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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.
http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009910220360
mu
The link doesn't work. On the other hand, there's a very nice 404 page. It's funny, friendly, and attempts to be informative.
Good error handling is something many of us don't always do well.
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by mere idiocy.
[$group] failed to go through [$procedure] to have [$new_technology] legally recognized by [$other_group]. As a result all results recorded by [$group] using [$new_technology] are considered legally suspect by [$other_group].
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Even more than that....NEVER underestimate the greed of the police force to reinstate their favorite method of revenue generation. That's really all this radar/lidar/stop light camera stuff is all about.
If you were to take all the money generated, and not give it to the cops, but, say, pool it and refund it all the citizens that didn't get a ticket...I'm sure you'd see the enthusiasm by the cops for doing this subside drastically.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Actually, it is not. LIDAR measures distance, not speed as RADAR does. If you point a LIDAR at a multifactaed object (like say a staionary car) and the operator moves enough to bounce the lazer from the grill to the windshield. A LIDAR will have seen the car 'move' because the distance the lazer went changed. This will not happen with a RADAR because there will be no change in red shift. LIDAR's should not be used in law enforcement.
I had always been shocked by the tails of being pulled over for speeding that I hear elsewhere. Compared to what the law says, not only am I a habitual speeder, the general flow of traffic is habitually above the speed limit here. Often by 5-10 in the city and 15 on the highway.
Despite that, and that I often drive faster than "average", I have been pulled over all of 3 times for speeding in nearly 11 years of driving, and never for less than 20 mph over the limit. Still, never gotten an actual speeding ticket.
It always boggled me until I heard that my state (MA) does exactly this. The mandate of the police is to keep the traffic moving and safe. NOT to arbitrarily enforce the law for any reason at all times. Since they don't get the ticket money, there is no reason to exceede that mandate.
Of course, I wonder if its changed. I have noticed that ever since the economy started to nose dive, there have been more and more police, and more and more they are pulling people over, rather than napping by the side of the road. Also, I am not the only one to notice, several other drivers have made the same comment.
My guess is that they feel the need to suddenly justify their usefulness to fend off budget cuts. Which probably means, that they SHOULD be some of the first ones on the chopping block. If they need to suddenly start enforcing pointless laws to justify their budgets well... can we really call that an improvement? I am in favor of laying off useless state employees if the alternative is to just make them do more pointless work.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
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.
What is the benefit of LIDAR? Is it more accurate, or just easier to 'aim'?
Both actually. RADAR emits a conical wave of energy that literally splatters multiple lanes. The return signal processor can get Doppler signal back from many vehicles, and reports the strongest signal (or fastest in models that support it). It is then up to the officer to visually determine which vehicle is speeding. It's not infallible, and subject to an officer's decision.
LIDAR on the other hand shoots out a very narrow pulsed beam that targets one specific vehicle at a time. Officer's are usually trained to target reflective parts of a vehicle (like headlights, taillights, license plates, etc.)
There is no trying to figure out which vehicle your measuring, you target, pull the trigger and bam, instant accurate speed.. usually within under 1 second so even though your detector has gone off, it's just telling you you're speed as been taken. Reaction time is NIL.
In the state where I grew up (Texas), the general philosophy is that, if you are going the speed of the general traffic, you are being a safe driver, and are, therefore, keeping the spirit of the law. I still remember my dad getting pulled over for going the speed limit because he was 15 mph UNDER the general traffic flow. Such a speed difference is hazardous to the rest of traffic. Period.
...in that because its beam is so narrow, that the speed measured is more precisely the speed measured between the target vehicle and the LIDAR gun itself, not necessarily the forward speed of the target vehicle down the road. Since the patrol officer is always sitting off the side of the road, that introduces what's known as the "cosine error" which is actually in the speeder's favor since the LIDAR device will show the officer a slower speed (vehicle's actual forward speed times the cosine of the angle between straight ahead vs a line between the front of the vehicle and where the officer's LIDAR is actually located). Most of the time, the cosine error is negligible, but if the officer is sitting far enough off the side of the actual roadway and the angle is big enough, the cosine error can be several MPH in the speeder's favor.
I have the solution!
It was Colonel Tribune, with the forward-slash, on the URL.
I would be more concerned with the legality of MPH Industries' radar POP mode. In summary, the company is marketing radar guns with a mode that allows officers to obtain speed readings that are at best, inaccurate. Of course, the only place a warning about the inaccuracy of this mode is found, is in the radar's instruction manual. How many police officers do you think read the instruction manuals that accompany their equipment? Reports of people "getting POPped" have shown up in WV, OH, GA, NV, NJ, and NY.
"POP is mode that emits a very brief (67 millisecond) pulse of radar to determine the speed. Its meant to defeat radar detectors. It works because the local oscillator sweep (the "tuner") in most detectors, (especially cheap ones) is too slow to notice this brief pulse. Newer and more expensive detectors have solved this by making a little detour during the sweep to check for POP. It's like flipping through the channels on your TV, but going back to check if your favourite show has started on channel 2 every so often. Except in a radar detector this is happening hundreds of times per second.
POP can be inaccurate because the electronics in the police radar don't have time enough to stabilize. It's like suddenly jumping on your bathroom scale. The pointer with fluctuate violently until it settles down on the the true reading. With POP it can sometimes indicate an inaccurate speed due to this instability. "
grep -iw skynet
Lawmakers and people don't know shit about science and technology. There is no absolute speed or stationary point.
But there are relative speeds, which is why your vehicle's speed is always considered to be relative to the surface of the earth.
Lawmakers may not know shit, but you know just enough to fail to notice the blindingly obvious.
The enemies of Democracy are
If you were to take all the money generated, and not give it to the cops, but, say, pool it and refund it all the citizens that didn't get a ticket...I'm sure you'd see the enthusiasm by the cops for doing this subside drastically.
I'm a state trooper. My agency gets none of the money for our enforcement.
It goes to two pools for state and county budgets (unrelated to law enforcement). I suppose you could argue that since we get funded by the state, we're indirectly funding ourselves....but I guarantee our budget hasn't ever been increased because of increased revenue, it goes to whatever pet projects are popular, etc.
We still get complaints that "it's all about the money". However, I write far more warnings than tickets. Other officers I work with have similar warning/ticket ratios, some more, some less obviously. We've never been pressured to write more tickets.
Bottom line - At least in my work group/area; we don't give a flying [fill in your fav expletive] about the money. We write tickets when we believe it's justified. If you get one from me (for speeding or otherwise); you probably had it coming. Feel free to resume your rampant paranoia.
Anonymous Trooper
P.S. - that was my main point - continue reading for tangential, stream of consciousness type elucidation.
I have an ongoing friendly debate with a non-cop friend of mine: his philosophy is basically "Let us do whatever the hell we want and don't show up unless we f--- up, to pick up the mess". Sounds great -- limited government and police authority, enforcement only for gross infractions and crashes; I suspect many here would be supportive of that.
The objections I offer are two. One - see the South Park episode where they fire Officer Barbrady. Two - it's hard to put succinctly, but imagine the things that I and other cops/ EMS/ firefighters see when we come to crash scenes. Dead and dying children, people who look like they belong in a horror movie - I've seen half a torso hanging out a car window.
Yes, somebody F---ed up.....and many times they run like hell so they don't have to face the consequences. These are the things I think about when I'm stopping people for speed, following too closely, inattentive driving, etc. I'd rather make more stops and issue more tickets and maybe change some behaviors than have to "clean up" those kinds of messes.
It's not always drunks that kill people, sometimes it's one guy who has to rummage on the floor of his car without looking up for ten seconds at highway speed. Sometimes it's the herd mentality that doesn't see a problem continuing to go 70 in fog so thick you can't see a hundred feet in front of you. Sometimes people get it, sometimes others don't think I'm serious unless they have a $200 ticket in hand and then disregard and keep doing the same thing. Sometimes people thank me and shake my hand when they get a $200 ticket...and not in a make-nice-with-the-cop manner. It would be nice to be able to lower the fees based on attitude, but we have to be consistent...because lawyers exist and you need to show that you do not operate on bias when they ask "Officer, are you sure you didn't issue this ticket because my client is [male/female, ethnicity, color, creed, lifestyle]?
Many seem to think an officer should know them (I never go this fast / drive like this) and get upset about being stopped or ticketed since (obviously) we should be after the =real= offenders. My last thought - keep in mind we don't know you so we have to act based on the behavior we saw, we don't know if it's typical, or really just a single screw-up.
Be Safe