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.)

Comments

other problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Another problem with using frickin' lasers is that you have to trust the sharks to use them correctly.

Re:Just gone one in FL

[blueg3]

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.

Dead link - here's a CLUE

[nsayer]

I have the solution!

It was Colonel Tribune, with the forward-slash, on the URL.