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Guess My Speed and Give Me a Ticket, In Ohio
quall writes "The Ohio Supreme Court has ruled that police may estimate your car's speed and issue a ticket if they believe you were speeding. The hearing threw out a radar gun as evidence because the officer was not qualified to use it, but apparently his guess was good enough. If you make your way into Ohio, I suggest driving 5mph under the speed limit because this leaves little room to dispute your ticket in court. The only chance you have is if the issuing officer decides to skip your hearing."
I wonder whether the court would also accept a driver's own GPS log as exculpatory evidence.
Yeah, but back then speeding tickets were a) not very common (according to people who were driving then) b) rarely paid because hearings degenerated into a lot of "did not" - "did too" ing. (educated guess plus anecdotes) c) not very high (matter of public record)
I do not have a sig. You are hallucinating.
I'm from Ohio. I once got pulled over, and though I was speeding (and quite excessively), the officer didn't radar me. He wasn't legally allowed to write me a ticket for speeding so he just gave me a ticket for reckless operation. The speeding ticket would actually have been cheaper and put less points on my license. Bottom line: this doesn't change much.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
I have a good bit of family in law enforcement up in Illinois. This is SOP for officers up there. When they go through their training, speed estimation is one of the things they are taught, for things such as radar malfunctions and times where they are not in their car, (ie foot / bike / segway patrol). If they see somebody who "looks" like they are doing double the speed limit, based on the cars they are blowing by, then they can cite / arrest them on their powers of guesstimation alone. This has been around for awhile, but apparently only newsworthy until now.
Not saying I agree with the practice, but lets not blow this out of proportion as there is nothing new under the sun. Precedent shows that the officers word is statistically more "trusted" than yours by the judges, and thems the ropes, folks. Sigh...
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
We still have that in Ohio, but it's a little more high tech. It involves a helicopter and painted lines at certain distances on the road. (The helicopter makes it more high tech.)
Though, this isn't what the story is about. I can't believe the SC voted it a valid technique. Now we have to have our lawyers figure out if a police officer is properly trained to issue tickets by guessing... I'm hoping there's a way to overturn this decision. (Yes, I'm claiming ignorance on how my government works in this regard.)
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
I was written a ticket by a detective one morning. It was for 4mph over the limit. There was no traffic on the 5 lane road and I was in a business suit. After he left, I realized he had written the ticket to me, but was for a Ford Mustang. I drive a Dodge Charger.
So the court date rolled around and I showed up in court. The DA comes over and asks if I want to plead it down to an equipment violation. I tell him that wouldn't be legal as I didn't have any equipment violations and the detective wrote the ticket to the wrong type of vehicle.
The DA walks over to the detective and proceeds to have him write me a new ticket, making the change to the type of vehicle to reflect what I was driving. This was after the DA looked up my DMV records to find the correct type of vehicle.
We go in front of the judge and I have to question the detective. I ask him if he used a radar gun to clock me, which he didn't. I asked him if he was qualified to write tickets based on "pacing". He wasn't. I asked him if he knew how far down the road in either direction the speed limits changed. He didn't. This was relevant because I had just entered a 45 mph area from a 55 mph area.
The judge got tired of me reaming the detective and says "I really don't care what evidence you have, you're paying for the ticket. Dismissed." That was the end of that. Traffic court is a joke.
A similar situation happened to me in Missouri. I was going at a good clip on a short road, and I got onto the highway before they could get the radar gun out. Eventually they pulled me over (I was going exactly the speed limit at that moment), and issued me a ticket for *exceeded* the speed limit. I asked what my supposed speed was when I broke the limit, and they said that only applied if you are *exceeding* the speed limit. So they didnt list my speed, just that I had broken the posted limit.
I'm not sure what the difference was, but I had my lawyer fix it anyway.
When you do show up in court with your GPS log, tell the judge that the GPS log is generally easy to verify if it has been falsified. Ask them to give it to their computer science guy to look for any signs of tampering. The record of the sattelite locations, the time of day, the locations, the time stamps, speed time distance, etc will provide evidence of tampering. Point out that a forgery is very hard to make with all those factors in place. It is up to them to prove their case against you. It is up to them to prove any errors in your GPS log.
Be sure to point out the number of satelites in the sky at the time of the stop, the margin of error, the base accuracy, the DOD calibration is monitored 24/7, etc. If the mobile is out of cal, it is out of sync and would not provide a valid fix. A valid fix is confirmation of calibration. If they doubt your statement of certification, ask them to verify it with the DOD and device manufacture. The base accuracy is generally +/- 1 on the LSD or 0.1 MPH. It does not have the parallax error of the officer's radar which you question to the max at this point along with the radar's known error modes, including mirrors, angle, angle correction, etc. It's your certification against their's and your operator skill against theirs.
You can show much more margin of error in both operator and equipment setup and calibration than they can show in your GPS log. Unless the judge is crooked or a technophobe, the GPS record is hard to discredit.
The truth shall set you free!
In my case (in Ohio) it was low flying aircraft measuring the distance and an officer at the side of the road waving me to pull over based on the results (along with several other drivers and a patrol car at the side for those who chose not to stop...).
I was pretty bothered by what I saw as a cheap stunt for money, so I went to court on the principal of it, after reading up on speeding ticket defense and the city's speed ordinance at the local University Library. Present at the hearing was the officer at the side of the road and the assistant city prosecutor. Here's a nut-shell of how it went:
Prosecutor to police officer: How fast was the defendant going?
Officer: The defendant was clocked at --
Me: Objection, your honor.
Judge: Yes, young man?
Me: The officer doesn't know how fast I was going. Based on the complaint issued to me in writing here, he was relying on an aircraft pilot's measurements. The pilot is not here; that makes the officer's testimony hearsay.
(Prosecutor approaches Judge after talking with officer)
Judge: Young man, would you agree to an extension 10 days from now until the pilot can be summoned?
Me: Respectfully, no, your honor. That date would put the hearing beyond the 30 day time-line for disposal of this case, which is the end of this week.
Judge: young man, would you like your case dismissed?
Me: yes, your honor.
Judge: case dismissed.
Know the basics of the law in your case. Sometimes it can end up being on your side, as long as your willing and able to take the time to research it and appear in court.
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
This whole story is strange. Courts have always recognized that Cops can ticket you based on "passing markers"--yes they need only count off the seconds between those little reflectors on the side of the road.
This is considered indisputable if the officer has passed a certification test.
Officers will routinely write, "passing markers" because its subjects them to the least review by the courts.
Other backwards ideas: if Cops use 'stationary radar' they need to do a bunch of work to ascertain whether it is working correctly--it takes two patrol units: the stationary one and the reference vehicle. But, none of this is necessary if they use moving radar!
But moving radar is next to meaningless (cosin error) without careful regulation of the setting which is only required... for stationary radar.