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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."
What evidence was there, other than the bloggers post, that an offence had occurred?
How could the police charge him without it?
He admitted it himself. Admitting your crimes on the internet are no different than admitting them in real life. There also were pictures and videos of his crime.
Same laws apply to Internet as real life. It would be pretty stupid to go tell police that. Well, they can read the internet too.
There you go
Why shouldn't it swing both ways? Doesn't the policeman have to make sure that there's actually a dead person?
You are not the first to have made that mistake. All that has to be proven is beyond reasonable doubt, not beyond any shadow of a doubt. While hard proof of a dead person (such as identifiable remains) would obviously give you "beyond any shadow of a doubt", it's quite possible to prove beyond reasonable doubt without such proof, as Hans Reiser's trial demonstrated.
IOW, the police only need good reason to believe that there's a dead person.
You wouldn't automatically be charged, but you'd probably be arrested or at the very least invited to the police station for questioning. The police would probably examine your claim, compare it with missing persons reports, and decide whether you're telling the truth or just being a nuisance (in which case, you might get a warning or be charged with wasting police time).
The article has a link to the actual forum post, which is worth a read if you're under the impression that the only proof the police had was a confession. In fact, the driver mentions the location and date of his crime, plus the fact that there were witnesses. There's more than enough information there for the police to conduct an investigation.
In the end, the guy pleaded guilty not just on the internet but in a court of law.
His bragging alone would not have secured a conviction. There was also evidence that on the same car forum the man was claiming that he was smoking pot and driving on a different occasion. This however, could not be confirmed and charges were not pursued.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2010/08/10/facebook-speeding-conviction658.html#ixzz0wIDKdH3a
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
Statements made online are neither the equivalent of testifying in court nor expected to be 100% TRUE. If the only "evidence" the cops had was his online statement, they had no evidence at all.
Do bear in mind the following, tiny fact:
A 19-year-old man from a Toronto suburb has pleaded guilty to careless driving
Doesn't matter if they had "evidence" or not, if the judge accepted the plea, the case is closed.
Yes, since the summary was somewhat lacking:
Ref: http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/845967--speeding-boast-online-costs-19-year-old-his-licence
You are wrong. "A car" in itself is no more dangerous than a fork on its own.
The "danger" of speed increases in proportion to the increase in speed. How, you say?
1) Less reaction time when something unexpected happens - blow a tire, new pothole, sudden curve, animal in the road, child in the road, broken down car in the road...
2) F=ma. When your car, traveling at a given velocity, suddenly and rapid decelerates due to impacting something, that Force is transmitted into you, the fame of your car, and the object you've hit. The higher your speed (velocity), the higher your deceleration (negative acceleration) when you come to a stop due to slamming into something. Therefore, the force involved in the crash is directly proportional to the speed at which you strike an object. More speed = more force, given the same car.
3) Increased braking distance - meaning the time it takes you to *safely* stop and not kill yourself or someone else is greater the faster you are going.
Speed, in and of itself, is dangerous. There are conditions where "60m/h" is a generally safe speed. There are conditions were "20m/h" is generally a safe speed. But no matter how you look at that, the higher speed is "more dangerous" in a given circumstance than the lower speed.