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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.
" issue a ticket if they believe "
I think there's a law against that.
that most of the judge's wages are paid from speeding fines?
Wherever You Go, There You Are
How do you think police issued tickets before radar guns were invented?
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Look, just because there are no missing people, no unaccounted for deaths, or any evidence of any shape or form doesn't mean you didn't commit murder. I mean, you LOOK like a murderer. A trained police officer can't be wrong...
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So much for a fair trial.
So by now, who hasnt wiped their ass off with the bill of rights?
If he can't be trained to use a radar gun properly, then he's not qualified to guess what speed a vehicle is travelling...IMO.
It's doubtful that you could show an appropriate chain of evidence with the GPS. It's easily argued that you tampered with any such evidence.
Ticketing for illegal speeds is pretty easy, most people confess to it.
"Do you know why I pulled you over?"
"I was speeding."
"I saw you doing 80mph"
"Yes sir, that's about right. I'm sorry."
Voila, instant ticket for 80mph, and a confession to back it up.
I did the opposite. You never *KNOW* why the officer stops you. You may have been speeding. He may be pulling you over for a burned out taillight, or your vehicle may match a description of one seen at a crime scene, or it may even match the description of a vehicle from a missing persons case. Don't guess.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Thanks but in light of this, I'll make a huge detour.
Given that it is Ohio, that is a valid question. Never mind locality-set speed limits.
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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."
Sometimes they are not set with their radar but a driver is going way too fast for the situation and the fact is obvious to any observer. Cops in motorbikes without radar come to mind, for example. They should have a way to ticket that driver. The problem, obviously, is the gray area. How fast is too fast? Is too fast if they estimate the driver is 50% faster than the limit?
Perhaps a common sense solution to that kind of situation would be just to stop the driver. The mere fact of stopping someone is usually deterrent enough; I know I don't want to be stopped by the cops even if they don't give me a ticket. I wonder if that would work for the general case?
Where I live, the cops can ticket a driver for driving negligently. That should be enough to cover the "too fast but no hard evidence" case.
It's doubtful that you could show an appropriate chain of evidence with the GPS. It's easily argued that you tampered with any such evidence.
Ticketing for illegal speeds is pretty easy, most people confess to it.
"Do you know why I pulled you over?" "I was speeding." "I saw you doing 80mph" "Yes sir, that's about right. I'm sorry."
Voila, instant ticket for 80mph, and a confession to back it up.
I did the opposite. You never *KNOW* why the officer stops you. You may have been speeding. He may be pulling you over for a burned out taillight, or your vehicle may match a description of one seen at a crime scene, or it may even match the description of a vehicle from a missing persons case. Don't guess.
Amen to that. Any conversation with a police officer should start with you saying "Evening officer, what seems to be the trouble?" - don't offer anything up, ever.
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The article indicates the driver was going about 15mph over the speed limit. I'd say that was relatively easy to identify by sight. So what the majority said, which is in fact "given the totality of the circumstances", such an officer's testimony may be held to be credible. If you can show at trial that the officer has borne you a grudge since high school, that may well be another story. And of course it's not in front of a jury - its $50, for crying out loud!
http://www.sconet.state.oh.us/ROD/docs/
Barberton v. Jenney, Slip Opinion No. 2010-Ohio-2420.
"Santimarino also testified that in addition to his training and experience in visually estimating vehicle speed, he was trained and certified to use the Python brand Doppler radar unit that he was using on July 3, 2008. Santimarino testified on direct examination that after he visually estimated the speed of Jenney's vehicle, he observed that the radar unit indicated that Jenney's vehicle was traveling at 82 miles per hour. Santimarino could not produce a copy of his radar-training certification when defense counsel requested he do so on the day of trial."
In order to be certified by OPOTA, Santimarino was required to show that he could visually estimate a vehicle's speed to within three to four miles per hour of the vehicle's actual speed, which he did
While I don't like ruling there is a certification process and they follow it. When I was in the military and got pulled over by the locals are AG told us in no uncertain terms, do not question the accuracy or honesty of a police officer in from the of the magistrate. You will show up in your Sunday best, use ma'am and sir where appropriate, and be a perfect gentleman. You may plead for leniency or such but never suggest any lacking on the arresting officer.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Any conversation with a police officer should start with you saying "Evening officer, what seems to be the trouble?"
Unless it happens to be morning. Or early afternoon.
"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
Bullshit. I often drive in slow speed areas, going slow but at high RPM, because I don't want to upshift. As I go down the street at 25 or less, I see people's heads perk up at the sound. It sounds like I'm going fast - or "zooming" around - but I'm not.
Moreover, studies have shown time and again that people estimate the speed of a passing car with wildly different estimates.
If some car ZOOMS by it's pretty easy for me to tell its speeding, radar gun or not (I'm not a police officer). If you have even a modicum of experience driving and you can't estimate whether or not a car is speeding you should probably have your driver's license taken away.
If you're talking about someone doing 50 in a 30, you're correct that it's pretty easy. But the difference between 60 and 70 isn't as obvious as you may think. Calling it accurately, and consistently? BS. That's why they have Radar and LiDar and all their other toys, so they can catch the minor offenders as well.
would accept this type of citation.
It hardly meets the burden of "beyond a reasonable doubt".
I'm surprised it made it as far as it did. I hope the Ohio Supreme Court isn't an elected body — or their jobs will all be on the chopping block next election day!
"Adventure? Excitement? A Jedi craves not these things."
That's the point of establishing a evidentiary foundation. You testify under oath as to: 1) Here's the process by how I acquired it; and 2) the printout is a fair and accurate representation of the data contained in my GPS log. While it may vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, that's the basic gist of it. Most judges I've appeared before were rather lax with evidentiary issues.
If the cop wants to challenge the validity of it, he can certainly do that on cross examination - or even voir dire before the logs are admitted as evidence. I would be amazed though, if the cop knew enough law to be able to effectively challenge its admission.
Unfortunately, and this goes back to the earlier post about videoing police during official stops, the old school judges seem to have a presumption in favor of police, so its an uphill battle regardless. Your closing argument would have to be along the lines of: a) I like cops; b) they're good for society; c) they would never intentionally lie and mistakes are rare, BUT THEY DO HAPPEN; etc...
The above, while it is general legal information, does not constitute legal advice. No one should rely upon the above statements and no attorney-client relationship has been established thereby. If you have been charged with a crime, you should immediately consult a local attorney.
This is the kind of thing where I would really want a jury trial for a speeding ticket. But I've heard that some legal gymnastics have been used to justify making traffic courts immune from the right to trial by jury.
Does anyone know if this is true, and if so, what the justification is?
The officer in question claimed that the other car was traveling more than 10mph above the speed limit.
I don't claim to be able to gauge speeds that accurately, but I can definitely tell if a car is going that much faster than the limit.
People got speeding tickets before radar guns, ya know.
Put this in perspective. 10 over a 10mph limit is easy to tell. 10 over in a 20, shouldn't be too hard. 10 over in a 60? Pretty hard to tell. Unless he's passing cars left and right, it's not going to be as simple as you think.
I remember seeing this on a ticket years ago. There were two boxes, one indicating that a radar gun was used, the other saying that the person was visibly speeding. I'm surprised it's taken this long to come up honestly. Though I was under the impression it was to get people who were obviously driving much faster than the speed limit, not for minor speeding.
My other sig is an import.
How do you think police issued tickets before radar guns were invented?
Well if I didn't know any better, and thought there was no way to measure velocity prior to the invention of radar, I might do as you have invited me to do and imagine that they just guessed and that this was good enough.
But since I do know better, I don't have to imagine. What they actually did was to time how long it took you to go between two points of known separation. Amazing, eh?
Even as late as the 90s some officers preferred this method, and sometimes near speed traps in the city you could see the markings on the curb that they drew. When it was explained to me by an officer, I believe he said the preference stemmed from when radar guns were new and tickets based on radar guns were being challenged successfully, while the stopwatch measurement of a trained officer was more likely to be believed by the judge.
In any event, "guess" was never the proper method.
The enemies of Democracy are
I still like to say "evening." Keeps them on their toes.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
What is next useing the EZ-pass times for Tickets?
Ohio now allows police to guess whether or not pregnant mothers are carrying human offspring, or an animal hybrid. http://idle.slashdot.org/story/10/06/03/1422213/OH-Senate-Passes-Bill-Banning-Human-Animal-Hybrids In cases where animal hybrids are suspected, the Ohio police are to issue a ticket immediately.
So since you use a powerful, bold disclaimer, if you accidentally omit it sometime, does your previous use of the disclaimer then imply that you are giving legal advice when you omit it?
Or is it so much puffery?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Meow also works.
I'm interested to see this put to some scientific testing to see how acurate this method actually is. I think its crazy still and i'm just glad my government here in the UK is a tad more sane. I saw another article today about it now being an offence to take photos of police uniformed or plane clothed. Crazyness.
Those who can, do. Those who cannot, sue.
It's not analogous to condemning a person for "looking wrong". It's eyewitness testimony as evidence of a person's actions: "It looked like you were speeding" is analogous to "It looked like you stabbed that guy". Yes, eyewitness judgment can be wrong, but eyewitness judgment is not the same as "you look evil therefore you are guilty".
"You look like a murderer" is more analogous to "you look like a speeder". It is quite different from "it looked like you were speeding", and has nothing to do with the case being discussed here.
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.
Probably the same way I was given my speeding ticket, long after radar guns were invented. Have you ever seen two lines painted across the road, separated by some distance of maybe a few hundred feet? The officer is parked off to the side of the road, and uses a stopwatch to measure how long it takes you to pass between the two lines. If you look at the ticket, it will list the distance and speed.
:(){
Isn't that like an officer being able to tell the BAC of driver visually? There are many factors that can come into play in a visual determination that it is unlikely to be accurate. I'd like to see the certification and a demonstration of these techniques. Otherwise I'd have to call BS.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I wonder whether the court would also accept a driver's own GPS log as exculpatory evidence.
Apparently not.
You're right. Next time I'm stopped, I'll confess to speeding, running a stop sign last week, and the fact that there are 5 kilos of heroin in the trunk next to the dead hooker.
No, hold on. How about I let him tell me why he's pulling me over, and I'll graciously accept the ticket for the burned out taillight.
(Just kidding about the contents of my trunk. I promise.)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
By my experience you don't get to see any information on the radar until you show up to contest your ticket. At which point so much time has passed that you can't really be sure that the allegation hasn't been tampered with anyways.
...
Nonetheless fighting speeding tickets isn't that hard. In all my years of driving I have been issued tickets twice. Both times I went to court at the appointed time to contest the charge (two different counties of the same state, a few years apart). Both times because my record was clean I was offered a plea bargain - with "probationary" terms where they agreed not to report the violation as long as I was not pulled over in their county again for X number of months (or years I don't remember now). Either way I paid the plea bargain fine (one case lower another case higher than the citation) and was not pulled over again in the issuing county. For that matter, one of those counties I have never returned to since
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
People got speeding tickets before radar guns, ya know.
Yes. They used stopwatches and known distances.
I recently fought a speeding ticket in BC. I went to court, was prepared with radar gun manuals and specs, what I thought was the regulations regarding calibration and many other defences.
They were all struck down. Things that i learned:
- going down a hill, moving with the flow of traffic, not enough posted signs, and many other "commonly accepted" defences were explicitly stated by the judge as not holding any water.
- The police officer does NOT have to prove that the gun was calibrated in any way. His word that it was calibrated was "good enough" in the judges view.
- Police are trained to make a visual inspection of the speed. They MUST make a guess at your speed in their head before firing off the laser or radar gun. Their experience in estimating speed is treated the same as laser evidence.
- there is no "paper trail" on the gun, and they do not have to prove that the gun registered a certain number.
- the judge makes or breaks your case. its pretty much the whim of the judge whether you will get off on a technicality or not.
- bring some sort of previous case law that backs you up. I tried hard to find some relevant stuff, but obviously did not try hard enough.
So I lost, but it was fun actually, going through the motions.
Another thing i should say is that i was simply unlucky in the end. There were approximately 20 people there in the court fighting tickets, and 10 of them got to go scott free as their respective cops didnt even show up. No show = automatic win if you show up. So it is worth fighting every ticket and pleading not guilty, at least initally. Just dont expect to win if the cop shows up.
Just my 0.2 cents as I just did this a few weeks ago in BC canada. ymmv.
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
I had drivers ed once for a ticket (gravity assist*) and one person in the room had been ticketed for 1mph over the limit. When they need the money, or there is a new speed limit they want folks to be aware of, it's legal. There is no legal "buffer" over the limit.
* Two of the three? tickets (anyway, every ticket for the last 25 or so years) I have gotten since I was a teenager were at the base of steep hills. The police just set up, wait for gravity to speed you up and voila. The third ticket was sometime in my mid 20's doing 50mph on the 40mph feeder. They drove on the freeway, matched my speed, then got off at the exit and ticketed me.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Thats why I always say "Hello, My name is Indigo Montoya, you killed my father. Prepare to ...... " and I let my voice trail off.
The problem is that human perception can be influenced by factors. For example, if you take the same car and drive it the same speed on a single lane or a multi-lane highway, it will appear to be faster on a single lane. Our estimation of speed is based on reference. The more reference points, the closer the reference points, etc. These are all factors.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
My uncle got a ticket for a speed higher than he was traveling, and the officer testified in court that speed was determined by time over distance between two very close markers. The officer thought the closer his markers, the more accurate the measurement. My uncle, a professor, tried to explain that human timing error meant that the closer the markers were, the LESS accurate the speed measurement was. The judge didn't understand, was frustrated, and finally said he thought my uncle was a speeder, and let the fine stand.
Bad analogy with the case at hand: eyewitness testimony is a recognized form of evidence in court.
Also, murder is a criminal offense, and thus has a different standard of proof than minor moving violations, which are not criminal offenses.
Cant create hybrid clones, cant speed... WTF is that state coming too?
Ya, some folks can't recognize a good movie reference when it's brains are splattered across the back seat of the car. :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Is it me or does this all seem to be a game of revenue generation?
Radar guns are not the most difficult pieces of equipment to use. Even if you've never been 'certified' in the use of one, you can still wield it to some degree of accuracy. Sure, it could be an inaccurate reading, but in this case, it'd have to be what? Over twenty miles an hour high in order to prove this guy was innocent. Besides, this guy became a cop way back in the 90s. Odds are his 'failure to produce a certificate' could just be... he misplaced the bloody piece of paper. If you've been a state trooper for that long and you don't know how to laser someone's speed, then... something is dramatically wrong.
Besides, this is a veteran cop, who has been trained in accurately taking a visual. If we're questioning a police officer's judgement on something like this (and trust me, who hasn't seen someone driving down the road and just known they're speeding), then what are police qualified to judge?
More than that: in another appeals case (Warning: PDF) in the State of Ohio (coincidence?), GPS evidence presented by the defendant was specifically and intentionally disregarded by the appellate judge. Apparently, GPS wasn't precise enough (average speed over an interval instead of instantaneous speed), and the appellant's use of supporting evidence downloaded from the Internet didn't help. (Protip: Wikipedia is not admissible in any court of law.)
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Here in Canada the police wont usually pull you over unless you are doing 25+kph above the speed limit (15mph+). Doing 115(71mph) in a 100(62mph) isn't going to get you pulled over.
Ever notice how slow 45 is when you exit the interstate after traveling at 70 for an hour? Its is pretty well established that people adjust their perception of their speed to the rate they have been traveling. This should also apply to people judging someone else's speed. How do they account for that? Does the office need to have been still for 5 minutes, 10 minutes, an hour, before making the call? Were they working a school zone an hour ago?
Any conversation with a police officer should start with you saying "Evening officer, what seems to be the trouble?"
Unless it happens to be morning. Or early afternoon.
That's when you say, "What's wrong, fuckface?"
Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing. -- Wernher von Braun
Remember, be a smug asshole.
So making an effort to not incriminate yourself equates to being a smug asshole?
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Before radar guns, the police generally had to match your speed over 1/4 mile to issue a speeding ticket.
Needless to say, a lot fewer speeding tickets were written. The radar gun's debut in the 70s led to the exact same discussion we're having now with red light cams. They actually made the roads less safe, but they were a revenue godsend, so they became the norm.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
I recall reading a book about how to beat speeding tickets. Assuming you'd disposed of the radar evidence (officer improperly trained, device not calibrated recently - works about half the time, if you know what to ask) you get the officer to demonstrate his prowess in estimating speed. Almost NO ONE is good at this. The example used was dropping a pencil from shoulder height. The usual estimates were between 40 and 60 MPH; in actuality, it's less than 20. Before radar, they typically had to pace you, time you on a marked bit of road, or use VASCAR (yes, I'm that old) Guessing wasn't considered evidence.
...judges seem to have a presumption in favor of police, so its an uphill battle regardless.
Do you think that's because they're former prosecutors?
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
I used to be a cop and I did a LOT of traffic stops. In training and certification to use a radar gun they train you to look at the vehicle whose speed you're going to measure and make an estimate of their speed before using the radar, then compare the results. This was a practice in Washington state but I would not be surprised if it is common everywhere. After a while you get very good at estimating speeds and find yourself generally guessing the correct speed +/- 1 MPH. When you write your subsequent traffic stop summary you include a sentence stating that your observed a vehicle that appeared to be speeding and your visual estimation followed by the radar measured speed. This gets the officer trained to look at what's being measured rather than just sitting there with the radar pointed back over his shoulder waiting for something fast to come through which then builds credible speed estimation and descrimination into his testimony and also gets past the problem of accidentally radaring the Cesna 150 that flew overhead at 80 mph while erroneously attaching that speed to grandma who was doing the speed limit. In short, anybody who does a lot of anything reasonably well gets good at it - cops do a lot of speed estimation and get good at it.
I once got a speeding ticket for 10mph above 45 limit. The officer had "estimated" my speed. When I challenged him in court, he presented a training certificate, certifying that he could estimate speed with some ridiculous accuracy (forgot the actual number, maybe within 3mph).
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.
Legal disclaimer sure, but what in the world is wrong with PGP/GPG signatures? They allow other people to verify that you are who you say you are...
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Would there be an appropriate chain of evidence for visual speed estimation? We don't even know how accurate the officer is until we calibrate him/her. An interesting test would be to see how many people can guess the speed of a car within 5mph without known distances between landmarks and such.
IIRC, the timestamps on New York Throughway tickets have been used to give people tickets before. I.e., you entered here, you left there, it took you so much time, bingo, average speed. Probably the same in other states. That's why I always planned my trips to include lunch or dinner stops on the throughway. I could do 80 and still average out to 55.
There really is nothing new in this story. Police are trained to estimate speeds. If they write a ticket based on that, you are likely to get the benefit of the doubt as to just how fast you were going, but not a cancellation of the ticket.
Except in Ohio, the cop can say you're speeding, and you're speeding. Even if you're going half the speed limit. Even if you're going 0 MPH, for that matter. I think the only way you could get out of it is by proving you weren't even in the car at that time.
What part of "Don't admit to knowing anything" is confusing you. If you tell them the time of day, they'll know that you know. Now they have the upper hand!
... if police officers are gonna play judge....
This is a great intro to why you should never talk to police. You have to show ID but you do not have to answer any questions /. story awhile back and bookmarked it because it is valid and useful.
Got this link off another
Never talk to Police
In a nut shell, the police will take what ever you say and use it against you.
I've gotten two tickets in my life. First was speeding near my house. I was helping a friend move, and had my car loaded down. I'd had a hard time even getting up to 70 on the interstate. The sheriff said I was going 80 in a 55. I know I was going 50, because I hadn't been able to even come close to that. I wanted to go to court, but couldn't make the court date. Found out later that the sheriff that got me was an idiot who probably couldn't operate the radar properly anyway.
Second ticket was for not stopping at a stop sign. I actually saw the cop a half mile down the road in front of me trying to turn around when I got to the intersection, and also knew I was in a speed trap town, so I purposefully made sure I did a legal stop (made sure the car was completely stopped and counted to three). Even if I hadn't done the counting, I still know I was there long enough while stopped because I let cars go from other directions. It was two miles down the road that the cop even got there.
I'm not saying I've never sped, or never rolled through a stop sign, but there's nothing as aggravating as a situation like mine.
I've seen what it can do. A traffic cop with several years experience can estimate your speed to within two miles per hour. And they're probably not going to write you up for doing 47 in a 45mph zone.
I wonder whether the court would also accept a driver's own GPS log as exculpatory evidence.
Nope, sorry, we don't trust any of that scieentifik evidence round here.
Or: So, I assume you can produce a certificate showing you were trained in the use of this GPS device?
Or... The evidence is excluded on the grounds the defendant can't prove they did not somehow manipulate the GPS device to log you as not speeding.
Or.... The GPS evidence is interesting, but does not invalidate the officer's estimate. The officer was trained to make that estimate, therefore it is infallible, sorry, pay the fine.
I don't know about other countries, but here in Canada RADAR is only a tool to confirm an estimate.
Judge: And how did you determine Joe Smith was exceeding the speed limit.
Cop: I estimated the speed of the vehicle to be doing 70 in a 50 zone, and then confirmed my estimate with RADAR.
Judge: The defendant is hereby guilty as charged.
The only time I've seen tickets thrown out is if the tuning forks (used to verify the accuracy of the RADAR) were not certified within the last 365 days.
Carry a GPS, record the track. (This only works if you're really legal.) http://xpda.com/ticket/
Except that most of the time, it isn't an officer, but a corporal or sergeant.
That people are so scared of them that they call them all "officer" just so they won't risk offending says a lot about both the police and the policed.
Don't even admit that you think there is any trouble. "Can I help you?" is more than enough. Otherwise, let the police do the talking. Their only interest in hearing your answers is to hear whether you incriminate yourself.
True, although of course it depends on the speed limit itself, as well as the cop's disposition. I find that +10% of posted limit tends to do me well.
What really sickens me, though, is cops who themselves don't follow the laws. I can't count how many times I have had cops pass me (going much faster), even in residential areas. A couple days ago I had a cop speed off the off-ramp, cross two lanes without signalling, and speed off -- all without his lights on. I can guarantee that if I tried a stunt like that I would have been pulled over immediately. If a cop is going to drive recklessly like that they need to put their lights on (and putting your lights on to do an illegal turn into Tim Horton's doesn't count, either -- and yes, I have seen that before too).
There's no such thing as instantaneous speed. Velocity is always distance over time. If time is zero, that's a divide by zero.
You didn't do well in calculus, did you?
The Minneapolis suburb of Edina is fairly notorious for speed enforcement.
Now I recognize that law enforcement is not a for-profit business (on paper at least...) but given the limited resources available for law enforcement and the unlimited amount of crime there's still a cost-benefit argument to make.
What often amazes me, though, is seeing them occasionally use up to *five* squad cars at a time. It gets me wondering how much money its costing them relative to how much they make back in fines.
Because they are a wealthy suburb, they have pretty state of the art squad cars. Assuming a fully equipped squad car runs about $75,000 including everything stuffed inside (from emergency gear & weapons in the trunk to lights, sirens, and other upgrades or add-ons), five cars on the side of the road is a $375,000 capital asset not to mention 5 police officers @ $100/hour each or whatever it costs the city in salary, benefits and overhead to employ them.
You could be looking at $1000/hour to run that speed trap in men and equipment without coming nearly that close to writing enough tickets to pay for it.
No kidding. The average Austrian highway cop is considered to have a "calibrated" eye that can guestimate your speed perfectly. I didn't believe it either 'til I was shown it in their law books.
Personally, I'd say it turns highway cops into highwaymen, but that's me...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If you're talking about someone doing 50 in a 30, you're correct that it's pretty easy. But the difference between 60 and 70 isn't as obvious as you may think. Calling it accurately, and consistently? BS. That's why they have Radar and LiDar and all their other toys, so they can catch the minor offenders as well.
The correct way would always be that the policeman makes the best measurement that he can, tells the court how the speed was measured, the court estimates how much the error in that measurement could be, and subtracts the possible error from the measured speed, because that would be the speed that is _proven_. In the case under discussion, the policeman measured the speed by estimating it was 73mph. Which is fine. The court decided that 70mph was proven, which in my opinion is _not_ fine. I wouldn't believe that the policeman's estimate would be guaranteed correct within 3 mph.
Airplanes and helicopters. Haven't you ever noticed highways with broad white stripes here and there? Those are markings so police in aircraft can mark your car at set intervals to calculate your speed.
Stopwatches. Car moves from point A to point B over a certain period of time. The cop does the math.
Pace cars. An unmarked car moves at a set speed and radios ahead to marked cars which cars are flying by.
And I'm just getting started. Police officers have long been inventive on how to determine the speed of a car. Technology has made them lazy, though.
They used to give speeding tickets before the marketing of the radar gun. Law enforcement officers were called trained observers.
From Wikipedia:
The instantaneous speed v is defined as the magnitude of the instantaneous velocity v, that is the derivative of the position r with respect to time
Must be Justice Terrence O'Donnell is the only justice in the court not from Michigan ;)
Bullshit. I often drive in slow speed areas, going slow but at high RPM, because I don't want to upshift.
Ahh, you're one of *those* guys. Compensating for something?
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Except that most of the time, it isn't an officer, but a corporal or sergeant.
That people are so scared of them that they call them all "officer" just so they won't risk offending says a lot about both the police and the policed.
I think you misunderstand what the word "officer" means in this context. When you talk about an "officer" in the military, that's usually shorthand for "commissioned officer" (ensign or above in the Navy, second lieutenant or above in the other services) although warrant officers and non-commissioned officers are technically "officers" as well. But none of this has anything to do with police. "Police officer" is a job description, not a rank, and everyone from the newest guy on the force all the way up to chief is in fact an "officer" by definition. It's not flattery to call them that.
The the equivalent job description in the military is "soldier," "sailor," etc. But this masks a more important problem. Cops are not soldiers, and both they and the rest of us need to remember that. It's easy to confuse them: both groups wear uniforms, carry guns, and use similar rank systems. But the failure to draw a bright line between police work and warfighting is one of the most serious threats to liberty which any nation can ever face, and it's a failure which is disturbingly common in America today.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Roughly stated, speed traps and red light cameras cause people to slam on their brakes, which more than one study has shown causes the very accidents they're hoping to avoid.
The other big point of discussion used to be that when you need to find a cop, they shouldn't be hidden from view. Speed traps raise tons of revenue, but they make society as a whole less safe by leeching police presence and resources away from attending to actual crime and accidents.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
(Speed traps || Red Light cameras) are about raising revenue, not enforcing the law. They actually make driving less safe by causing drivers to slam on their brakes at unexpected times. They engender contempt for the law by making law enforcement about revenue generation and bill collection, not serving the public.
But yes, I'm in total agreement that red light cameras are a far more egregious case, though I would argue that radar speed traps paved the way for them, in the same way that red light cameras will pave the way for in-car black-box gps monitoring, where all apparent violations will be billed automatically to your credit card.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
I used to watch Cops upon occasion. One of the things that never ceased to amaze me was how, when the police officer asked the suspect if there were any drugs in the car, the suspect said yes. Every. Single. Time.
What the hell is wrong with these people? If you've got a bag of marijuana in the glovebox and the cops ask you if you have anything Just Say No.
They do not, contrary to what they tell you, have the right to search your car without due cause (and telling them no is not due cause). Nor will it make any difference to a prosecutor whether they did a legal search and found stuff or if you just gave it up to them.
I guess this just goes into more evidence that pot makes you stupid.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
To be fair, they were already doing that in Ohio (and no doubt many other states), they were just claiming that the radar substantiated it.
With modern technology, there is really no excuse to not require radar/laser guns with video cameras that keep verifiable logs, or video of the car traveling a known distance. Then there really wouldn't be questions about the evidence (faking it would be too expensive to bother with, anyway).
I think a more likely scenario is that the radar gun showed the driver's correct speed, but the cop could not produce evidence that he was certified to use it, so it was not admissible as evidence (which is the way it should be IMHO). That means that the cop's estimate of the speed was off by ~10mph, but even with such a large margin of error is enough to prove "guilt" in the sham that is traffic court.
The whole thing stinks, and makes me regret moving back to Ohio. Some things are truly backwards here.
Just like driving a car:
(D) to go forward
(R) to go backward
I actually prefer to say "good morning" at any hour of the day, rather than "good evening." If they look at you like you're insane, you can at least make the argument you just woke up. Thinking it's evening all the time strikes me as more of a drunk's behavior instead of a slacker's.
I have no idea whether or not you were joking, but I did actually have the habit of saying "good morning" all day long until a while ago.
Instantaneous velocity = lim(distance/time) as time-->0
Or, more succinctly, ds/dt - the derivative of distance with respect to time.
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!
That was pretty much the way it went with a traffic stop with me several years ago. I was scooting down a large road in a convertible with the top down. I saw him on his motorcycle going the other way, and didn't think anything of it. I ended up stuck in the middle of a large clusterfuck of cars, where a few roads merged. I heard the siren behind me, so I pulled over.
The conversation went pretty much the same. After asking me twice, he told me, "you're really making me mad. I'm going to walk away and come back, and you'd better tell me what I expect to hear." When he came back, I said the same thing, "No sir, I don't know why you stopped me.".
He had me get out of the car, patted me down, and told me I was going to jail. That's odd, since I still didn't know why he stopped me.
He believed I was speeding when he saw me a few minutes earlier. Well, his words were "you were passing the other cars like they were standing still." Since I wouldn't confess to anything, and he had nothing to prove his statement, he gave up. We ended up having a nice polite chat after that.
It's a lot easier for them if you just confess to whatever. "Oh ya, I must have been speeding, and I was following that car too closely." Great, 2 tickets with no proof.
Part of a traffic stop is high visibility. When the police have someone on the side of the road, it makes everyone slow down to the speed limit. By spending an extra 5 minutes with me stopped, even without a ticket, it brought the flow of traffic down to the legal limits.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
It's not the pot that makes them stupid. It's just the fact that people are stupid.
Did you ever notice that just about every stop on Cops results in an arrest? They cut out all the rest of them. It wouldn't make good TV to show a bunch of traffic stops where the people say "no, I don't have anything illegal" and "no, you may not search my vehicle without a warrant.", where the suspects were all let go.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
What if you were running more than 60mph?
Most of what I've seen in traffic court is always "he said" vs "she said". Except your side is the defense, and their side is an arm of the court, upholding their sworn duty to enforce the law.
I've sat in on a few, just to hear the nonsense. It ranges from pathetic to humorous.
One guy was trying to negotiate the speed on the ticket down by 1mph, because tickets given at that speed are a conspiracy between the state and the insurance companies. The guy had a whole rant about it, which almost kinda made sense. He lost.
In the same day, a lady was fighting a ticket for running a red light. The cop had a clear view of the traffic light and her vehicle. She swore the light was green. Then she had the 7 passengers in her van, all kids she was driving to school, all also swear that it was green. It was plainly obvious that she coached them to say it was green. 8 witnesses for her side, vs 1 witness for the state. She won. The judge cracked a joke about it, clearly indicating that he knew they were all lying.
My case was for a "careless driving" ticket. I was driving by myself on a 4 lane highway at like 2am. I was wide awake, and doing 5mph under the speed limit, since I knew there were always police patrolling it. I didn't know it was a cop that came speeding up behind me (in excess of 80mph). But, since he failed to appear, when I tried to say anything the judge told me to shut up. Well, it was more like "He didn't show, you've already won. You don't have to say anything." So I said "thank you, your honor", and walked out. :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I wonder whether the court would also accept a driver's own GPS log as exculpatory evidence.
Don't get it do you? We have leapfrogged guilty until proven innocent. Now you're guilty when charged. G traipsing in there with your GPS log and I wouldn't be surprised if they held you in contempt.
Our government is now totally corrupt.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
In point of fact, I was pulled over between... let's say... Hartford and Boston about 20 years ago.
The officer asked "do you know how fast you were going?" I replied, "probably about 75 or 80."
He asked, "where you going?" and I told him I was on my way home to Boston. It was 2am.
He replied "Okay, I'd probably be doing about the same. Just be careful out here and watch out."
First time, but hardly the last.
I lived in Ohio for many years and still drive through regularly. You do NOT want to speed on the highways in Ohio. Seriously. The Ohio State Highway Patrol is one of the more ticket-happy police organizations in the country. I've driven from Ohio to Florida and seen more cops in Ohio than in all the other states on the trip combined. I think the state gets a ridiculous amount of revenue from speeding tickets on the highway. The officers in the highway patrol are not especially friendly either. Professional enough but not courteous or forgiving. You will not talk your way out of a ticket if they pull you over.
Basic suggestions when driving on the highways in Ohio. Do not drive more than 5mph over the speed limit and under no circumstances should you go significantly faster than the traffic around you. Radar detectors are legal but the state highway patrol uses laser detectors heavily. If you absolutely must drive faster than I suggested you should invest in a detector. Believe me, you'll need it. If you see one cop in Ohio you can bet others are out too. They like to hide behind obstructions and in the medians. Sometimes they'll have the guy with the laser/radar identifying speeders and the officers pulling people over are further up the road.
Better idea: Boycott Ohio until they get a clue.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Face it, Ohio is an openly crooked place where you are required live in fear of cops.
Dirty cops are dirty cops, Ohio is a police state.
I wondered why the Ohio plates always hung out in the left lane dragging ass when they are here.
You can spray Lysol on shit all day, and at the end of the day it is still shit, even if a crooked judge says it isn't.
Unless you know them or someone more powerful than them, you lose.
To quote "Patrolman Henry Hill, Colorado Springs PD"...
(truly the biggest rolling pile of crooked lowlife fat slob shit disguised as a cop I have encountered in my life)
"I don't need to hear your side of the story. It is your fault and you are getting a ticket."
This loser later committed blatant perjury against me in El Paso county court to protect his drinking buddy who had rear ended me.
Some cops are good, some cops are fair, some cops are bad, some cops are just garbage with a badge.
I'll just skip Ohio since the true distance between 'estimating speed' and 'just making shit up' is just a fat crooked fucker with a quota eating a donut and hiding in the ditch with the rest of the roadside trash.
Fuck Ohio, it's dirty cop/judge show, and all the slow cowering idiots from there who block the left lane on I-95.
That's OK. I'll be estimating my fine...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The uncertainty is in most cases not an exact value as you suggest. In scientific studies, it is the standard deviation, which implies something like 60% of the measured values would fall within this mark.
What part of ``don't admit to knowing anything'' is confusing you? If you tell them that you know that they're an officer, they'll know that you know. Now they have the upper hand!
My first ticket was like that.
A fairly long steep hill with a 25 mph limit led away from the high school I went to, and the speed trap was set near the bottom of said hill. Easy money.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
If I have to drive though Ohio on a regular basis, I'll get one of those GPS logging devices. They log your location, speed, and the time. That way you can have PROOF of your exact speed vs the officers "Estimation".
Seriously, though, some of the legal reasoning seems pretty insane.
Using the time-speed-distance math formula, the pilot determined the speed of the white vehicle to be eighty-four miles per hour in both the second and third quarters of the mile and seventy-seven miles per hour in the fourth quarter.
So right off the bat, we have the government's assertion that he was going 81.67 mph averaged over 33 seconds.
2:46 p.m. – 57 mph; 2:48 p.m. – 50 mph; 2:50 p.m. – 44 mph; and 2:52 p.m. – 50 mph.
[...]
On May 15, 2009, Barnes filed a motion to dismiss his case because the prosecutor failed to provide him with (1) a copy of the video from the ground trooper’s cruiser, which he maintained would show that there were other cars in the area that matched the description of his car and would provide the audio of the conversation between the pilot and the ground patrol, and (2) the ground trooper’s notes/log that would show the tickets he gave to other motorists that day. This motion was overruled later that same day.
It goes on. Basically, if there is a moral here, it is that you can't get away with arguing pro se, even in traffic court. Especially when every time the appellate court quotes you they have to include a sic.
These documents reflected a rate of speed of fifty miles per hour at the time the troopers purported that he was traveling at eighty-four miles per hour. However, Barnes did not have an independent recollection of his speed at that time. In addition, Barnes testified that the GPS provided the average of his speed over a two-minute time frame. In other words, the GPS did not give his specific speed at a specific time, but an average speed over two minutes. Further, Barnes presented no evidence from a person with personal knowledge regarding how the GPS calculates speed, whether there is any type of calibration of the equipment used to detect speed, whether the methods employed by his particular company to detect speed are scientifically reliable, or the accuracy of the GPS’ speed detection.
It seems like they are saying he needs to mount an O.J. Simpson "dream team"-quality defense in traffic court to establish reasonable doubt (that the pilot was either lying or wrong in his identification of the right "white vehicle"). The prosecution is relying on ~11 second averages, while Barnes has two minutes. If his GPS were correct, then he would have to have traveled 38 mph (in a 65 zone) for the remainder of the two minute period recorded to still average 50 mph. That isn't absolute proof, but it certainly casts a doubt. In opposition, the government offered only the testimony of two officers. His GPS proof is also rejected because one of the officers said that the slow speeds reported (which Barnes attributed to truck traffic) are unlikely on that highway at that time. Since no video (Appelate Court: "Barnes has not shown that a video of the incident even exists") was presented, however...
And what's with the fixation on his independent recollection? Traffic court is fucked. There seems to be an incredibly unhealthy weight attributed to (notoriously unreliable) testimony, and a rejection of physical ("circumstantial") evidence. If the cops can get away with "his traffic excuse is implausible, because we say so" then the defendant should be able to get away with "it is common knowledge that GPS is fairly reliable, and the cops are declining to produce physical evidence that almost certainly exists, which could potentially contradict my testimony." Especially since the discrepancy in reported speeds was so massive. The defendant was obviously incompetent in representing himself, but this is traffic court! It would not be plausible for a normal defendant to get an engineer who designed the GPS chip on the cellphone to testify on his
Except that calling police constables "officer" is only common in some parts of the world, and wasn't done in the US either until the end of 19th century (according to Etymonline), only recently in Canstralia, and not at all in many other English-speaking countries.
100+ years of common use in the US or not, common constabulary are not officers unless they hold a rank of office. It's like calling all university teachers "professor", physician's assistants "doctor", pilots "captain", or a judge's associate "your honour" -- it dilutes the value of the titles and demeans those who hold the actual titles.
There's no such thing as instantaneous speed. Velocity is always distance over time. If time is zero, that's a divide by zero.
You didn't do well in calculus, did you?
Goddamnit. You owe me a new keyboard.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Never do this:
"Do you know why I pulled you over today?"
"Yes sir, you are conducting an investigation in the discharge of your official duties, and had probable cause to do so."
They don't like that one at all....
If the cop wants to challenge the validity of it, he can certainly do that on cross examination
No, no, no, no, no. If a cop ever tries this, immediately object.
The cop is a WITNESS, not a prosecutor. He is there to offer testimony and answer questions, not prosecute a case.
It is up to the judge, or the prosecutor if there is one, to question your evidence.
It's doubtful that you could show an appropriate chain of evidence with the GPS. It's easily argued that you tampered with any such evidence.
Ticketing for illegal speeds is pretty easy, most people confess to it.
"Do you know why I pulled you over?" "I was speeding." "I saw you doing 80mph" "Yes sir, that's about right. I'm sorry."
Voila, instant ticket for 80mph, and a confession to back it up.
I did the opposite. You never *KNOW* why the officer stops you. You may have been speeding. He may be pulling you over for a burned out taillight, or your vehicle may match a description of one seen at a crime scene, or it may even match the description of a vehicle from a missing persons case. Don't guess.
Right up there with - after pulling someone over for going [limit+20] the officer asks "Do you know how fast you were going back there?". It's amazing how many boneheads answer, "Probably [limit+10], sir." As if by somehow admitting to a LESSER amount of speeding, they'd get out of trouble. Guess what folks - it's still speeding, and you still just admitted to it.
On the other hand - it's often possible to drive quite a bit over the speed limit , as long as you're not driving like an idiot. If given a choice between someone driving 80/65 in a straight line in the right line; and someone driving 75/65 while alternating between weaving through traffic, tailgaiting, and tromping on their brakes... most officers aren't going to pick the person who's posing little to no risk at 80.
Once in a while, you'll get a cop who knows the fine line between protecting and serving, and trying to find any any reason to write a ticket.
Several years, I got pulled over on I-10 between Ozona, Tx and Ft. Stockton, Tx. Literally in the middle of nowhere. I'd had the cruise control set to 85mph for a few hours, and thinking about how much sooner I could get there at over 150mph. There was very little traffic. Just the occasional large truck or RV. The roads were straight, and visibility was very clear. As I was cruising along, I saw a patrol car come up the top of the next hill, and then turn around. I slowed down, and when he hit the lights, I stopped.
When he stopped me, I told him what I always say. "no sir, I don't know why you pulled me over." He told me I was doing 85mph. Hmm, good guess. :)
He checked my plates and drivers license, saw that I was just driving through, and told me to be careful.
I got pulled over in El Paso later the same day. That time, I was driving just under the speed limit in traffic. He was stopping me to make sure it wasn't a stolen car. He actually looked really surprised when he saw white guy, rather than a hispanic person. He wasn't quite sure what to say, so he just asked if I had insurance. He didn't ask to see the insurance card, nor registration, and told me to go and have a nice day. :) I'm pretty sure if I had been hispanic, this story would be ending with what the inside of an El Paso jail looks.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
A dream is good. A plan is better.
Yeah, it's so rude of them to think you were speeding when you were merely being a douche-nozzle.
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
Your later example is very true. I rarely get pulled over cruising on the Interstates. I don't drive too fast (like 100+), I don't tailgate, and I don't cut in and out of traffic. I'm even one of those lunatics that uses their turn signals for lane changes. :) I've been passed by patrol cars who were chasing down someone stupid in front of me. I'd rather be moving quick and safe, than in a way that'd make me (and probably someone else too) dead. I just posted one of the rare times that I've been pulled over on an Interstate, and that was let go with a verbal warning. I'm very happy to see them ticket someone who thinks the lines are just decorations, and my bumpers are a guide to exactly how close they can get.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Do you know why I pulled you over?
Because today is ticket quota day?
Because the doughnut shop is closed?
Because you're trying to compensate for your small penis by driving a big patrol car and carrying a gun?
Because you think I'm cute? Fuck off, I'm not gay.
Because you realized how much of your life you've wasted writing tickets, and needed someone to talk to?
Because you know I just robbed that bank?
Because I wasn't going fast enough to get away?
I still like your answer better. :) I won't ever use it though.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Every mail client I've seen recognizes PGP/GPG blocks and doesn't display the text of them to the user unless they request it...
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I would place a lot more credence in EZ-pass times than visual estimates.
A lecturer at the College of Law(*) here in Sydney likes to tell students a story where he was acting for the defendants on a speeding fine where the radar evidence had to be thrown out due to failure to meet the calibration and testing requirements. The magistrate asked the cops to estimate the speek on the basis that the cops have a lot of experience viewing vehicles in the context of speeding laws. Coincidentally the cops' estimate was identical to the radar value (20km over the speed limit). When it came to the defence GPS logs were tendered showing the vehicle went over for only a few seconds by 1km. Result: not guilty. (*) the College of Law teaches post graduate courses to law graduates, including the mandatory legal practice diploma course.
His educated guess is after all based on the display of the radar gun.
Sorry but my ingrained sense of justice hates it when smarmy lawyers try to get their client of on technicalities. Odd that lawyers are so dispised in general because they rape the law yet everyone uses them to rape the law.
Just don't fucking speed, how fucking hard is that?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I think the bigger problem is cops using "innocent" traffic stops as a way of searching your car. Very few people actually know the correct way to decline an unreasonable search, and even when one does, the cops will often still search the car. I have seen them put a dog, illegally I might add, into a car, get the dog excited, and then walk away. They have no intention of finding anything, but they know a full-grown German Sheppard will more than likely shred a leather interior. In fact, when done illegally, anything found cannot be used as evidence, but they still get off wasting your time, making you sweat (even innocent citizens should be worried anytime they are searched in this country), and destroying your car. Granted, there are the "1 in 10" good cops out there, but they are not the majority. I encourage all of my friends to know their rights and how to not give them up, but sadly, that is not enough. I like the defense of getting out a camera, but according to another /. post, that may be taken away soon.
I'm pretty sure this country used to have something to do with "rights" and "freedom" but I don't really see that anymore. I tried looking it up in a Texas school book, but it did not have anything about it either ;-) (I hope someone gets that!)
Member of American Sarcasm Society - Motto: "Like we need your help!"
That's why I always say "evening", no matter the time of day!
It's interesting, I've *never* been asked "Do you know why I pulled you over?" although I've been stopped by the police many times, especially when I had the scruffy old Dodge truck when I was in Texas (and I have black hair, so from behind you can't tell me apart from a Mexican, I suspect scruffy vehicle + potential Mexican = find an excuse for a traffic stop. Once I had a nicer vehicle all of a sudden I wasn't being stopped once a month. Strange, that).
The conversation always went like this:
"May I see your license and insurance?" (which I would pass over)
"The reason why I stopped you is X" (where X was normally "you were travelling at Y miles per hour" or "you have a burned out brake light" or whatever).
I was stopped for speeding 5 times in 5 months, but only ever got one ticket. The officer never asked "Do you know why I pulled you over"; they always came straight out with the speed they'd seen me doing.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Oh my god, when I was about 8 years old I remember making a conscious decision to always say "good morning" when greeting people. After a while it stuck and 22 years later I still do it all the time!
There is no 'chain of evidence' with radar guns either. Most of the time, the cop has it placed on the dashboard and keeps one eye open on the speed readout while he takes a nap or talks on his cell phone to his girlfriend. The ticket doesn't show anything related to the evidence, just an observation by a cop. I've been ticketed before by cops guessing my speed, there's nothing new about that, it's just that now it's enshrined in law.
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The constitution says you're entitled to it if the amount of the fine in question is more than twenty dollars. If the jury doesn't agree that a copy eyeballing your speed is good enough, they'll acquit you.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
It's doubtful that you could show an appropriate chain of evidence with the GPS. It's easily argued that you tampered with any such evidence.
Not exactly. Chain of evidence only applies to state-aquired evidence. Your evidence does not need a chain of evidence to be brought into court(or else no defense evidence would be available -- No one has the police officer or access to an evidence locker that is required for appropriate chain of evidence). Now, that doesn't mean that you can't be cross-examined on the veracity of that evidence or whether you had the opportunity to tamper with it. But establishing that you had opportunity to tamper with it is a far cry from establishing that you did. You're still better off with that evidence, especially coupled with a respectful attitude and appropriate demeanor at court.
This is literally one of the best and funniest posts I've ever seen on /. 1729, you rock.
"You cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense." - C.S. Lewis on Intelligent Design
Seriously, this is actually holding up in court...I would take it to the supreme court...no way should someone's guess when it comes to a moving vehicle, because it could be a little bit over or under, but the only to make sure is with radar or laser...humans make major mistakes, machines don't...i hope not only does it go to supreme court and the defendant wins, but also sets a precedent that stupid state judges should just follow the book, and not try to rewrite the law in their court room.
Shouldn't that depend on the GPS' logging behavior? Modern GPS chips are said to compute speed from doppler shift comparison between birds and can temper the inaccuracy of their position-based measurement with that behavior. Or did the person who told me that just want to impress me and make me look like a tool? I don't really understand the math involved so trying to read papers on the subject is like @#%@#!@#
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
My Dad has told me stories that they did this down in southern Florida as far back as the early 1960s. He and his friends would speed down Alligator Alley until they were nearly to their destination, then pull off at one of the diners on the highway (not passing the timer/toll booth), sit and have a sandwich/coffee/etc. until enough time had passed, then exit the road so that their average speed was legal.
I guess that is what someone does to brag that he is a lawyer. Or karma whoring. Or both.
It's like !ianal, but on ecstasy.
No, its just that that particular post got rather specific.
Here in Ohio, traffic tickets are just a cost of doing business. I got in a wreck a few years back on black ice. I was one of four cars that wrecked in the same spot. The cop apologized to me for giving me the "failure to control" ticket, but explained that if he didn't, his boss would make him drive out to my house and issue it later. Everyone knows it is NOT about public safety, it's about money.
And certainly don't guess any of those last ones.
"Do you know why I pulled you over?"
"My vehicle matches the description of one seen at a crime scene?"
At least here in Florida a police officer can pace your vehicle to determine if you're speeding and write you a citation based on that. A friend of mine got one several years ago. A cop claimed he heard him peeling out so he wrote him a wreckless driving ticket. He took it to court to dispute it and when he got there the cop lied and said he "pace clocked" him doing 45 in a 35 for 2 miles.
Yeah Sure.
My guess is it falls under the category of "attempting not to get disbarred for offering advice in a jurisdiction where he is not licensed to practice" or some such.
Also, remember, if he's *your* attorney from the Internet, and you lose your case, it hurts his win-loss record, and then he might not make the All-Star Litigation this year.
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
I learned a long time ago that Traffic tickets and Parking tickets long ago stopped being about safety, deterrent, or legal punishment. They are simply a tax. They are a way for the government and more specifically Police Departments and Cities and Municipalities to raise funds to pay their wages, and continue their existence. As such now, I ignore laws pretty much, and when caught, just pay the tax, and call it the cost of operating a Car in Canada.
Example 1:
Driving down a street that is considered "residential" and thus a 50km/h limit, but which really has hardly any actually houses on it and actually serves as the main connection between the City and the University. There is a park where the police set up a tripod speed trap, and work in 3 person teams. One operates the hidden tripod, one stands in the middle of the road past the trap and waves EVERYONE over (as NOBODY drives 50km/h there), and the last gives out the tickets and this speech: "We clocked you going 6x km/h, I am writing you a ticket for 125$ and two points off your licence. You can pay the fine or fight it in court. Alternatively you can attend a drivers safety course being put on by the local Police for 75$ and you won't have to pay the fine, or lose any points."
Fines go the the Province whereas if you opt for the alternative all the money goes to the local cops. Can you say conflict of interest?
Example 2:
I was visiting a friend of mine in Ottawa, Canada. Never having visited before I wasn't exactly sure where he lived, though I had directions. Anyway I arrive at what I think is the house. Not being sure if this is the case I stop and park in front, and walk up to the front door and knock. I friend comes to the door, and we say Hey and ask him where we should park. While we are talking, my friend who is facing the street, is like "dude, I think that guy is trying to give you a ticket", which is crazy as the car had only been stopped for like 2min, I mean traffic lights are longer. I turn around and confront the parking guy, and say I just stopped to see if this is the correct house, and that I am parking out back. The Parking guy say, "Oh OK, just make sure you move it, I'll cancel the ticket." I got in my car and moved it immediately. 3 or 4 months go by and I get a letter from the City of Ottawa, and I get a nasty later saying that not only did I owe money for a parking ticket, it was now overdue, and that I owed extra for that, and that if I didn't pay in X amount of days I would be convicted and all sorts of nasty things would happen to me. Naturally I was fucking pissed. I called up the parking services people in Ottawa and explained my situation, and this went back and forth 4 or 5 times until finally the parking attended lied and said that he did issue the ticket on purpose and it was a violation. My ONLY options were to fight the ticket or to pay. However I was told they only way I could fight it was in court in Ottawa. So my option was to take off work, drive 300KM, spending about 4-500$ dollars to fight the 60 or 75$ dollar parking ticket. The amount of anger, and rage in me was ultimate. However bottom line when it came down to it, it makes no sense to spend 500$ to fight 75$, so in the end I swallowed my rage and paid the City of Ottawa. It was extortion plain and simple. Most people put into that situation will do the same. So the City of Ottawa and others will play the game and generate revenue using the legal system. It disgusts me. How is it we are innocent until proven guilty, with the exception of traffic and parking? Expedience, and court costs, and various groups (police, cities) take advantage of this fact to their financial gain.
Calculus allows estimating a non-existent state, speed at an interval of zero doesn't exist, so you work out what it would be nearest that point.
Its still NEVER an instantaneous speed, since speed is only defined when time changes.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
This is nothing new, almost every state has a law called "To fast for conditions" where no actual speed is required, only the inclination by the police officer to believe that the rate of speed that you were traveling was not conducive to save travel. The only reason for a radar/ladar etc.. is to provide supporting proof to a judge that you were speeding, the officer's word is actually good enough. The only time a radar (etc...) comes in handy is if the officer is trying to prove the difference of "To fast for conditions" and "Reckless".
Many departments:
- Certify their police cars' speedometer to "pace" your speed, again only as additional proof.
- As part of an officer's radar/ladar certification require the officer to estimate a vehicles speed within a few MPH of its actual speed. - Utilizes "Time over Distance"; two pre-measured marks and the officer times you as you cross them.
As for someone asking will the judge accept GPS information, that is also an individual judge by judge decision, but you need to be careful of trying to use a GPS to disprove a ticket.
You: "Your Honor, Officer Dudley claimed I was traveling at 25MPH over the speed limit, but according to my GPS I was only traveling 50MPH".
Judge: "I'll accept your GPS as evidence, but the speed limit in that area is 30MPH, you are here-by fined for Reckless, and your driving privileges are suspended for 6 months. Thank you for your bit of evidence." ...and yes, I've been in court where the defendant has had this happen to them.
While I do not necessarily agree with the last part (self-incrimination), the moral of the story if make sure you have all your ducks in a row.
The big problem that I see here is that in Ohio moving violations aren't always based on fact in the first place. I got a ticket there once in a vehicle that was governed below what the officer wrote the ticket for. I was going 57 in a semi truck, the speed limit for semi's was 55, he pulled me over and said that I was going 67. The truck was governed at 63. I explained this to the officer but he didn't really care what I had to say. After that I always set my cruise at about 54 when traveling through Ohio because I felt the best way to get even with them was to not give any opportunity to acquire revenue at my expense. If this truly is a revenue game for Ohio like I believe that it is, they can now issue tickets with even more ease.
The important part you didn't quite get is that when they say anything you say can be used against you in a court of law they don't say anything you say can be used to defend yourself. If you say it to the cop and the cop uses it against you it is evidence, but if you say it and try to use it as defense it is hearsay and inadmissible.
every anarchist is a baffled dictator. Benito_Mussolini
It's not the pot that makes them stupid. It's just the fact that people they show on TV are stupid.
I think you implied what I corrected, I just wanted to clarify it.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Now Ohio will be able to catch all those speeders and murderers with little cost to their law enforcement agencies. This ruling should also allow Ohio citizens and those just passing through to be found guilty of just about anything, promptly and efficiently. No time Ohio's deficit will be solved. The bad news is that Ohio politicians will rush to get themselves appointed as deputy sheriffs so they can immediately arrest anyone they suspect may not have given sufficiently to their reelection campaigns. First Arizona and now Ohio, soon I won't be able to travel hardly anywhere in the US and still feel safe.
If it's a female cop, I find "woof" works wonders.
Most gps logs only show the calculated location and timestamp. They do not show the timing information from each satellite. Without this info, it is easier to falsify a log.
More importantly, the law has little if anything to do with physical reality.
That all depends on the judge. When my wife asked if the prosecution needed to provide proof that she was speeding, asserting that she was innocent until proven guilty, she was told by the judge "This is traffic court, the constitution doesn't apply here!"
I call those people "copbait" or sometimes "copcatcher". Because of them, I'm free to speed responsibly without interference. It's all about a) being safe and b) not calling attention to yourself.
No, he doesn't.
He offers testimony, and answers questions about that testimony. That's it.
Ya, there was a bit much, and the trunk was just tied half way open. I was hoping they wouldn't notice.
I swear, I just found it, and I was taking it to the police station. :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Weird. I guess it's just a difference in who we are, and where we were stopped.
When I was a kid, I was stopped at least once a week. Of those stops, I was never ticketed. They just liked harassing me (there's a long story behind that). Every time I've been stopped in the last 20-some years, I've always if I knew why they stopped me.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Well, yes and no.
Too many people in real life are stupid, which makes the television representation of them almost correct.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
That's one of the things I do on long drives. :) I let someone who wants to drive faster than me pass, even if he just wants to do 2mph faster than me. I let him take point at about a mile ahead. If I see him hit his brakes hard, I let off the gas and roll down just under the speed limit. If I see pretty blue lights kick on, I know I just lost my point man, and wait for another to catch up. If he's driving way too fast and I lose visual on him, I slow down a little until another point man comes up.
I found the best place to be is with a point man way ahead, and several cars following. Drivers tend to cluster, and they'll play follow the leader with a fast car. On a long enough drive, I'll usually end up with 5 or 6 cars doing exactly what I do. If I move right and slow down, they'll all do exactly what I do because I obviously see something they don't. :) If the police stop someone, they'll get the point man, or the last car in line.
So, your copbait/copcatcher description is perfect. :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I think that's the difference between a home grown GPS tracking tool, and a commercial one. If your company is providing that service, then it's an easy matter to show the accuracy, which would be the business you are in. It's in your best interest to provide accurate information, not falsify information for a single client. If I, Mr Joe Public, were to do the same thing, it will quickly be argued that the data I generated is easily modified with whatever data I want to include.
I know of a few commercial units that do what you're describing.
I would expect one day the courts will review the data and methodology, when a sufficient incident occurs.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
That's why you don't admit to anything. Then there's nothing for them to testify to. "He confessed" will be testified to. "He told me about rushing home to help his sick kid" won't ever be repeated.
It was mentioned in this lecture.
Here's the actual Miranda quote, which has been modified for the Miranda warning.
It says your statement will be used against you. It doesn't say it will be used to help clear you. Nothing you say can possibly help you.
Ideally, you should remain silent when the cop pulls you over, but doing that will likely result in worse treatment. Admitting you don't know why you were stopped is the truth. Stating anything beyond that is bad for you.
Idle chitchat about the weather or even local laws (once the cop is done doing his official duties, and gives up on giving you a ticket) isn't a bad idea, as long as you're careful never to implicate yourself. I like asking about their car or motorcycle. They like talking about them, especially if they're driving a special one. :) I had a nice chat recently with an off-duty officer about his retired police edition Camaro. We compared notes about our cars, since they are similar.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Sorry - I have to disagree with you here.
You can't MEASURE instantaneous speed, however it does exist. It can also be measured with arbitrary precision (if you're willing to tolerate arbitrary error in position).
I'd consider velocity a state variable. Sure, it can only be measured relative to something else, but at any moment it has a value.
You could consider the speed of an object the distance it would travel upon in a given amount of time absent any forces, even if other forces are not absent, and even if you're considering an instant in time.
I can also tell you what the speed of light in a vacuum is, even though I'm sitting in a room with breathable air.
Physics experts are welcome to comment, but I'd prefer some kind of authoritative citation. What you're suggesting just doesn't make sense.
That's the point of establishing a evidentiary foundation. You testify under oath as to: 1) Here's the process by how I acquired it; and 2) the printout is a fair and accurate representation of the data contained in my GPS log.
Maybe you could just guess what the GPS log would have contained ...
Yup! I live in the country and commute about 25 miles to a job in the outer 'burbs so there isn't a lot of traffic, and consequently not a lot of cops. Last summer I was driving home in my 350Z accelerating through about 85 or so, with the engine screaming at redline (love that sound!), came over a rise -- and passed a sheriff going the other way. He instantly lit up and turned around to chase me. By that time he made the U-turn I had slowed to about 65 or so (keeping off the brakes).
- Do you know why I pulled you over?
- No, not really, why?
- I clocked you doing 68 back there.
- Really? I just came off the stop sign at the intersection with County 78, didn't think I could pick up speed that fast.
- Well you did! Be careful and keep it below 55, have a nice day.
- K. Thx. Bye, officer.
It doesn't always work, but you're better off being polite and playing dumb than getting pissy with a tired, overworked cop.
Would be nice if gpsd stored a (compressed) log of all the actual radio signal (perhaps as lossless audio?) to make a "tampering" claim even more difficult...
Luke-Jr
Speed is defined as distance over time. That makes this whole argument really simple -- without a passage of time, there is no speed.
We talk about instantaneous speed because its convenient, and its a technicality to claim as I did that it doesn't exist, but to be fair, without time, all you have is position.
For a thought problem, lets say your granularity of speed measurement is one tenth of a second. That is to say, you can measure the position of an object every tenth of a second. By subtracting, and dividing by one-tenth, you get the speed on average over that time.
Now what happens if the object came to a complete stop in say the 8/100ths of a second after our last measurement? In the one tenth of a second that passed, we would've estimated its speed at greater than zero, because it had been moving -- on average, but in fact it is now quite at rest and we've attributed a false number to it.
Accuracy of speed measuring is based on the granularity of time we measure, which is very good these days, but its still based on time, and has to be.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
I dunno - when I look up speed on wikipedia about the first definition I spot is a definition of instantaneous velocity as a derivative.
I'm also not certain that measurements of speed depend on granularity of time at all, but I'd have to confirm that with somebody who knows a bit more about quantum mechanics.
Suppose an electron changes state and emits a photon. That photon will have a doppler shift based on the velocity of the electron relative to an observer. I don't think that the emission of a photon takes time - the energy of the electron and the photon is quantized - at one moment of time there is no photon, and at another moment there is a photon with a given wavelength. So, when you measure the wavelength of that photon, you're getting an instantaneous measure of speed.
Of course, in practice you're going to measure lots of photons, which creates an interval, but it really is just an average of many instantaneous velocity measurements.
I'm open to clarification from somebody with knowledge of such things.
On a final note - in my brief search I couldn't actually find an authoritative definition for speed anywhere. Sure, we all "know" what it is, but we're arguing technicalities, and doing so requires agreement on a precise definition in the first place. Lots of concepts in physics are defined by differentials, such as entropy (dS = dq(rev)/T).
It depends on your GPS, some show only speed, time, position, heading, etc as part of a NEMA message. Some show number of satellites tracked, estimated position error due to poor reception (showing good reception is good for your case) as well as which the Signal to Noise ratio of each satellite received. Know your equipment.
The truth shall set you free!
That would be correct if the speed limits were based on actual "safe" speeds, which is not the case.
I invite you to read report No. FHWA-RD-92-084 by the U.S. Department of Transportation. Some interesting conclusions below:
# Accidents at the 58 experimental sites where speed limits were lowered increased by 5.4 percent.
# Accidents at the 41 experimental sites where speed limits were raised decreased by 6.7 percent.
# Lowering speed limits more than 5 mi/h (8 km/h) below the 85th percentile speed of traffic did not reduce accidents.
You may also find this interesting.
And the the hundres of other people in the area don't want your loud-ass shit disrupting their peace and quiet. Think about someone other than yourself for a change, douche.
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
Oh, I get it -- you're not like those *real* loud-ass douche Harley drivers, you're just loud enough that people get annoyed enough to complain to the police about you on whatever pretense will get their attention, as opposed to the *truly* loud Harley drivers, who ... wait, what was the difference again?
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.