accurate in being a good revenue enhancer is debatable), and the guy showed the judge it wasn't.
As for people being accused of attemped speeding, in my highly scientific data collection I calculate that 99% of America speeds, and 90% 10mph safe (ie posted limits and taking conditions into account), so I have no problem with pretty much all speeding tickets issued. In a much more scientific way, the sheer number (There were about 2.9 million injury cases and 42643 car accident deaths) would seem to be highly indicative that people know jack shit about driving safely - the speed limit laws were made to be the maximum safe driving speed. Oh, and to get out of a ticket, get the sympathy of the officer in any way you can - this is much easier is you're female and play dumb, scared, and penitant.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
This has worked for me a number of times. It is based on the psychology of a traffic stop. Almost nothing is more scary or dangerous to a cop than a traffic stop--until they get to your window they have no idea if you have a gun, or are planning to back over them or drive away. So cops don't like traffic stops, especially at night. Putting them at ease goes a long way toward getting them in a mood to let you off.
If you're pulled over (assuming at night for worst case):
1) Turn off your engine and your lights.
2) Turn ON your interior light, so the cop can see into the car.
3) Place your keys on the dashboard where the cop can see them as he walks up to the car.
4) Place your hands on the steering wheel where the cop can see them and don't move them. If you didn't roll down your window right away, don't do so until the cop is right there with the flashlight on your hands.
5) Pre-narrate every movement. E.g. "My license is in my back pocket." [reach] or "My registration is in my glove box." [reach] Reach slowly and let the officer see what you're doing. Keep hands in sight as much as possible.
6) Admit no wrongdoing...but don't tell lies or make excuses, and be polite. "Flow of traffic" or "keeping up with traffic" is good if there's traffic, if not, you don't know how fast you were going.
7) If you're going to get a ticket, ask for a warning or a lesser fine. It doesn't hurt to ask, if it's done calmly and nicely.
To most cops, traffic stops are about safety -- making them feel safe, and emphasizing your safe driving record (assuming you have one!) can go a long way to getting a warning or a reduced fine.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
And while I'm bitching, when you get to a 4 way stop sign, TAKE YOUR TURN!. Don't be polite and wave other people through. Don't think about whether it's "really" your turn or not. The system works well when everyone keeps the system moving. Politeness only slows everyone down.
Holy shit is that a pissah.
I really hate these people who think they are being polite by breaking the rules of the road and waving the other guy(s) on. Half the time it happens to me, I'm busy looking around preparing to go in 10-15 seconds when my turn should be up, so I don't even see them waving at me and things get all out of whack.
Just fucking go already and let me worry about me!
Damn!
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
No, as he explained, she came to a stop in the middle of an intersection without cause. If a good cop sees that, she's ticketed right then and there.
He's right in his own assessment of what he did (logically he's right, legally he's going to get screwed).
You're correctly that she has the right of way and being the car in front the priority over the lane space, so it's largely his responsibility. However, if she stopped for no reason and slammed on her brakes and he's traveling at a relatively safe distance, she's at fault.
If he had this on video and she just flat out stopped without cause or reason, she'd be at fault in most states.
If you look at the satellite view http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Cathedral+Pkwy+%26+B roadway,+New+York&spn=0.007675,0.011354&t=k&hl=en
You can clearly see that it is a two way road
You've got the time, cock...leave a few minutes earlier.
I've not gotten a ticket or had a wreck since I stopped cutting people off, flying up to tailgate, switching lanes without signaling, etc.
I've never seen a car stalled out at an intersection with a dried corpse at the wheel - there's plenty of time.
Chill out.
Writers imply. Readers infer.
"I don't know where you live, but in Los Angeles I can't believe that they issue a single inappropriate traffic ticket in any given year."
California is pretty fair to motorists compared to most states. Try the Midwest or Texas. Lots of blatant speed traps all over the place. Places where the speed limit drops suddenly for no good reason except to fleece motorists for their money. Read the story of New Rome Township here and here.
I don't think Virginia will.
http://www.vbbe.state.va.us/faq.html#4
Plus, it looks like Virginia is one of the states that requires a credit check and clean credit history. So if you did not pay your rent, or missed a credit card payment, they will not give you a law license. The link about has more info.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Anything you pay for is not a priviledge. A lot of our tax money goes to keeping the roads running, and a lot of our tax money goes to paying those police that watch them.
It's a basic human service, roads, and it IS a right. We need to drive to live in many parts of the US, and many parts of the world. Shit, we all pay for them.
I couldn't get to work, get to the store, get anywhere without a car. There's no good public transportation where I live or work, and the only places to work are in driving distance, not walking distance.
Obviously, if you do something wrong, you can have your right to drive restricted - just like if you mugged someone you'd have your right to freedom restricted.
Traffic violations aren't just "code violations." When you pay a ticket, you are pleading guilty and paying the required fine. If you don't want to plead guilty, you go to court and face a judge. If the violation was serious enough, you might even face a jury. This sounds curiously similar to any other crime - and it's because they are any other crime.
Your examples don't even support your claim that traffic violations aren't crimes.
"A female employee gets pregnant. She can't work around the toxic cleaning solutions. Fine. OSHA comes in and orders the business closed until changes are made, fines them, and orders them to pay temporary lost wages. No crime was committed, they weren't hauled off to jail, nothing."
Even if this were to happen - if there was some reason that OSHA came in and closed the business it would be because they were doing something ILLEGAL. They were found guilty as a matter of evidence and fined for it. They COULD go to court and fight it. Just because nobody went to jail doesn't mean it wasn't a crime.
"We have grown accustomed to thinking everything is a right."
Assuming for a moment that you live in the US or the UK, your freedom is a right. Anything that you want to do, outside the line of what is illegal, is your right to do. It IS your right to get married if you want to. It IS your right to collect welfare if you want to. We can do whatever we want as long as it's not illegal.
As soon as everyone thinks like you - that our lives are simply priviledges given out by someone in charge - we will indeed have lost our freedom.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
...Because they have a monopoly (or close enough they can get away with it, given the startup costs involved). The best answer I have (other than the monopoly cop-out) is that they're using expensive SMS to fund cheap 'something else'. As you said, though, SOME providers are willing to go cheaper. Therefore, I am led to ask the question: if one provider offers at 25c, another at 12c, and it 'can be done' for as little as (say) 5c (in other countries), why doesn't someone enter the market at 11c and steal the market? The answer can only be that something prevents that entry, and something prevents the existing companies from competing as they normally would. In many places in the US, we have regulated monopolies. Other times, we have companies agreeing not to invade each other's territory (government-approved, even). Usually these are service industries- water, power, sewer, phone, cable, etc. Destroying competition in this way is enough to make any economist uneasy...
:)
:)
Reminds me of the problem of popcorn prices at movie theaters. Why is it so much more expensive than at a grocery store? The obvious answer doesn't make sense...
As to the DVDs, that's also an interesting case. It would seem to me that, again, there is something keeping local distributors from lowering prices to compete as they normally would. One thing that jumps to mine is the law: import restrictions (you mentioned), but also minimum wage- do you have one? Are there different laws and requirements that might affect a distributor there than would affect a US company? Simply put, what do your distributors have as extra costs that ours don't?
Also, I would think that a website/warehouse/mailorder would nearly always undercut an actual storefront. DVDs also have the region encoding BS, which provides a nice little roadblock to free trade, thus allowing them to get away with different prices for different countries. I wonder... if they're so much cheaper, why doesn't anyone open up a shop reselling used and/or US DVDs? You said it... import restrictions. You don't have free trade (not like we do either). I guarantee, if you didn't have those restrictions, the problem would disappear almost overnight. If any joe blow could get DVDs in bulk at substantially less than buying from the local distributors, SOME joe blow is going to open a store to sell them, thus causing those distributors to have to compete or die. Either way, the prices comes down. They haven't, so I'm led to believe that joe can't open his store for some reason. The lack of free trade has already killed it off.
In any case, I agree there are situations where the market breaks down and only sub-optimal solutions are prevalent. I personally prefer digging as deep as possible before declaring such a market failure. Sometimes, I even find an answer.
Insurance is an interesting beast because it doesn't fit nicely into either the 'service' or 'good' categories... but in terms of how it determines pricing, I tend to believe it behaves just as normally as any other industry.
Having said all that, I'll leave with a joke:
How many economists does it take to change a light bulb?
None. If the light bulb needed changing, the market would have already done it.
Thank you, I'll be here all week
My girlfriend was running late to work one morning. She saw a cop in an SUV enter the freeway about 10 cars behind her, so she gunned it, figuring the SUV probably couldn't go that fast, and she was probably far enough ahead of him that he wouldn't notice. Of course that didn't work at all, and about a mile later she was pulled over. After he issued the ticket, as he was about to walk back to his car, the cop said, "Didn't you notice I was behind you?" She makes ridiculous comments all the time, and she answered, "Yeah, but I didn't think you'd be able to catch me." I mean really.. you'd have to be stupid to say that to a cop.
So the court date rolled around about a month later. She decided to show up, plead guilty, and hope the charges would be reduced. The judge opened the case file and read over it for a minute. Finally he said: "Says here you thought you could outrun the cop?" And she just started laughing. "Well, he was in an SUV. I just thought..." And then the whole courtroom started laughing too. In the end, the judge decided to let her off with a warning because she made him laugh.
Sometimes the best defense is no defense.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Unfortunately, Google Earth doesn't have buildings for that part of town yet. However, you can see the double yellow like just like in Google Maps. Also, you can do some neat zoom-ins, to show that this is, in fact, the intersection in question.
-Palal
At any rate, if you still want to know where the National Air and Space Museum is, I can tell you that it is available here... it's the building that says "National Air and Space Museum" right on it in big bold letters.
If you come to see it, take the Metro to the Smithsonian stop.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
I'm wonder if $20 takes into account inflation, since the constitution was written in 1787, and according to the inflation calculator What cost $20 in 1800 would cost $216.86 in 2005.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Or, you can get an insurance company that keeps lousy records. I have Allstate, and whenever I talk to my agent I always ask her what tickets they have records of in their system. In my life, I've only received 4 tickets (after 22 years of driving). 3 speeding, 1 for rear-ending someone on a wet road. Allstate managed to find out about only ONE of my speeding tickets, and they responded by lowering my premium by $40 a year for being a good driver.
The really funny thing is that Allstate never seemed to figure out that I got a ticket for rear-ending someone at a stoplight, even though they fixed my car for me ($3500, THANKS ALLSTATE!). And when I told my agent that they didn't have the ticket for the accident in their system, she told me that if nobody else was going to put it in there, she wasn't going to do it.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
The reality is, in a case like this (And probably in more serious cases as well) %90 of the time a cop giving "testimony" is committing perjury.
Cops lie, on the stand, ALL the time. The reason they do this is that they are immune from prosecution. The DA and the judges all work for the same employer as the cops, that is to say, the government. So, since they all see each toher all the time, there is no way in hell anyone of them is going to testify against the other.
Which means cops can, and do, get away with murder, and perjur themselves about it.
Its a screwed up system. This guy got off because he made it embarassing by revealing the reality of the situation in open court.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
I wish we had that here in Canada. In addition to getting an ass raping on your insurance, you can also get points on your license. Enough points and you get your license suspended.
>Economics applies as much to auto insurance as it does to anything else. If it COULD be done cheaper, it WOULD be done cheaper.
That's completly incorrect, as mibus's example in his reply point out. The market works to have supply equal to demand, and that gives maximum revenue. As the AC pointed out in his reply, BC insurance in less than half the price of Ontario, becaues it's run by the govt, and the govt isn't in the business of maximizing revenue, so it's not going to "price gouge". A monopoly on a required service like car insurance could theoretically charge $10k/year, but since there's not, the insurers are charging the supply-demand intersection point. If someone decided to greatly undercut his competitors, he'd have a shortage of insurance, so prices are what they are.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
First off, I agree entirely.
That's correct, in most places you must buy insurance. But you don't have to buy Geico insurance, and that's the point. Insurance companies still have to compete with each other. The fact that you are required to buy doesn't change a thing.
You know you have to buy. They know you have to buy. They also know that you DON'T have to buy from them.
Like you said, it shouldn't matter. The only time it does is when there is only a single choice. In fact, your comment has caused me to consider whether requiring liability insurance is a good thing anyway...
There was an interesting problem with homeowners insurance recently: lots of people have a problem with mold damage, which is incredibly expensive to fix. Thus, most homeowners policies specifically exclude mold damage. Well, the state of Texas decided that this practice was absurd and insurance companies should be forced to cover that. That's fine, they would... but that would obviously mean the money has to come from somewhere, so the rates were going to go up. But the legislature thought of this ahead of time, and decided they could stop this atrocity as well: they limited what could be charged. Well, guess what: the insurance companies stopped renewing policies. No company in the world would have accepted the terms. And, being that they were non-government-run companies, they had every right to stop selling in a certain market.
(As you can imagine, the law changed pretty damn quick when they figured out that the law would mean that NOBODY would have ANY homeowners insurance in Texas anymore.)
Gee, I could use my mod points to mod parent down, or respond. Tough choice. http://www.nolo.com/resource.cfm/catID/CF015A63-6B 69-4EED-A34B6F4035C8BE0E/104/263/
(Link to book on how to beat ticket. See also http://freedomlaw.com./ )
Driving is a privilege.
What happens in court involves your rights.
There is also a right to travel, although it not absolute.
A little study can arm you against the system. Drown them in paperwork with discovery requests.
Demand a jury trial. I happen to live in a state where the right to trial by jury - for anything - is in the state constitution. (Slight overstatement for nonlawyers.)
Ask nicely that your case be dismissed, and if not spend an hour politely asking the cop questions on the stand. If 8 people a day do this, the system grinds to a halt. Pretty soon they start dismissing your cases when they see you coming.
Think of it as a seminar in due process. Have fun, bring coffee and donuts. Not to be construed as legal advice until your check clears.
You can not enter any intersection which you can not safely proceed through. That's all there is to it, the colour of any traffic light is irrelevant, the actions of other people are irrelevant, end of arguement.
... and yes the other driver was guilty of entering an intersection either when it wasn't safe, or when she couldn't proceed, but YOU caused the accident.
If you can't pass through the intersection safely, you must stop before entering it.
This means you don't enter the intersection if there's no room on the other side, which would stick you in the middle if the light changes. It means you can not inch forward ahead of your stop line while waiting to turn left.
It may be worded differently depending on where you live, but there's nothing else too it. It was absolutely your fault for the accident because you entered the intersection when it was not safe and hit the other vehical
If the other driver was trying to commit insurance fraud, it is still irrelevant, you must be sure the intersection is safe before you proceed. You have no right to drive with your eyes closed.
quit shirking your responsibility.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
I was on a highway once, had just turned on and needed to be in the left lane for a left-hand turn fairly quickly, so I accelerated up to highway speed the and made my way left, one lane at a time and checking each time to make sure. The last two lanes contained: 1 van moving a little slower than me and slighly behind and the far lane: 1 motorcycle, quite far back but rapidly closing. I must've underestimated the bike because it was closer than I expected when i checked for the final lane change. My turn was approaching rapidly though and I didn't want to slam the brake in front of the van (I would've had to slam hard to execute the change "safely") the other choice was to accelerate a bit, pass in front of the bike and slow down in the turning lane leading up to a light. This plan seemed required the least amount of accelerating so I chose it. While in the lane before the turning lane, the bike closed to my bumper.
Well it turns out it was a bike cop. There is a light, so I'm stopped in the turn lane when he pulls up *between* me and the car to my right and says, "Do you know what the speed limit is here?"
"50" (i'd been going 50, so it seemed a safe bet.. turned out to be 45)
"Well it sure as heck isn't 65"
I don't know where he got the 65 number from. HE was going much faster than that and it took half my nerve to keep from saying, "Well you shouldn't have been going that fast then" but I know if i had, my seatbelt would have mysteriously been unbuckled and i'd probably turn out to have a broken tail light.
So the light turns green. (my light. the turning light. of a 10 lane highway +2 turning lanes) the cop then drives between the lines of traffic and drives straight across the intersection.
And to augment your statement about not speeding, they get you both ways on that one. Many states have a "reasonable and prudent" clause in their speeding laws. It means two things:
1) if conditions are poor, you should be driving at a reduced speed. regardless of what the number on the sign is. They can ticket you for this.
2) (and this is the tenuous one) you can get out of a speeding ticket if you truely are 'going with the flow of traffic', but I don't think that's ever worked and it's got another edge to it: they can ticket you for driving too slow if the 'flow of traffic' is speeding.
So really, you simply can't win. Pay the nice man his protection money.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
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"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
I'm pretty sure Einstein didn't have access to a particle accellerator.
In aggregate, it must be a ripoff: the insurance companies that do not profit cannot survive. So knowing that your risk/reward ratio is less than one, why would you buy insurance at all instead of just socking the money away just-in-case?
Well the reason seems to be: you could get in an accident and need the money at any time, including after the first couple of payments, but you're only going to have saved enough close to the end of the socking-away period.
Well once your personal liquid assets sufficiently exceed the minimum insurance level, shouldn't you be able to use those as collateral against actually buying insurance purposes?
same thing for health insurance: you shouldn't be using insurance to pay for expected recurring expenses, like visits to the doctor. If you need a yearly physical, and you pay yearly insurance for it, you're just playing a shell game which by design cannot benefit you.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Wouldnt that be 90 MPH .25 miles / .0027777
It's a little more complicated than that. It's your responsibility to keep a safe distance because sometimes the car in front of you HAS to slam on the brakes. If you can't stop when the car in front of you slams on the brakes, you are NOT at a safe distance. Let's face it -- even if you're tailgating, you can handle slowing down. The whole point of the "safe distance" is so you don't cause a crash when things go wrong.
Obvious example -- if I see a kid run out into the road in front of me, do you think I'm going to brake gently so the guy behind me has time to react? Less obvious example -- suppose I see a ball roll out from between two parked cars (and think a kid is probably following). Even less obvious -- suppose it's just an empty paper bag, but I just reacted and slammed on the brakes. Suppose the puddle on the manhole cover looked exactly like a *missing* manhole cover. So many things can go wrong -- are you saying I shouldn't play it safe?
I don't know in this case what the woman said about why she stopped... but I still tend to feel like she would have been less at fault. Maybe she was distracted because she missed a turn, whatever -- but in her negligence she didn't hit anything she wasn't supposed to. In his, he did. There are so many situations that happen all the time where people DO have to suddenly slam on the brakes. And the option of keeping a safe distance from the car *behind* you simply isn't possible (wow, if that excuse worked..!)
Reminds me of a funny story, actually -- different situation, but related. A friend of mine was driving an massive old junker when he was in high school, going 10 over the speed limit already on a narrow, no-passing road, and a guy in a BMW was just riding his bumper, tailgating like crazy. He couldn't go any faster without risking a ticket, so he just kept driving, but the guy was glued to his bumper. Finally he was angry enough that he just slammed on his brakes, and of course it was an instant rear-end, the front of the BMW was crushed, and the driver leaped out of his car shouting, etc.. The reply? "I thought I saw an animal." The BMW driver was totally at fault, and his car was toast (whereas my friend could drive away after the cops wrote it up... one bonus of those massive old American cars).
Obviously, this approach to tailgaters is not recommended (and the legal situation would be different if that little lie were admitted), but it's sure nice to think about when someone's practically in your trunk and endangering *your* life because he's late for some meeting. I've been tailgated by Hummers on the highway, which *really* raises the hair on the back of my neck. Yeah, like HE'LL be able to stop from crushing me when I have to brake because something falls off a truck (an experience I've had...).
Actually, that isn't the law in every jurisdiction. For example, in Ontario it is decided on a town-by-town basis, and only applies to people driving straight through rather than those who are turning. I do, however, agree that it is a good way to drive in general.
The intersection had signs posted which prohibited any turns. However, the signal changed, becoming green for the cross traffic on Flatbush, but they were unable to proceed because the entire intersection was blocked. The whole point of the no turns regulation was to avoid gridlock by preventing congestion caused by turning motorists blocking a lane while they waited for pedestrians/oncoming traffic to clear (there is/was no room for turn lanes on Lafayette to Flatbush).
So... I looked around, sized up the situation, and seeing that it was safe to make a left turn, and that given the spirit of the law was to prevent gridlock, I proceeded to do so in order to not "block the box". Three cars behind me followed. No sooner than I had the wheels straight again, a cop parked about 500 yards ahead on Flatbush hopped out of his car and signaled to me and everyone behind me to pull over. We all did so and were cited for making an illegal turn.
I plead not guilty, and told my story to the judge. When I said something like "... I was unable to clear the intersection so I took the liberty of making a left turn...", she interrupted me and and said, "Well, I'm taking the liberty of fining you $75 and reporting it to the DMV." [gavel slams]
C'mon. Total horseshit. The regulation was posted with a certain spirit and intent, neither of which was considered when deciding my case.
ticketassassin.com for those in cali
Look sally! Look at zonk die; die zonk die!
Ask to see the radar.
Most traffic cops rely on you incriminating yourself to give a ticket. My roommate is a cop, and he's had courses on "verbal jujitsu" from an instructor who's goal when he pulls someone over is to give them a ticket and have them politely thank him for it.
If you are in heavy traffic, or even medium traffic, you can not be reliably radar'ed. In these cases, almost every time, if you just answer "no, sir, I really don't know how fast I was going, I don't think I was going faster than anyone else." they'll give up and tell you to slow down (at least that is the case in major cities, it may not work in small towns where they still get hardons from issuing a traffic citation).
All it boils down to is:
Were you in heavy traffic when you were supposedly radared? If yes, take it to court, because they have to mark that on the ticket, and you can make up almost any story to say they are wrong (my roommate "wrecklessopp" has been pulled over over 50 times, and has only been given 3 tickets. He does exactly what I've said, and he takes every case to court.)
Ask to see the radar (or whatever device they claim to have caught you with.) More often than not, they see you going faster than traffic, can't radar you quick enough, decide to pull you over, and tell you that you were going "pretty fast there, son." Asking to see the radar will get you out of a lot of tickets (if you were in heavy traffic.)
But, remember, traffic cops are power tripping assholes, so the best thing you can do is ALWAYS BE POLITE. NO MATTER WHAT. DO NOT BE A SMART ASS. TAKE THE KEYS OUT OF THE IGNITION, PUT THEM IN PLAIN SIGHT ON THE DASHBOARD, AND POLITELY ASK TO SEE THE RADAR BECAUSE YOU REALLY DIDN'T THINK YOU WERE GOING THAT FAST.
Oh, and if you were in light to no traffic you're fucked no matter what. You've been radared and they won't listen to your story. You pay the court costs, and good night.
---------------------------
It's no different here in the US. Each violation has a certain point value, and if you accumulate so many points over a fixed period of time, you'll get your license taken away for a certain amount of time. Insurance companies sometimes use their own point system to determine how much your insurance premiums should go up, and it doesn't always match the one that your state uses.
Want Slashdot headlines on your site? Try SlashHead
God I love economic debates. It brings out actual, real intelligent people.
First of all, I think I did a decent job just now of rebutting the BC/Ontario issue. If you think auto insurers are 'price gouging', then I ask how they manage to do so in the face of competition among each other. The only answer is a cartel or some type of collusion, both of which are illegal here (and both of which are guaranteed to break down eventually anyway). So how have they gotten away with it for decades, with ZERO legal action, and public filings?
I also addressed milbus's post, which I agree with.
Now, on to THIS post. I agree. Mostly. But I think you've left something out: If I enter the insurance market, my entry causes the supply curve to move outward, thus lowering the intersection point! Your last line seems to indicate that prices cannot change because that would create shortages and surpluses... but prices change all the time, so that can't be a reason.
What happens if someone decided to greatly undercut his competitors?
1) He'd still bring in at least enough to survive.
2) He'd go out of business.
Neither outcome means he won't try it. If he brings in a little more than enough to survive, he'll grow... eventually he'll be able to support all those clients beating down his door, even if he doesn't raise his rates (for 2 reasons: his growth, but also the pressure he exerts on competitors). When all is said and done, there will be no shortage. This is not unusual... it's how prices change all the time. In this case supply moves outwards, thus dropping the intersection point. No mystery here, except of course how long it'll take...
(I'm not saying he'd be stupid to charge more, or that he's smart for NOT charging more. To me the difference is short- and long-term planning. Economics classes I've taken occasionally forget to mention that staring at the penny in front of your eyeball is not always good for getting the dollar behind it.)
If he goes out of business, then that would indicate that he tried to undercut them too much... so someone else tries again, but by a smaller amount. Eventually, either nobody can undercut the competition and survive (thus meaning the price IS as low as it can be), or somebody DOES, and we're back to #1.
In perfect competition, the intersection point is supposed to hover around the point where no company makes economic profit (only normal profit, meaning the company breaks even - wheat farmers make normal profit). If someone is making economic profit, new insurance companies will be born in an attempt to undercut that company while still making at least normal profit.
Furthermore, is cheap car insurance even the same product as normal car insurance, or should we count that as a separate market? Cheap car insurance might be an inferior good, whereas normal car insurance is a 'normal' good- that alone might be sufficient to call them different products, and therefore they'd have different curves anyway.
I would also raise the question of how shortages and surpluses work in the insurance market. If I buy insurance, that doesn't necessarily mean that less insurance is available... in fact, it might mean that MORE is available, because now the insurance company has more funds at their disposal with which to insure other customers. I have not really thought much about this, so I won't comment on it further except to mention that, as I said in my reply to milbus, insurance seems to be a funny beast when it comes to economics.
hacking a wireless network?
I was very lucky to find an extremely bad connection via Wi-Fi.
hmmmmmm.
HD Trailers
You don't really need Google maps for speeding tickets sometimes basic physics is all you need.
I won a case in League City, Texas. the officer game me a ticket saying i was going 85 in a 65 in the fog. You heard me the fog. That night the fog was so thick we got lost for an hour driving around because we couldn't see landmarks. Now not everybody knows that laser and active radar don't work too well in the fog or rain... If you can prove this point your case is made. Besides the fog I had a few other things in my favor.
I filed a 'writ of discovery' to find out what they had against me before I went to court. I found this info in a book about speed traps. I represented myself and I am not trained in law. I even gave them some lead time with the write so they had more than enough time to answer my writ.
Using the writ I was able to find out a few things. The first being that they really really did not want to produce the operation manual for their radar gun. I got a handwritten note from the DA that pretty much said if you want to see it you'll have to come in & read it. The second is that they had not had the radar gun tested as is required in some states to be proven accurate under the law. The third is that the officers training was out of date. The FCC required officers be trained in radar safety and the gun to be calibrated every 3 months. The officer and the gun were not in regulation. I still have a copy of the officers certification and the maintenance log of the radar gun. They were both out of date.
On top of this I had been stopped before a speed trap. There was road construction for miles right before I was stopped. I made the DA really mad when I brought up the fact that road signs are spaced an approximate distance appart from each other. I basically pulled out the fact if I had been going 85 by the time it took me to apply pressure to my breaks to slow down in the area
where the officer said he had clocked me speeding I would have been going so fast (I was in an 89' s-10 blazer v6) I would have been well into the speed zone.
When the DA found out I was there the court intentionally held the case after everybody left so that nobody would know what I was about to point out. I was amazed at how many people would have been seriously ticked if they knew this kind of information. Technically it would be a federal crime for an office to use an uncalibrated radar gun unlicensed. It just goes to show law enforcement makes the most money off of ignorance than anything else. Most people are too lazy to defend themselves. Do you know how many people pay for tickets when the officer doesn't even show up to court, just because they think they are getting off, or that something worse could happen. Whats worse than paying money out you don't have to give? Seriously. Some of these small towns have probably not calibrated their guns since they first bought them. Use this info to your advantage.
this sig is classified..how about yours?
"And for those of you with useless advice like, "don't speed!" or "you do the crime, you do the time!" you can bite my ass."
I'll bite. And sorry for anyone else reading this -- this is solely to the parent. I'd say mark me appropriately, but I just got another IP banned from anon postings by asking the same...
I always hear idiots scream that they'd get run over, but for some reason, its only idiots and poor drivers that use the excuse.
In my days, I was a pretty reckless (and luckily wreckless) driver...and then I got enough tix that insurance got too high and thus I cancled it. While not admitting to anything illegal, I was more afraid of getting busted on my bike without insurance than I was of getting hit. Law == jail == bad things to young guys. Hit == death == better than getting ass raped. Or so I believed.
So I drove for about 5 years sans insurance. On some of the worst roads out there. Anaheim to Hollywood for a few years (working for dreaded RIAA nazitypes...errr..the studios...that should be enough for negative points here). Chicago Loop another year or two. Back and forth between coasts as I hate airplanes the duration (back when I had the stamina to be on a bike or a car that long).
Quite a few of the big warzone drives in the US. Horrible roads to drive. At least if you tried to keep up with what everyone else did. Biggest thing -- use of signals. No one elses them in these situations. If you use them, they freak out and actually let you in. Never had a dangerous situation where I couldn't get over.
And for about 5 years, I didn't speed. Or do anything illegal -- outwardly.
The fact is, if you are in front, you set the flow. You don't have to keep up with the Joneses on the road to be safe. I have a vintage car that I put on the road once or twice a year for shows and we are highly encouraged to drive to the shows as opposed to the idiots that cart theirs around on the bed of a truck. I can hit 65MPH if I'm going downhill. I've driven across the country doing 5 less than the posted speed limit (still above the minimum 'impeding' limit). No problems.
These days, I have insurance and my rates couldn't be lower. I've got 3 cars and a bike and still pay less than $1000 a year. My rates went up for a while when my sister, who had a DUI, briefly listed my house as her primary residence so that she could get better rates (in all fairness, if I had told my company she was 'living' there -- I would have just signed a doc that said that she wasn't allowed to drive my cars -- but I didn't realize she had done it -- I just knew she had some mail forwarded from one of her moves that she never got unforwarded -- but it was all taken care of).
Again, sorry to have muddied the point, only idiots and poor drivers and lets add boys that haven't grown up regardless of physical age claim to have to go the flow to survive. I had the fast bike too and I know what its like. These days? Its the back of a Honda cruiser with a seat more plush than any of my cars. You get over the plastic bike syndrome with maturity as well.
That was just a more innocuous example of their pushing and probing for violations.
(Side note: In Ohio, it is illegal for police to request a license plate check unless the driver is doing something illegal. New Rome cops sitting in a "speed trap" regularly called in every plate that went by.)
perfect answer.
Uh, you should've just ignored my post - I mean, I make the giant mistake of assuming that because the govt can provide it for a lower price then the insurance companies can means that they can't because they don't. The govt can provide it for a low cost because they're not trying to make a profit, I think, but it's late and I shouldn't post when sleepy.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I got out of a major ticket this way when I was 18. The officer had shoddy handwriting so it looked like his odometer in his log contradicted his car's test reccords (which was important because he said I was caught speeding by pacing, not radar). The judge, knowing odometers don't normally go backwards (and also thinking this guy's 4s were 9s), let me off. Which is good because in many states, one moving violation under the age of 21 and you have no license until you're 21, which basically means you're unemployable.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
look at what happened in illinois a couple years back. when the state did some dna testing on inmates, they found out they had over 100 people on death row who were innocent.
Illinois had a few people on Death Row who was shown to be innocent via DNA testing. (Actually, I think it was just one, but it could have been a coule more.) George Ryan, then governor before being forced out due to corruption, determined that the death penalty system in Illinois was inherently unfair, and commuted the death sentences for EVERYONE on death row to life in prison, which was about 100 people, shortly before his term was over. Almost all of them were guilty (they stayed in prison, just wern't going to be executed anymore), although he did pardon a few as well.
paintball
"I am dismissing your traffic citation. However, I am finding you guilty of unauthorized access of a computer network, and sentenceing you to 5 years in prison. Bailiff!"
paintball
A good friend of my mother had her son die in a car accident. My first thought was, "he probably deserved it." It's disturbing, but true.
Wow, you should run for office or something. Anyway, I don't see these hundereds of infractions that you claim everyday. Also, everyone does signal when changing lanes-- we just signal
The admin of gearlive.com must be wondering if he can use Google Maps to get out of the slashdotting..
Remember, there are no stupid questions. But there are a lot of inquisitive idiots.
I always hear idiots scream that they'd get run over, but for some reason, its only idiots and poor drivers that use the excuse.
I always here idjits scream that and for some reason its only idjits who think they know how to drive better than everyone else.
The fact is, if you are in front, you set the flow. You don't have to keep up with the Joneses on the road to be safe.
Ah, another self-righteous twat who camps in the left lane. You've completely invalidated any claim to superior driving skills right there. See Ya! Wouldn't want to Be Ya, you fucking road hazard.
I'm sorry, but if I were the judge I'd throw out Google Maps as a source of evidence.
My experience of their mapping of London shows that they can't place a postcode in the right spot so I'd not be convinced of their map being up to date. Streetmap is just as bad. Give me a good old A to Z any day.
In my state, Hawaii, the judges threw all those speed-check tickets out of court, and the stupid legislature repealed the law with all the public backlash. A democracy really at work.
...and the Geeks shall in__herit the earth.....
Personally I'm not entirely convinced the government wouldn't be trying to turn a profit. If it were profitable, they could use the excess to fund other things or cut taxes. But that's neither here nor there...
;).
When it comes to free market economies, though, you're dead on. The status quo is often a good indicator of what is most efficient. The presence of government competition brings up the question of how free that market is, which brings up the question of how efficient the current solution is.
Is it a good idea? I don't know... ask a real economist. (Then ask a sociologist for a good laugh.... kidding, only kidding
Rob Miles
That can't be right. Surely if you win the court case, you can recoup the lawyer's / solicitor's fees from the loosing party? Otherwise anyone with lots of money, could take anyone with not much money to court, and the poor person would be forced to accept whatever the rich person said just to reduce the bill.
Or is that just England?
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
Was it HPD or one of the notorious speed trap "postage stamp" municipalities that the State troopers won't even record/honor their tickets? Years ago, one ticket only had the mailing address of a PO Box in the adjacent small town. I called, they were unprofessional and unreasoning scum. I looked up the political boundaries of the "city" and it was essentially 4 miles of I-45 lanes and a PO Box. Total scam, posted a 45 in a 70 mph low density area - should be nailed/removed for obstructing traffic. Even the newspapers said you could often ignore these tickets if they couldn't grab you. I was working out of the country, domiciled with my parents. These two assholes drove 200+ miles to bother my parents for about 1 minute. Tough luck guys. Although my parents were mildly worried and annoyed for me, I would love to know exactly what my father said to them (get off my property, polite discouragement, or just unpleasant?), he was smart (an engineer writing legal contracts on 70s energy) and could be really tough on assholes. Bothered nevermore.
There, or straight from Sci/Tech page from Google news.
I wonder if anyone's gotten out of a ticket by showing how inaccurate most speed-check methods can be.
Many people do. In the Netherlands, the website Flitsservice, besides offering an always up to date database of police radar and laser traps for Tomtom Navigator and giving information to major radio stations, assists with appeals against speeding tickets with standard letters etc. They also try to photograph the setup if you call in to report a speed trap.
They suggest that you have a good chance appealing, certainly against hand laser speeding tickets, by claiming that the equipment was used wrongly, since it can be used only at a precise angle, within 400 meters distance, not through a car window, not in bad weather, only by a certified officer etc. Municipal police officers get it wrong all the time. Highway police are better at it. The web site also explains the procedures to correctly set up a Gatsometer or Multanova radar, but everything in Dutch unfortunately.
For Americans, the Maccarone vs. New Jersey case is relevant. A dirty or damaged license plate will result in an invalid laser measurement. For the British, there is the Speedtrap Bible.
Wow could he have mentioned Google(tm) any more? I'm certain any map program could have performed the same act? Next time, if the submitter would be kind enough to mention that his Honda (tm) was not speeding, but getting a Honda(tm)-like 35 mpg while providing Honda (tm) level of safety and it was excessive force for the officer to Taser(tm) him. Luckily the Taser(tm) did not run out of batteries as Taser(tm) maintains the highest level of quality.
Everyone did notice that his web page was just a schill for Google right?
1. i was doing 42
2. it's a $25 fine with no further penalties vs. $185 and insurance badness.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Best part is that cops in speed traps in Texas make it a point to show up for court, just to deter people from doing it. Any of the small townships inside Houston or Austin are especially bad (Westlake, Lakeway, West University, Bellaire, etc.)
It could be worse though; it could be Louisiana. If you are an out of state motorist who gets a ticket, you get escorted to the nearest courthouse by the officer where you get to enter your plea.
I'm not certain about NY, but in many states you CANNOT have your rates raised for being involved in an accident in which you were not at fault.
If you aren't in a legally-parked vehicle and it is hit, you most certainly can't be charged for the accident.
On the other hand, if you hit somebody else and settle the matter without the use of insurance, and the insurance company finds out, they can raise your rates to the same degree that they could if you had filed.
Insurance companies love the myth that your rates go up when you file claims. They end up collecting premiums but not paying anything out.
Your rates are determined by your accident and ticket history - your claims history is irrelevant. At least, I believe that is the case in most states. I don't know about NY in particular, but certainly in PA you should file claims anytime you are eligible...
I am indeed privileged to have these basic human rights (which, sadly, do not exist in some third world lands)
9 5&spn=29.002532,41.497559&hl=en
like Guantanamo?
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=19.103648,-77.3876
Yes, they are rights. But with those rights come responsibilities. Just like my right to walk around in the sunshine where I want to comes the responsibility that I don't stab someone in the chest every 5 minutes when I want another cheeseburger. If you want to exercise your rights, you have to do it within the confines of the law. That includes speeding. You think the speed limits are set too low in your area? Fine, use the system to get them changed. Same thing I would have to do if I thought the gov't should hand out free cheeseburgers every 5 minutes so I didn't have to stab someone...
That's where the privilege aspect comes in. Your 'rights' are only rights so long as you obey the law. You have no 'unconditional' rights, except maybe thought, and they're working on that.
SUV owners have a great rationale for being able to tailgate: "We can see over you, so it's safe."
I'll smack anyone that says that to my face. What if I blow out a tire (and don't think it doesn't happen; I've seen tires blow with no warning and no debris in the road at fault)? I'll lose some speed suddenly, maybe swerve a bit, even without hitting the brakes, and a minor incident could suddenly become a big one because the tailgater thought he/she was safe because he/she could see over me.
--RJ
Exactly, thats what people dont get. I have a right to freedom, and a right to be alive. But if I decide to kill women with brown hair under 200 pounds exactly 5'8" wearing pink and then rape their lower and upper torso's seperatly. I deserve to be put in prison for the rest of my life, or executed. But its so not fair! Why should I get punished so severly?
What was bogus about the tickets?
I think we have to accept that realistically, police officers are going to check faster, sportier cars more often than small mum-mobiles, simply because there's a particularly strong correlation between people who drive that type of car and people who speed.
Personally, I'm a pretty law-abiding driver. I can't honestly claim I never drift above the limit for a moment, but I'm not the type who goes flying around town well over the limit all the time. I have strong feelings about certain traffic laws and the abuse of speed limits, which I make known to my representatives when the matter arises, but in the meantime I obey the law even if I don't really have much respect for it.
I bought a pretty distinctive, very fast car a year or so back. I've noticed since then that police cars will sometimes follow me along roads that are well known for speeding in my neighbourhood. It doesn't really bother me; since I'm not breaking the limit the police have no reason to pull me over. I'd rather they spent their time going after genuinely dangerous drivers -- drunks, idiots on mobile phones, etc. -- rather than someone driving a car like mine who breaks a needlessly low speed limit but is a threat to no-one, but it's not like my personal freedom is being unduly infringed.
You might try that, instead of the "I'll do whatever I like" attitude. You'll probably find you get fewer tickets, even in a Mustang, and you might just avoid being someone's bitch for a few months on account of upsetting too many LEOs, too.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Are there really states where this is supposed to be a defense? In California they are very specific that the "flow of traffic" is not a legal defense for speeding. I think this is similar in Indiana and Massachusetts and I'd assumed it was the case for other states as well.
So the light turns green. (my light. the turning light. of a 10 lane highway +2 turning lanes)
This just makes me think of highway moderation. e.g., SR-137 (Score: +2, turning lanes)
Finally he was angry enough that he just slammed on his brakes, and of course it was an instant rear-end, the front of the BMW was crushed, and the driver leaped out of his car shouting, etc.. The reply? "I thought I saw an animal." The BMW driver was totally at fault, and his car was toast (whereas my friend could drive away after the cops wrote it up... one bonus of those massive old American cars).
Yeah, someone did that here in Florida a few months ago. The result, the person in back lost control of the vehicle, smashed the car, and died. The person in front ran and is wanted for vehicular manslaughter.
Not a very good idea. You might not be guilty of a traffic violation, but you are guilty of assault with a deadly weapon, and if something really bad happens, you might just find yourself charged with murder.
I don't know about the US legal system, but here in the UK there's usually a scale of possible penalties for common traffic offences. Minor offences like routine speeding usually result in "fixed penalty notices" -- such and such costs you x amount of money and gets you y points, and if you pay up, it never goes to court.
Now, you don't have to accept the fixed penalty, and can challenge the case in court if you wish. However, if you do so, the magistrates have access to the full range of penalties, and a lot of discretion about how to apply them. If there are genuinely mitigating circumstances, and you can offer a reasonable explanation for your actions, then magistrates can often reduce or eliminate a penalty they see to be unfair. (For example, "I was on the way to hospital with a casualty in critical condition in my vehicle, there was no time to wait for an ambulance, and exceeding the speed limit resulted in saving his life without causing unusual danger to others, your honour" with supporting evidence from hospital and ambulance staff would probably go a long way.) However, if they feel that you're taking the piss, they will tend to hand down penalties at the upper end of the scale. That means more fines, more points, accelerated or possibly immediate disqualification, and potentially even jail time, depending on the offence.
It takes something like 4 routine speeding tickets in 3 years to get you a semi-automatic ban in this country; you'd have to demonstrate exceptional hardship of some sort to avoid it at that stage. However, annoy the police and magistrates, and you'll probably find yourself banned after two offences, and imprisoned for driving without a licence the third time they see you. It would take hundreds of people trying to block up the system to really bring it down, but in the meantime, you're still going to jail. Is that a smart plan, really?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
yeah but that's only in beta right now
I got ~ 10 speeding tickets in 6 months. My license was suspended for months. I was pulled over on several occasions with a suspended license.
You must be the worst driver in the world.
I think you are a FUCKING ASSHOLE. It was your fault as you should have be watching where your car was going. The I'm sorry, but I didn't see the car right the fuck in front of me excuss is pathetic. If you had watched what the fuck you where doing YOU wouldn't have hit her.
In the USA, you get as much justice as you can afford. This is why the RIAA has settled most of the suits it's brought against individual file sharers; the defendants can't compete with the RIAA's deep pockets, and the RIAA's lawyers will chew their clothes off if they try.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
I have one simple solution. If I was a state legislator, one of the bills I would sponsor every year would be to eliminate license points for minor violations and go as far as not even record the violations. Since traffic tickets are used to enhance revenue for a given locality/county/state, lets cut through the bullshit and recognize tickets are for revenue, not safety.
By getting rid of the points, you don't have to worry about losing your license for a few violations such as 65 mph in a 55 mph zone and you don't have to worry about your insurance going up since there is no record of the ticket.
On this notion that driving is a privilege, where do we get this ? What I understand is back in the aristocratic days, riding a horse was considered a privilege. That notion of thought carried to automobiles since the original cars were only owned by the wealthy before the Model T. In today's society, driving is a necessity in order to survive unless you live in the few metro areas like NYC. Back in 1990, I lived in the NW Indianapolis area which was served by the Metro Bus line. My office was about 4 miles away and I looked into taking the bus to and from work to save gas and wear/tear on my vehicle. The bus ride would take an hour one way and all lines had to go through the downtown Indy bus station. Since Indy streets are setup as a grid, that logic did not apply to their bus routes. I was also in Toronto for vacation as well back in 1991 and they had good public transportation. I was able to get around pretty easily by bus & train. Their bus lines were setup in a more grid pattern.
And in Florida, when insurance companies tried to stop renewing policies after a particularly bad hurricane season, the legislature stepped in and prevent them from doing so. And as most insurance companies are part of larger corps. the state can prevent ANY company affiliated with the insurance company from doing business in the state. THAT made the insurance companies work with the state to make certain insruance was available at reasonable cost.
That has not been my experience!
I've been pulled over, and the cop came up to the car and said, "You were going way too fast back there! I caught you on radar at 73. The limit is 40 through here!" And he's looking at me, waiting for me to say something stupid.
I just said, "Uh, I really didn't think I was doing 73. Is that what your radar gun says right now?"
The officer said, "No, I got two readings; one at 63, and one at 38 because you hit the brakes when your radar detector went off. (He points to my Escort DSP which is still on, with its lights blinking.)"
I just said, "I didn't think I was doing 63."
The cop, clearly frustrated, says, "I'm going to give you a warning...." He proceeds to write me a special warning ticket and on it, he writes "63/38 RADAR DETECTOR" in the margin below.
Now, you are all welcome to dispute my interpretation of this, but I was there, and I am convinced that had I not asked about the number currently on his radar, that he would have definitely written me a full fledged ticket, which I would have tried to fight, with doubtful success.
Like you, IANAL. If you were going to take the advice of a non-lawyer, which would it be? The guy telling you to use some crack-addled schemes, or the guy telling you to cover your ass and hire a lawyer? You decide.)
The biggest urban legend of all is that lawyers are good for you. Ever dealt with one? Hah! I've dealt with dozens, and only two or three out of that bunch were worth their salt.
Lawyers cost $$$, guaranteed. If you hire a lawyer for anything other than a truly expensive fine, you are guaranteed to lose money even if you manage to beat the charges.
If you'll simply scan the other posts, you'll see first-hand stories where individuals have beaten traffic tickets in court without lawyers. It may be that some slashdot reader truly has nothing to lose by fighting a ticket in court, using one or more of the strategies I mentioned. And for the record, I never told anyone to use them. I simply made suggestions of possible strategies.
You said "hire a lawyer" like someone concerned about covering their @$$ rather than someone wanting to dispense as much potentially useful anecdotal information as possible, like I did.
Give slashdot readers credit for being able to determine what if anything was applicable to them in my grandparent post.
I've been informed on two separate occassions that if I get a third ticket within the three year window that my insurance will be dropped.
Okay, so I go get insurance with another provider?
Well gee, genius, I guess you shouldn't be speeding. Actions have consequences.
You're not entitled to insurance.
You're not entitled to have a license.
Driving is a privilege, based on the assumption that you will drive responsibly. If you drive irresponsibly and get caught, the insurance company has a right to know that you are more of a risk than their responsible clients, and is entitled to charge you more.
If you are a big enough risk, they don't stand to profit. So why should anyone insure you? You shouldn't be on the road!
And for those of you with useless advice like, "don't speed!" or "you do the crime, you do the time!" you can bite my ass. Everyone speeds.
Nope. Not everyone speeds. You are incorrect in this assumption.
Cops routinely do 10-15 over, no lights.
So call them on it, bitching on Slashdot accomplishes nothing.
If I don't speed, I'm going to get run over.
No, you won't.
And if you "go with the flow" then you play the lottery.
What the hell are you talking about? That is the whole point of safe driving, is everyone is supposed to go with the flow and be alert.
Given these two options, game theory says I might as well get where I'm going a bit faster.
I hope you lose your insurance. You are a prime example of the self-centered "me first" mentality that pervades society. You think you're entitled to everything and don't care about other people's well-being.
evil adrian
Auto insurance is legalized robbery. Heh. And what IS insurance? Insurance is the mass-distribution of resources so no one person suffers too greatly, at the cost of paying those who distribute it. You costs don't go up because the insurance company is making more of your money, it goes up because YOU are taking more than you're giving
And over there we have the labyrinth guards. One always lies, one always tells the truth, and one stabs people who ask t
I tried this on a judge in a small town about a cop that had paced me and showed what a short distance he would have had to pace me over. I also used a weather site to show how foggy the weather had been that night. Even the officer admitted he had likely errored. However, the judge still pronounced me guilty. I hadn't been speeding, either. I assume it was because the town's primary income was fines and such.
"I wonder if anyone's gotten out of a ticket by showing how inaccurate most speed-check methods can be." Probably. If this were the case, then lawyers would be able to use such cases as a standard for their own clients, but then the enforcement agency would stop using it. However, my father proved in court that the police officer who sited him for speeding could not have possibly got a read on him from where they were relative to eachother and the road. And he got off the ticket. That was probably ten years ago though, and lets say he hasn't been so lucky lately. I would suggest, though, always get a lawyer.
This sig is o Unfunny o Funny
Usually the person behind you gets the message if you start tapping your brakes. That gives them fair warning that you're about to snap and screw them up.
Of course, you could just start throwing things out the window. The airstream usually ensures that whatever you throw out your window gets sucked back behind your car, to hit the car behind you smack in the windscreen.
Man, I lived in LA too long.
The ______ Agenda
Correction: Both 73 and 63 appear in my above post (parent to this post). The correct number is 63. Sorry for not proofing.
Okaaaay. So that's number two on the "things Brits find completely incomprehensible about Americans" (Number one is executions. Utterly alien concept to my generation, I'm afraid.)
Although I do admit that our use of the words "barrister" and "solicitor" are far inferior to your much more understandable "lawyer".
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
EXTRA $1500??? wtf do u drive?
My lille 1.2 litre engined Fiat Punto costs me about 250 pounds a year ($400 ish) I do have 4 years no claims discount, without any discount it would probably be $700 tops OK it's a small car but you must be driving a very fancy pants car for an additional $1500 - either that or car insurance in NY is very very expensive (another reason not to live there)
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
Yeah, I'm not really seeing your point. To believe that insurance COULD be done cheaper means you would need to believe either A or B.... and?
I guess I'm still waiting for the part of the argument that demonstrates why A and B are unreasonable things to believe.
so please pardon the AC post.
I used physics, expert witness and my own experise to win a dismissal of my speeding charge.
In essense, I was accused of going 17 miles over the speed limit; however, the ticketing officer selected my vehicle from the midst of approximatly 12 other vehicles moving at disperate speeds within 1-2 meters of one another at a range of at least 100 meters.
To further complicate what is an already difficult scenario of events, the officer was physically moving himself, the intercept took place in opposing tangential turns (our northbound road was bending away to the east, his south bound lane was bending away west), and lastly, there was significant ground clutter between his emittor and our returns.
I brought with me a collegue who is an accepted expert in the field (as am I, but this offered an additional resource), and from the stand (actually, we just stood together in front of the bench as a group - this was Boston's traffic court), we calmly and almost academically explained the theory and operation of radar, radar returns and signal analysis with 3 posterboard charts.
We then launched into a derivation of what sort of equipment, power, rating and emission would be necessary to discriminate and process 5 3m x 2m x 2m contacts at similar range, speed and bearing - from there, we closed with a simple statement of fact by reading the manufactuer's FCC product specifications for the radar in use by the ticketing officer. Note, there's a significant difference between the FCC physical specs provided, and the manufactuer's claimed product performance caps and lims.
The judge was quite impressed by this 15 minute song and dance, to which the ticketing officer had no response as I'd exercised my right to remain silent during the ticketing process, leaving him no evidence such as "the defendant stated he was 'late for work,'" or "the defendant appeared harried and upset during questioning."
The two take aways from the day: (1) *don't* give the ticketing officer any reason to believe you were rushed, distracted or otherwise unable to maintain control of your vehicle at an acceptable and safe rate of speed with due regard for others and (2) the conventional use by local enforcement of radar as definative evidence in speeding is a myth waiting to be busted - even capable equipment requires training, perodic (re)calibration and non trivial preventative maintenance to be viable.
You can drive at 14???? where is that?
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
Not a very good idea. You might not be guilty of a traffic violation, but you are guilty of assault with a deadly weapon, and if something really bad happens, you might just find yourself charged with murder.
Assault with a deadly weapon for stopping your car and being plowed into from behind? Hmmm. Who said there is no justice?
Having written a good sized piece of an auto insurance rating engine and poked around in the guts of one provided by another company, I can say that the parent is probably right (in general). I have never seen any signs of claim information being used to adjust rates. However, each company calculates things its own way (they are almost fanatical about that) and are highly protective of information about how their calculations are done, so there might well be some companies out there who have snuck this into the algorithm. I'd doubt it is widespread, but it could be happening in places.
However, I do contest the parents assertion that you should always file a claim. It probably won't raise your rates, but it may get you dropped by that insurer. They definitely do track whether you are a 'good'/'bad' customer based on how many claims they have to pay out (I've written code that relates to this), and not permitting customers to renew is the standard approach to dealing with bad risks. Think of it from this standpoint, they care about you as a risk to them for having to pay out a claim. From their standpoint they don't care so much about your driving record as they do about what you cost them. Sometimes these things correlate, sometimes they do not. You can have a driver with a pretty clean record who is 'claim happy' and files them left and right. You can also have a driver with a lousy record, who is afraid to make a claim, and costs them nothing. They still might get a little nervous over the latter, but the greater sinner in their eyes is still the former.
Further, I can tell you that if you have home and auto with the same insurer, filing a bunch of claims for one type, can put you at risk of getting your renewal refused for both. Again, you have pegged yourself as a bad financial risk to them because it actually seems to occurr to you to *use* your insurance instead of simply paying the premiums each month as if they were a tax.
Also, I have heard (but unlike the prior points this is only hearsay) that some companies are also tracking your benefit inquiries (i.e. when you call/mail in and ask them if you are covered for something) and that this also adds up against continuing to carry you. Again, it is a flag that you view insurance as something to be used rather than just paid for.
As with rating, claims processing and policy administration are pretty custom from company to company, so to what extent this stuff is happening in any given company really depends on how recently they updated their IT infrastructure. Some companies are really modern, others are varying shades of stone age. One thing is certain though, this and even scarier stuff will become more and more prevalent. Getting true value from insurance industry is like trying to beat the house in vegas. The big winners are the few really lucky ones, and even this is only permitted because it serves as advertisement.
A coworker had his car serviced so he was dropped off at the service station by his wife in her car. He pays for the service receives a receipt with a date/time stamp and drives his car home, following his wife. The road was an average two lane road with stop lights and stop signs and heavy traffic. A police officer on the side of the road pulled him over and said he was doing 60 miles an hour in a 25 mile an hour zone. He accepted the ticket and signed it. Knowing it was not possible for him to have been doing that speed he returned to the site the next day with his GPS unit and laptop in the car along with his wife driving. They drove the route 5 times and mapped the distance by using the GPS and mileage odometer on the car. They were careful to do it at the same time during the day (rush hour) so the traffic conditions would be at least similar and the timing on the lights would be similar.
When his case came up, he was denied a deferral and a court date was set. He took all of the evidence and put it together and made sure his math calculations were correct and that the flow was as clear and logical as it could be. It was not possible for him to have traveled that distance at that speed. Another driver had passed him at about the same time the officer was clocking him. The gun must have picked up that car or one traveling the other direction.
His case was called and he got up and argued his case after the officers testimony. The officer stuttered in response and Less then 2 minutes later, the judge declared him not responsible and dismissed the city's case against him. He stood there for a few seconds stunned. The bailiff directed him to the back of the court room and explained he was good to go, no need to see the clerk or sign anything, etc.
This is rare. However, you stand a very good chance in busy districts fighting a ticket. Most people don't bother and just pay the fine and the system depends on this. The more people who show up to contest a ticket will strain the system and they will be forced to dismiss cases before they come to court. There is only so much staff and only so much time. The costs involved in running the court and paying the staff is higher then the court fees. Whatever you do, DO NOT plead not guilty on a ticket and then not show up for court, your license will get suspended and if you get pulled over again you will be arrested. They might not even notify you that your license is suspended depending on where you live. If you are positive you can defend yourself, then give it a try, worst case scenario you will end up paying the fine plus court and clerk fees but it's still cheaper then what your insurance company will do to you. If you are guilty you may luck out and get a deferral or you may get to court and they are so busy that the judge will tell you to plead guilty and they will seal your record if you pay the fines. That will keep your insurance company from finding out about your ticket.
If you just pay a ticket, you are guilty and your insurance will increase. If you don't pay the ticket and plead not guilty you have a chance at getting it dismissed either due to heavy workload at the courts or due to your innocence and your presentation skills. You generally have little to lose once you've been ticketed for speeding. You will pay one way or the other, the difference being the amount you will pay and a loss of time out of work.
Hi! That sounds just like Russia. You pay the officer a small "fee" to forget about the ticket. The fee might be of the same size as the ticket, but wont be recorded anywhere.
I had no idea Texas had that kind of corruption!
You're only up to two?
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Insurance companies are out to maximize profit and get whomever they can.
Consider my situation.
A few months ago I moved from Ohio to Kentucky. I moved exactly 12 miles from where I lived before. I drive the same car that I drove before with the same driving history. I live in the same type of area as I lived before (in fact, both places are run by the same management company). I am the same person.
My insurance went up 63%, and my coverage limits were cut in half.
All for moving 12 miles across a river.
SYS 64738
Or, you know, you could stop speeding or accept responsability when you do speed and are caught. But your way might work too.
Alaska
Arkansas
Iowa
Kansas
Montana
North Dakota
South Dakota
In many rurual states, kids have a need to drive at a younger age due to the lack of mass transit (or just to work on the farm).
I reject the notion that "using" insurance equates to filing claims. I happily pay my insurance premiums for home and auto and I hope to never have to file a claim. But I do consider myself to be "using" my insurance to help me get a good night's sleep each night and not worry that a catastrophic loss will ruin me financially.
It's false to presume that an insured did not receiving a benefit from their policy simply because they didn't have to file a claim. Being covered, even if it's not utilized, is a benefit.
My lille 1.2 litre engined Fiat Punto costs me about 250 pounds a year ($400 ish) I do have 4 years no claims discount, without any discount it would probably be $700 tops OK it's a small car but you must be driving a very fancy pants car for an additional $1500 - either that or car insurance in NY is very very expensive (another reason not to live there)
Compare that to $850 US per year, for an 8-year old Chevy, driver has no tickets or accidents in 30+ years, no city driving.
That's the result of having state-mandated insurance. The companies can charge whatever they
want, since you'll be locked up if you don't pay
their 'protection' money.
The insurance industry claimed that mandatory
insurance would lower rates (since every driver
would be covered, they wouldn't need to pay
for damage caused by 'uninsured motorists').
Of course, the rates are now double what they
were before the law. And if you file a claim -
of any kind, including damage from a tree falling
onto your *parked* car - your rates will double or
triple. Can you say 'high risk'?
The Mafia could learn something from these insurance companies.
Way to miss the joke, William Buckley.
http://ehowa.com/mythoughts/nospeeding.shtml
Well written, logical, covers the bases from avoiding getting stopped, how to handle being stopped, all the way through traffic court. Also, at the end, he links to actual cops responses to it and success stories of people who have applied the suggestions.
This sounds more like you, (and your case) were used to take care of some soap opra business going on amongst the employees of the court. Maybe the traffic court justice is/was a douchebag and the court clerk was on notice to kick 'problems' on up the chain of command so they could document enough case evidence to get rid of the guy. Who knows. In any case, it certainly isn't the norm.
You lucked out...I hope you played the loto that day.
As I understood the original post, the guy ran after doing this. The correct action would be to stop (you were after all in an accident), and call the police. Rear end is not your fault (particularly because you can say you thought you say an animal, which would be reason to slam on the breaks), but running from an accident is, and by not stopping to check on the other driver (and then calling for help when you realized there was trouble) he delayed the EMTs from getting there in time to save the other driver's life.
The bill that created federal funding for roadways says that all citizens have a right to access roadways for personal or commercial use, including vehicles. Driving is not a "privilege", unless you look at it from the "only financially secure individuals can afford to drive" perspective. Legally, you have a right to be on the road.
That right has been limited through licensure for the general safety of the populace. We have the right to drive, but we have the responsibility to meet licensing requirements or that right is revoked or restrained.
a traffic ticket is not a crime, it is a code violation
Traffic tickets are crimes, but they are typically 'summary offences' (more minor than a misdemeanor). A summary offence is anything you get a citation for; the difference between a summary offence and other crimes is in the prosecution of the crime. If you pay the fine, you automatically plead guilty. Also, you don't have a right to jury trial for summary offences except in particular circumstances. You can still plead "not guilty" and pursue the matter all the way to a trial by judge; the burden of proof remains on the State, as it does in all criminal cases.
The practical difference is that most people are not willing to pursue a traffic ticket to such extents, because the costs in time, effort, and legal research and/or representation are more than the costs of the ticket. However, if you do pursue it, the State needs to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you were speeding -- your job as the defense is to poke holes in the theories the State presents to demonstrate that doubt. For example, the State says "we know you were speeding because we have RADAR equipment that measures speed". That, unchallenged, would probably be enough to convict you. You, however, could say "do you have proof that the equipment was properly calibrated? This Exhibit is a study that RADAR is inaccurate, and the inaccuracy is so great I could have been going below the limit. There were 3 lanes full of other cars moving at various rates of speed; how do you know the RADAR registered my vehicle?" Things like this may demonstrate that the State can't prove the case against you.
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
> Yeah don't his family have to eat?
An agent of the state that would lie to a court should be behind bars. Families of rapist, killers, and savings & loan managers have families that need to eat too, but it does not really bother me if the reason they are hungry is because a parent is in prison for a crime.
I consider perjury by a police officer to be among the very worst possible crimes, because it undermines the entire system of law. Purposely weakening the system of law violates the social contract that, among other things, puts killers and rapists and bank managers in prison or on death row. A regular guy commits perjury, that's bad, but I don't think of it as a breakdown of the whole system. But when a lawyer or a police officer or a governing politician commits perjury, that's where the whole system ceases to have merit.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
The guy simply proved reasonable doubt. Which is all you need in a court. There is no where in an american court where you are required to prove your innocents. All you have to do is prove reasonable doubt.
Oh, yes. Agreed. I posted in response to him expanding upon his example and *concluding* that the parent to his post had committed assault with a dangerous weapon when the situations were very different.
I think perhaps the problem is that in some states (maybe the ones with "No Fault" laws), you can never be "totally not at fault".
I'm not sure about the exact numbers, but I believe it's something like:
* __any__ accident in a parking lot - 50/50 blame
* the other guy is completely at fault - 90/10 blame
So you can never file a claim and get off without any blame (and blame == raised premiums). Maybe a broken windshield or something would not be in this category.
For more anecdotal evidence, my brother was hit by a bread truck, and his rates went up about $1000/year.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
Umph. Yup. That's why the police use the VASCAR computer instead of their heads to perform the calculation.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
ok - but (albeit rare for a guy that posted on slashdot) i bet you're girlfriend has a particular quality that illustrates other flaws in our judicial system and society in general:
she's hot isn't she?
Being a good driver is not passing ever schmuck doing the limit. Being a good driver is not pulling out into oncoming traffic to pass some guy going 5 below, forcing some oncoming guy to slow down so you can pass, narrowly missing them as you pull in around the guy who used to be in front of you, then thinking you judged that perfectly. Being a good driver is not getting from A to B in the shortest amount of time. Being a good driver is not being able to talk on your cell phone while cramming a breakfast burrito down your throat, with a hot coffee between your legs, using a knee to steer, not realizing your swerving into and out of your lane into the other lane and the shoulder.
Being a good driver is getting from Point A to Point B consistantly and safely (safely means not just you, but other drivers), being aware of your car/bike/boat/truck/tricycle at all times, understanding you're driving 2000 lbs of possible death, and so is everyone else, and not doing stupid things that cause other drivers to have to avoid you. Sometimes this means going over the limit, sometimes under, and sometimes right at the limit. Sometimes it means swerving out of the way of an obstical, be it an animal, a rock, or another driver, but knowing when you swerve you are not going to be taking out the guy next to you, or a guy coming into on coming traffic. Being aware of your surroundings and in control of your ride is the most important part of being a good driver, and if some other driver camping in the left lane doing the limit or even a little below is how one accomplishes that, it's your job to respect that, and safely navigate with/around/past said other driver. Most people do not notice they are a bad driver. You may very well be one of them.
For a good time call www.sawkie.com
Then, you show up to court and hope the cop does not show up. He is much less likely to drag his ass into court for just one ticket.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Around here (BC, Canada) we have a right to due process. This partly depends on the charge(s) laid, and the "reasonable" time for them to see a judge.
If you dispute a ticket and don't get a court date within a reasonable amount of time, you can (at least two weeks before the actual dispute trial) alter your dispute to includes the grounds that your right to due process has been violated. Basically, you shouldn't have to wait forever to get your day in court, if you do you can have charges dropped because your right to due-process is violated - even though the charges in the ticket might be valid.
I see some posts talk about rights and what not. Here's one, how about a right of not having to worry about dying or crashing on the roadway from some jackass who rather look cool and drive like an maniac than obey the rules of the road?
Yea there will always be risks in driving but it doesnt help when you have people more worry about talking on the cell phones, putting on makeup, reading that map or studying at that very last minute for that exam(yes i've seen this before). Not to mention those speed demons who have no regards for any life or those who know full well the dangers of drunk driving but do it anyways. And my personal favorite the 90 year old lady who cant see 2 inches in front of her face nor can barely move but yet she'll still get in that car and do 40 on the interstate.
This aint grand theft auto when you can pop back to life or get out of jail 3 seconds later. This is real life and any situatioin where one can take another's life NEEDS TO BE taking seriously.
On that note the current system is a joke. Most of people that I seen get pulled over are for hov violations. I don't know what the answer is but since 1 out of 4 us will be involved in at least one crash in our life, its not something that should be ignored or considered a basic right either.
What do you mean, that's what people don't get?
I said about 8 times "as long as what you're doing isn't illegal."
If you're so far gone that you think people as a general rule don't understand you can't kill people for the fuck of it, you're the one that needs to be locked up; in the mental hospital.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
She was beautiful. I loved her. I told her so. She told me to take a hike. And that's that :-(
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it is possible to at least get overly aggressive drivers ticketed when there are not cops around. The Highway Patrol here started a program where, if you see someone doing stupid shit (i.e. weaving back and forth in traffic, speeding through a school zone, passing school busses that are stopped, etc)
you can call it in to the HP, and if you agree to testify in court against the driver, they will issue a summons to that person even if no officer is around to witness/pull him/her over.
Obviously, it doenst do a thing for speeders, but the next time that stupid woman on the cell phone slides into my lane on top of me without even noticing that I am there (and I drive an ex-cop car, so its really hard to NOT notice me), I have at least some real recourse that wont land me in jail instead...
"Our funds have never taken part in toxic or death spiral convertible financings of any sort" -BayStar's managing partne
Yeah, well, is it still legalized robbery when they pay to have your car replaced and your medical bills paid because of an accident?
The way that insurance works is that they'll increase your rates so that in 5-10 years you will have paid for your new car and medical bills from the money they made from hiking your rates. The only situation I can see insurance being useful in is when something really catastrophic happens - like bills costing over $250k. But for smaller things, people would collectively be better off without insurance and just paying out of pocket if/when shit happens.
Not a very good idea. You might not be guilty of a traffic violation, but you are guilty of assault with a deadly weapon, and if something really bad happens, you might just find yourself charged with murder.
That seems unlikely assuming you *don't* run, and stick to your story... but of course causing an accident is a very risky thing.
Seriously, the *safest* thing to do when you're being tailgated is to let them by you -- get into the other lane if there is one, or even pull off into a side road. Every second they're tailing you you're at much higher risk of an accident, so letting them by is almost always the quickest way out of danger. Doing anything to force them to back off is actually *more* dangerous than just letting them tailgate you, because once they're pissed off they're far more likely to do something stupid that could kill you both -- like passing illegally (even on the shoulder) at extreme high velocity, and probably cutting you off in the process.
I admit I'll occasionally play little games with drivers who piss me off (nothing obviously malicious... I just happen to be driving sedately in the most inconvenient spot for that guy trying to dodge and weave through). But if there's anyone in the car with me, I just let them go by -- it's not worth it. "Sorry, honey -- I know it'll take years of surgery to reconstruct your face, but my pride is intact!"
you'd have to be stupid to say that to a cop. You'd have to be stupid to call your girlfriend stupid. Chances are, she won't be as understanding as the judge.
Regarding presumption of guilt, try looking at DUI laws some time. For instance, if you are accused of DUI, you have the right not to submit to a brethalyzer. If you exercise this right, you are automatically guilty. There is no defense at that point. You can't even change your mind once they tell you you're now automatically guilty. You can thank MADD for that miscarriage of justice.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
In many cases, laws are inconvenient for most, ignored by many, and selectively enforced against the few.
Selective enforcement is something to get all righteous about.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
You must be the worst driver in the world.
If that's true, then what does that say about the police officers who failed to pull me over for years and years when I was driving an old Chevy truck?
How about $1250 every 6 months additional for a *secondary* driver on an 8 year-old Toyota Camry. That's what my parents got dinged with when I got my license. That's South-Eastern PA, and it's mostly a rate penalty to take
Moved out to south western Ohio, turned 25, and got married, and was paying $1200 for a then 6 year-old Honda Accord, *AND* a brand-new Toyota Corrolla between my wife and myself. (And she was complaining about how much we had to pay because I'd had an accident and a couple speeding tickets!)
Well didn't wanna be childish and say i'll be 20 in 2 weeks.. but yeah... got my permit at 15, no accidents until i was 17, and none were ever my fault, as i said.. not quiet 5 years, but close enough for rounding...
And I'm not blindly repeating urban legends, I have used this in the past the couple times I've been pulled over.
Also, one thing that I've found scores lots of brownie points is to shut your car off if you get pulled. The officer is far less likely to think you're a threat to run if your car is off (and plus then you're not idling for 3-15 minutes on the side of the road).
antipaucity
You own a dry cleaning business, you follow all the rules, laws, etc. A female employee gets pregnant. She can't work around the toxic cleaning solutions. Fine. OSHA comes in and orders the business closed until changes are made, fines them, and orders them to pay temporary lost wages.
If you were following all the "rules, laws etc" they wouldn't have made you close your business because you were, well, following all the "rules, laws etc".
The site is back up, and being migrated to stronger servers :)
I've been pulled over twice, once was for "Lane change violations" (the cop suspected I was DUI; he even made me do a field sobriety test) and the other was for expired plates and "rude gestures made at pedestrians (by passengers)"; I also didn't have updated insurance information the second time as well.
Anywho, both times I shut off my car and did exactly what the officer said and only got one warning (the first time).
A sidenote: I only had a restricted license the first time I was pulled over, at 3:30am; driving after 8:00pm is illegal with just a restricted license, but the officer wrote my birthdate down as earlier that year (restricted license automatically becomes a full license at 17.)
Help a poor college student. Send a couple cents via paypal to chucks86@gmail.com
Rear end is not your fault (particularly because you can say you thought you say an animal, which would be reason to slam on the breaks)
Lying about what happened doesn't change who is actually at fault. It just might change whether or not you are found guilty of the crime.
Slamming on your brakes with the intention of having someone run into you means it's absolutely your fault if the person then actually runs into you. There may be civil laws which say that compensation should be distributed otherwise, but that doesn't change the reality of the situation.
...if something really bad happens, you might just find yourself charged with murder.
That seems unlikely assuming you *don't* run, and stick to your story... but of course causing an accident is a very risky thing.
Depends on how good your story is, whether or not it fits the physical evidence, whether or not there were witnesses who saw otherwise, etc.
Besides, even if you did manage to get away with murder, you'll probably still feel pretty damn guilty. Yeah, you shouldn't have been tailgated, but recklessly assaulting someone just because you're being tailgated is not the proper response.
Max Penalty for DUI (1st offense): $2500, 1 year in jail, and loss of driver's license for 1 year.
Max Penalty for Refusal (1st offense): 1 year in jail, loss of driver's license for 3 years.
So as a practical matter (i.e. what is going to happen to you), refusal to take a breath test is more or less equivalent to a DUI conviction. My guess is that this is not accidental.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Depends on where you are, but in most Metro and surrounding areas anything on two wheels is considered a menace to the "cagers." I'm in the LA area and what really annoys them is the fact that we can split lanes so while they're stuck in traffic we're merrily proceeding on our commute. The whole attitude in California generally leads to everything being the fault of the rider regardless of how stupid the other party is. Apparently "I didn't see him" is a good excuse to nearly run someone over. But that's about the worst of it, there are some really fun roads to ride here; espexially if you're into sportbikes.
If you're in Southern Cali: http://www.socalsportbikes.com/
If you're in the Bay Area:
http://www.bayarearidersforum.com/
Depending on why you're choosing to ride, lots of people are more than happy to help you get started in the right direction. If you join the socal board, post up an into thread and I'll help you out.
I would like to confirm if this guy have GreaseMonkey or any proxy installed.
Or hacking the browser himself would be safer.
In PA the rule is typically that an accident is either charable or it isn't. An accident is not charagable if any of a number of conditions are met, some of which are:
1. You weren't in the car and it was parked legally.
2. The other driver was DUI.
3. You were found by a police officer to be no more than 49% at fault.
4. Your car has damage only to the rear portion of the vehicle, and the other car has damage primarily to the front portion of the vehicle. (Note they worded it this way to lower insurance company wiggle-room - this is pretty objective.)
There are a bunch of others as well. A factor that works against most of these is if you were given a ticket as a result of the accident. I forget the exact rules.
Note that people have accidents as far as insurance is concerned, not cars. So, if you loan your car to a friend who doesn't live with you, and they total it, that doesn't count against you at all, although your friend may be toast with their insurance on their unscratched car.
This is all quite sensible - it is logical that accident-prone individuals pay higher rates. However, if you are merely unlucky that shouldn't count against you.
I think in regards to the govt trying to turn a profit, there's much less incentive for the head of say, NASA, to be efficient, than the head of Boeing.
And yeah, re: efficiency, for something like health care, I went to the hospital to get some stitches out, they had to put my personal information on about 20 forms, and took my vital for shits and giggles. I can't believe all of that is necessary, but maybe that's what it takes for bureaucracies to get things done, as well as cover their asses.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
...and you're likely to be met with the cop outside the building with their trusty MAG light flashlight saying something along the lines of "hey pal, i gots yer google map right here"
:-D
Sorry if this is redundant. I didn't have time to read all 700+ comments (and I was getting pretty irked by #100).
.
Classic liberal vs. conservative [and don't get me started on 'libertarians' -- they're just liberals without the rocks to admit it] argument.
As it shall soon be needless to say, I tend to lean on the conservative side of the fence. And now on to my point.
There are two words that start with "R" that apply to being a citizen of the United States of America. The first is one that everyone loves to hear and toss around. It is rights. Everyone has their rights! You can't take away my right to do this! Semantic arguments of rights vs. privileges (N.B.: that is the correct spelling of privilege. Learn to spell before you learn to argue, please) aside. Classic liberal argument, "ooooh, don't step on my rights as a human [expletive] being!"
The other "R" word, that liberals seem to hate, is responsibilities. To enjoy one's rights as a US Citizen, there are certain responsibilities which one must uphold. If one fails to uphold one's responsibilities in regards to a right, it should be viewed as a voluntary waiving of said right. As it pertains to operating a motor vehicle:
As an American citizen having satisfied the established requirements of license, I am granted the [right | privilege] of operating a motor vehicle. In exchange for the [right | privilege], I am given the responsibility of operating that motor vehicle in a safe manner, in accordance with the rules and regulations ["laws"] set forth by the governing body (the state in which I operate said motor vehicle). This means, in addition to not running people over, obeying, among other things, posted speed limits. If I repeatedly fail to uphold that responsibility, I waive my [right | privilege] to operate the motor vehicle.
A foreign immigrant taxi driver said it best:
Americans are always so quick to remember their rights. So few of them remember their responsibilities
http://undecidedgames.blogspot.com
I hope you lose your insurance. You are a prime example of the self-centered "me first" mentality that pervades society. You think you're entitled to everything and don't care about other people's well-being.
I hope a thousand sea-gulls crap on your car.
You are a prime example of the self-centered ignorant know-it-all that think's he's entitled to dictate how other people live without regard to their actual safety and well-being.
1) The safest motorists are those traveling faster than the average rate of traffic.
2) Only 1.5-2.2% of accidents are caused by speeding.
No, no matter what I do, the person following me must be driving in such a way that they do not rear end me. I might slam on my breaks for no reason, which would be stupid. However I might also slam on my breaks because a deer jumped out in front of me. (this is a common problem where I live) I have seen axle bearings fail suddenly, and the wheels just stop turning, which has the same effect as slamming on the breaks, but the lights don't come on. (though more common is the wheel falls off) Not to mention blowouts, or just plane hitting the wrong pedal (I went for the clutch to shift, forgetting it is an automatic with an oversized break)
No matter how stupid I am, if you rear end me it is 100% your fault.
Indeed in some states, the police are permitted by law to physically restrain you and obtain a blood sample by force to be used as evidence against you. In other states (such as VA), we have "implied consent" laws where the police are not permitted to collect a blood sample through the use of force; rather, they make it a crime to refuse to provide evidence of your BAC and that crime carries a similar punishment to a DUI.
As a practical matter, after you layer on technicality after technicality, we are left with a system that presumes your guilt and it is left up to you to prove your innocence. In most jurisdictions, a police accusation is sufficient evidence to convict, anyhow. The brethalyzer just lends some credibility to the situation.
Actually, for some interesting reading, you should google for just how wildly inaccurate brethalyzer machines are when used outside of a laboratory environment on people who are not of average size and build. It's amazing we let breath tests administered on the side of some highway on people of all sizes pass as evidence of BAC.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
When there's an argument about whether a street is one-way or two-ways, if you're right, there is absolutely nothing to fear. Any judge would not just believe the officer - he/she has to verify the information is accurate, because it is verifiable information.
A different story is when you say " the light was green" and the officer says "it was red". There is no way to go back in time to see who's right, so the judge will go with whatever the officer says, but that's not the case with a street - the street was/is/will be there and the judge has the obbligation to verify whether the street is indeed onw-way or two-ways.
Also, I find it hard to believe a judge will trust information from an unverifiable source like something you bring up in your computer. And the fact that you pulled out your laptop as if you knew you were going to get a wifi connection out of the blue...
It's a sweet story, I just don't think it happened. Hey maybe it did, I'd just have to see it to believe it, that's all.
No, no matter what I do, the person following me must be driving in such a way that they do not rear end me.
It seems to me you're arguing that two wrongs make a right. The person following you might very well be breaking the law, but that doesn't give you the right to assault and/or kill him.
No matter how stupid I am, if you rear end me it is 100% your fault.
I can think of a lot of situations where that isn't true (what if the person blew a stop sign and pulled out in front of you while you were going 50 mph?). But that's really irrelevant. If two people both engage in negligent behavior which causes an accident, then both people are at fault. If you want to say that both are 100% at fault, fine.
Anyway, as I've said, in another way, one person's negligence doesn't excuse another person's recklessness.
In the end, the judge decided to let her off with a warning because she made him laugh.
Behold the inspiring display of fairness and underlying principles of how the great American justice system works!
* spits *
in American usage at least, "fine"(verb) can refer to the imposition of payment as well the actual payment. The man got "fined," but did not have to pay the "fine"(noun)" I've watched Red Dwarf smeghead, I wanted to know if You are British, not the definition!