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Online Forum Speeding Boast Leads To Conviction
Meshach writes "In Canada, a nineteen-year-old man has lost his driving license for six months and is facing one year of probation after the police arrested him for dangerous driving as a result of a post on an online message board. The tip apparently came from an uninvolved American who called the Canadian authorities after he saw the post bragging about how fast the man went."
Motherfucking snitch.
What evidence was there, other than the bloggers post, that an offence had occurred? How could the police charge him without it?
Doesn't he know he should be driving an Audi now?
The ______ Agenda
Heisenberg got pulled over for speeding. The cop says "Do you know how fast you were going?" And Heisenberg sayd "No, but I know exactly where I am."
while (true != false) process_more_stupid_code();
I am here telling you guys that my car was traveling at 299,792,459 m/s along the I80 free way, it only took me 1/10,000th of a second to reach my destination though so nobody else saw.
license plate written down
He was speeding as a result of a post on an online message board?
There you go
He pleaded guilty to this.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
In this season's last episode of Top Gear there was a review of iirc a Ferrari where the same screen was used for the satnav and the digital speedometer, so one can have either one or the other, but not at the same time. The perfect car for Heisenberg. :)
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Oh what? Wrong sort of speed.
I just drove 230mph through a school zone, hit 3 children without stopping at the scene of the accident, failed to use my turn signal while driving the wrong way down the road with expired tabs and a burnt out tailight after drinking 13 long island iced teas!
. . . . .
. . . . .
wait for it. . .
I posted the same joke a few days ago. Maybe I should issue a DMCA notice :)
Whenever in an argument, remember this.
As someone who owns a motorbike with similar performance to that M5 (though it's almost 10 times cheaper!), I have to say there really are times when 100KPH over the speed limit is still safe.
I don't know if these particular circumstances were safe... but he may have been able to accelerate to that speed and drop back down to safe speeds over a very short stretch of road... one where you may have perfect visibility of potential dangers.
Laws based on fixed speed/rules suck. There should be only one offense: driving dangerously under the conditions. Traffic police should be required to prove that it was dangerous every time.
Disclaimer: I was recently fined $300 for something that would have, at the very worst, given me a few bruises if I'd fallen off my bike.
Wakka Wakka
A quantum memory may be all scientists need to beat the limit of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, according to a paper published in Nature Physics.
According to a group of researchers, maximally entangling a particle with a quantum memory and measuring one of the particle's variables, like its position, should snap the quantum memory in a corresponding state, which could then be measured.
This would allow them to do something long thought verboten by the laws of physics: figure out the state of certain pairs of variables at the exact same time with an unprecedented amount of certainty.
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/08/quantum-memory-may-topple-heisenbergs-uncertainty-principle.ars
How about this rocket scientist, take your baby to the track. Go as fast as u want
Bought a kickass cool car that goes fast fast fast? Go for it - take it to the track and drop the hammer and see what the car is really made of. The public streets, with kids and grandmas and, you know, everyone else in the damn world, is not the track. Getting someone else killed just so you can enjoy an adrenaline rush is disgusting.
I'm glad the cops nailed him - I wish they'd confiscated the car (100kmh above the speed limit is, to say the least, excessive).
Why the hell does a child drive a BMW M5 anyway ? I sane parent would not give such a monster to his child. Let him start with a small but safe car and if in 5 years his OK, buy him whatever the hell your pocket wants.
It's just a shame that this moron didn't weed himself harmlessly out of the gene pool and save Canada the cost of prosecuting his sorry ass.
I piss off bigots.
So the police asked if he'd been speeding as he had bragged. he admitted it. Where's the need for any evidence. The guy doesn't sound particularly bright (for oh, so many reasons) and I would guess that he wasn't too good at thinking up plausible excuses.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
100 kph over the speed limit?! I didn't even think you could get a moose to run that fast! Whats he feeding him?
Monstar L
When Schrödinger was caught speeding, he claimed: "I didn't have that high speed before you measured. It was your measurement which caused my speeding."
Einstein, on the other hand, simply replied: "I've just proven that the true speed limit is the speed of light. I was clearly slower than the light, so your claim that I was speeding is wrong."
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
am i the only one surprised that a 19 yr old could afford a $40,000+ car? Even on eBay they're $40 grand http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200504383411
beautiful car, but i wouldn't want to pay the gas bill, with 12/18mpg.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Don't post anything on the internet you wouldn't feel comfortable showing or demonstrating to a police officer, your parents, your priest, etc.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Here we had a guy on a motorbike that mounted a camera and recorded his feats.
[fr] http://www.lejdd.fr/Societe/Faits-divers/Actualite/Un-motard-filme-ses-infractions-205788/
The policemen had the good idea to seize the device and review the recorded video and just found 65 counts of infraction to the road regulations. ...
One of them was a HUGE speed excess and the guy even recorded the speed indicator just to "prove" it to his friends. Bad idea
Of course the difference is that this material was not posted on the Internet. The video was directly extracted from the camera mounted on the bike. So the driver could not really deny that it did not happen in real life.
You should ask the cop in what reference frame, since everything is moving about at enourmous speeds anyways,
you obviously aren't familiar with this case:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Todd_Willingham
He claimed to be driving at 140kph in a built up area. You're suggesting that this might be safe?
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
This guy must be stupid on several different levels.....
In all reality that sort of speeding is reckless and stupid - and if a cop actually saw it, then I am all for this guy having to pay for the crime. Too many people treat their vehicles like toys and risk others lives for no reason at atll....
With that said though, I cannot see how it is possible for this guy to be convicted, unless he is a TOTAL idiot and actually confessed to the police, because people post bullshit on internet forums all of the time....For example, everyone should know that I stole a police car last night and drove it exceeding speeds of 160MPH between Philly and Atlantic City and ran it right into the ocean....well, wait, maybe that was actually MY car.....I must be hallucinating from the LSD lab that I built inside of the Police car as I was flying down the parkway.
What he should have done, when confronted about the post by the police, (which I am assuming is what happened) is said "I was making it up," or "I was just trying to impress the forum." I just have a huge problem with someone being charged for a traffic infraction based on a forum post when a officer clearly wasn't present and is basing the entire case/evidence on an internet forum post.
It's probably much too late to post this, but the police actually went to the street where he was supposed to have been speeding, and they found witnesses. That would probably have been enough to convict him, but he also confessed in court.
Now maybe that is just my opinion and feel free to disagree, but if you boast about exceeding the speed limit in a criminally dangerous way, then that puts your ability and more importantly your willingness to drive a car safely and according to the traffic rules very much into doubt. Even if it wasn't true. And we should also consider that his boasting, even if it wasn't the truth, could easily encourage others to actually do it, so that kind of boasting should be strongly discouraged. So I would see a good case for taking away his driving license for the boasting alone. I would also say that if he didn't do it, then he should at least be charged with wasting police time. (Interesting question: Would that apply if he did do it but they cannot prove it? )
I thought he was like "First post!" too quick and somebody fined him for posting too fast... English!
not even red light cameras can hit your license with points no a real cop needs to do it. Speed camera with real on site running them can but they still need your face shot and not just the plate as they need to prove the car owner was driving it and that it was not some other person driving it.
what if a valet did it? they have ways to mess with you if you don't tip good.
Read the fucking article, dipshit.
I wonder how his identity was discovered. Anyway, I bet Mark Zuckerberg feels relieved the idiot was exposed as a result of bragging about it on facebook :).
This is bullshit. Its after the fact, witnesses or not, there is no absolute proof of it. What kid doesn't brag, anyhow? Sounds like an easy case for a first time lawyer, to me.
One person in the forum claimed that he and his son witnessed this stunt. So it is likely the conviction was not based just on forum posts. The forum posts were merely the tip-off for the police. Unlike the American justice system, in Canada, it seems to get a conviction the prosecution still has to prove the case, even if the defendant admits something.
It depends on your country, and the exact laws. I wouldn't be so certain. In the EU, for instance, a photograph of a car breaking the law is enough to send a ticket to the house of the owner of that car. They are then legally required to identify the driver at the time of the incident - not doing so runs you into all sorts of "obstruction of justice, harbouring a criminal, etc." laws and also a lot of court time even if you just "forgot" who was driving that day - you have to basically put the court into the same doubt as yourself about who was driving, which isn't easy or cheap.
And a vast proportion of the cameras in the EU are forward-facing to catch faces. Those that aren't can normally capture enough of the inside of the car to prove male/female just from the silhouette (my father-in-law found this out when he said it was either himself or his American female friend driving, but he couldn't prove conclusively which it was at which time, so they sent another image from the same incident which proved which it was - they even chased her down to the US from the UK and sent her a ticket).
In the US things might be different, but if someone is driving - with permission - in your car and breaks any law, and the police ask who was driving at the time of the incident, you're in deep legal water if you start lying or saying you don't know. Same as if you'd knocked over a traffic light, been chased by police and were both found in the back seat of the car - they won't just let you off because they couldn't prove who was driving, they'll charge you both with obstruction. It's obvious that the legal owner of the car must know who was driving, or he'd report the car as stolen. If he does report the car as stolen, you're driving a stolen car. If he doesn't, you were driving with his permission and therefore he's obliged to identify you.
Sometimes it's not worth the hassle. Sometimes it hits a million and one legal trip-ups. But to just claim that a "real cop" must see you do something is barmy.
With that said though, I cannot see how it is possible for this guy to be convicted, unless he is a TOTAL idiot and actually confessed to the police, because people post bullshit on internet forums all of the time....For example, everyone should know that I stole a police car last night and drove it exceeding speeds of 160MPH between Philly and Atlantic City and ran it right into the ocean....well, wait, maybe that was actually MY car.....I must be hallucinating from the LSD lab that I built inside of the Police car as I was flying down the parkway.
There were multiple witnesses to the crime, at least one of whom - according to the perpetrator - had a pen and paper with him to write down the man's tag number. The main function of the forum posts seems to have been to demonstrate such a reckless attitude and lack of respect for other peoples' safety that multiple forum members contacted his local police, who then investigated it.
As the AC rather more bluntly pointed out, all of this information was available to you had you stopped to read the article before making pronouncements. (I know, I must be new here..)
They were just trying to make the car innards as practical as the Ferrari itself.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
If you read the original forum, his real problem is he admitted he was a telemarketing manager. After that he was pretty much fucked.
Maybe he shouldn't go around admitting to the times he violated the law?
You have a right to remain silent in most countries.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
>130mph on "public" asphalt several times.
Now what?
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
The difference being that this person was very specific as to location, even down to the street name, the neighborhood, etc. Enough information to give the police incentive to investigate the claim and validate that it was true, and enough to prosecute.
No they are not. They are numbers that are based on the best speed under all conditions. Multiple factors have been taken into account such as stopping distance, reaction distance, flow of traffic, population density, traffic density, zoning and more.
I dont know about the UK but here in AU, 50 KM\h (Embrace the Metric system) for built up areas, 60 for main roads and roads not in built up areas, up to 90 for major roads and up to 110 KM\h on highways and freeways. All of these roads have different purposes, conditions and environments as well as speed limits that suit those environments and allow the fastest possible travel with a good level of safety.
Define plenty. I live in Western Australia, I can literally drive along a highway at 100 KM\h for 3 hours and not see another soul and I would never define the kinds of places where you can safely drive at 290 KM\h as being plentiful. In fact given the results of an impact or loss of control at that speed I wouldn't call it safe at all but if you are going to do it, do it where you'll wont kill anyone else.
Reaction distance and stopping distance are very important so try to pay attention. Reaction distance is how far you travel before your brain registers that you need to stop, braking distance is how long it takes the vehicle to stop once the brakes have been engages and stopping distance is the combination of both.
An alert driver has a reaction time of 1.5 seconds which gives them a reaction distance of 25m at 60 KM\h and 120m at 290 KM\h, a distracted driver has a reaction time of 3 seconds which gives them a reaction distance of 50m at 60 KM\h and 240m at 290 KM\h. So it's reasonable to assume you will travel between 120 and 240 metres before even slamming on the brakes. Now stopping distance varies a lot between vehicle types, tyres, road surface, temperature and so forth. At 40 MPH (64 KM\h), an Ariel Atom will take approximately and additional 40 metres to stop giving it a total stopping distance of 65 metres (Source and Graph).
Now at 100 MPH (160 KM\h) you have a reaction distance of 66-130m and a breaking distance of 180m giving you a minimum stopping distance of 246m. Amusing the graphs trend continues we can say the breaking distance for 180 MPH is around 260-280m and add the reaction distance (120-240m) and your stopping is between 380 and 510m, which means that anything that pops up around 300m away will get splattered and you along with it (any land vehicle capable of 180 MPH is not built to withstand serious impacts).
Nice strawman but as I've demonstrated above there is real science behind it. But forget the children, think of the my local council (and they are _MY_ local council) who have better things to do then scrape you and the remains of your bike off of whatever object you smashed into. Far better uses of my tax dollars then fixing up the roads and other objects you decided to take out with an act of stupidity.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
A civil infraction does not go on your criminal record, in WA it only goes on your driving record, and it's dropped from insurance view every 3 yrs, and police view every 7, and is allways available to the FBI.
I'm sorry to hear about Florida. That's crazy! but then again, that's Florida. (hence Adam Carolla's game...)
Sorry so long to reply, been camping.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.