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.

Comments

Re:This isn't so strange.

[DragonWriter]

Following the suspect with a certified speedometer.

Which, of course, requires visually estimating that your speed is approximately equal to that of the target vehicle.

Which just validates the idea of visual estimation of relative speed as a basis of a ticket.

Re:This isn't so strange.

[DragonWriter]

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 don't think the "not very high" holds up when adjusted for inflation, and now, while tickets are regularly paid its because they are rarely challenged -- many (and by some accounts most) challenges to tickets succeed, most often because the ticketing officer doesn't show up to testify at all -- and part of the reason that they are rarely challenged is that in many jurisdictions, there are positive incentives not to challenge them (e.g., you can avoid negative reflection on your driving record if you pay the ticket and pay an additional fee to go to traffic school, if you challenge the ticket and lose, you don't have that option.)