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Chicago Court Throwing Out LIDAR Speeding Tickets
bridgeco writes "Chicago Traffic Court Judges have been throwing out speeding cases in which the driver's speed was measured with a LIDAR. Judges are asking for a special 'Frye Hearing' to determine the accuracy of these devices. Many motorists nabbed for speeding by a laser gun, instead of radar, are seeing their tickets thrown out at Chicago's traffic court because of a legal issue that the city's law department has been unable to overcome. Within the past year judges in Cook County Traffic Court in Chicago determined that speeds captured by lidar were not admissible because the devices had not been proven scientifically reliable in an Illinois court, said Jennifer Hoyle, spokeswoman for the law department, which prosecutes most speeding tickets in the city." (Here's some background on LIDAR from Wikipedia.)
Another problem with using frickin' lasers is that you have to trust the sharks to use them correctly.
With a name like LIDAR, who would doubt the radar's claimed speed?
I'm sorry we had to meet under these circumstances, but allow me to introduce myself. I'm Colonel Tribune, the Web ambassador for chicagotribune.com.
Looks like the Tribune Co. is really embracing the interweb...
Meantime, I hope I run into you surfing the Web. You can find me on Twitter and Facebook.
...I wonder if Colonel Tribune prefers Farmville or Mafia Wars?
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
If you'd hired sharks, they would be used properly. They obviously hired mutated sea bass here.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Florida is one of 50 states yet hands out 15% of all traffic tickets.
The residents of Wyoming are going to be pissed if, according to your math, they're going to have to give a dozen speeding tickets to each citizen to bring them up to 2%. Kind of unfair, given they only have 0.17% of the US population.
I'm glad somebody is standing up to this junk science. Remember, the so-called "Doppler effect" is nothing more than a theory. There are still many unanswered questions to resolve before it's conclusively proven that we can measure velocity of solid objects with nothing more than ethereal laser beams. Correlation is not causation. These self-appointed "physicists" can't even get their act together on whether laser beams are waves or particles, for crying out loud! How can they get away with fining people if they don't even know what they're emitting?
I have the solution!
It was Colonel Tribune, with the forward-slash, on the URL.
I find this project very cool, are there any apps available that allow one to enter a speed limit as they see signs, and couple this with your GPS coordinates? I saw an android app here:
http://handheld.softpedia.com/get/Travel/Wikispeedia-82116.shtml
But I haven't rooted my G1 yet, so I can't install apps not on the market (which it isnt). If this isn't what that particular app does, it would be nice to write one.
...when seconds count, the cops are only minutes away.