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Smart Phone Gets Driver Out of a Speeding Ticket
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Sahas Katta writes in Skattertech that a traffic cop pulled him over while driving home and gave him a speeding ticket but thanks to his Android, he ended up walking out of traffic court without having to pay a fine or adding a single point to his record. "I fortunately happened to have Google Tracks running when an officer cited me for speeding while heading back home from a friend's place," writes Katta. "The speed limit in the area was a mere 25 miles per hour and the cop's radar gun shockingly clocked me driving over 40 miles per hour." Once in court Katta asked the officer the last time he attended radar gun training, when the device was last calibrated, or the unit's model number — none of which the officer could answer. "I then presented my time stamped GPS data with details about my average moving speed and maximum speed during my short drive home. Both numbers were well within the posted speed limits," says Katta. "The judge took a moment and declared that I was not guilty, but he had an unusual statement that followed. To avoid any misinterpretations about his ruling, he chose to clarify his decision by citing the lack of evidence on the officer's part. He mentioned that he was not familiar enough with GPS technology to make a decision based on my evidence, but I can't help but imagine that it was an important factor.""
Guy gets a ticket, goes to court dressed respectfully, treats the judge with deference, geeks out to a clueless judge about his nifty new GPS toy, asks the cop something he heard a previous defendant's lawyer ask about lack of evidence that worked, and is found not guilty. The judge goes out of his way to note the GPS evidence played no part in the decision. How is this a story about a smart phone getting someone out of a ticket?
Alright! I know I'm in there! If I don't come out, I'll have to come in after me!
How is this a story about a smart phone getting someone out of a ticket?
Judge:I hereby sentence you to...OH NEW SHINEY!
Dunno about your phone, but my Droid's GPS is /not/ a precision instrument; it's routinely off by dozens of feet.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
By his own admission he was using google while driving.
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
25 MPH happens to be approximately 40KMH.
Me thinks the cop was incompetent or malicious and had the setting on Metric....
Do police radar allow you to choose units?
(Imperial police should not use metric units)
I'm going to guess that, yes, the phone got him out of the ticket, but only because the judge wanted to avoid setting a precedent by expressly ignoring it. I'd say his evidence was clear enough, but the judge wanted to avoid being the judge to rule that an app on someone's mobile device constitutes indisputable evidence, and the lack of evidence on the officer's part gave him the necessary out.
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
gives you a 2% error in speed, or 25 +/- 0.5 mph
The last time I was issued a speeding ticket (around 10 or more years ago) I never met with a judge. I went to argue that the ticket was bullshit, as it required my ~80hp car with 3 men (including myself) in it to have accelerated from 0 to 45 in about 10 feet. However when I went to argue against the ticket I was greeted by a district attorney (DA) instead of a judge. I was told if I wanted to meet with a judge I would need to schedule another date beyond the one that I was there for, or I could talk to the DA and see if I could get a plea deal from them.
The DA saw I had a spotless record, and gave me a deal where I paid a lesser fine, and no offense was reported in my name provided I was not pulled over again in their county for at least 1 full year. I took that deal because I didn't want to go back there, and have never been in that county since.
Nonetheless my understanding is that my experience was fairly typical. I have heard that few jurisdictions place a speeding ticket in front of a judge immediately.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Is there any evidence to back the author's claim? because it reads like a junior high fib.
Those new phones interfere with everything and it threw off the radar. Isn't that what happened? No, all you have to do is clock one person at the beginning of the shift and don't reset it all day. Much easier than actually using it.
That's actually a very good point, and another thing I would like to add is that every time a cop stops someone for speeding they should be able to archive video evidence until it can be purged. Maybe that's how it's done usually? I don't know, heck, I have never really seen inside a police car before so I have no idea how things are done in the police world. I only have police academy to help me visualize how it might be...
the cop has the rotten luck of pulling over the one honest guy.
If an officer testifying in my jurisdiction's traffic court can't say when they were trained in radar, when their radar was calibrated, and what model of radar they use, the citation is automatically dismissed. I have certifications for all three of those that I present in evidence immediately after giving general testimony. The smart phone is completely irrelevant to this case.
Essentially, lacking the predicate to introduce the radar into evidence, the officer was saying "he was speeding because I said so, and therefore I wrote him a ticket." Of course the judge threw it out.
You participated in a racket and were ripped off and now you are proud? Its clowns like you who don't fight that encourage them to continue the racket.
I had my car towed across the street once... a construction crew wanted to dig up my side. I have no problem with that. What I didn't like was the ticket for parking in the no parking zone. The issue is the no parking zone showed up probably at 7 am in the morning after I left.
You better believe I fought them! racket. Ont he way home from winning (for the wrong reasons... racket remember) I met my neighbor who had also been parked. I asked him why he didn't get a ticket. He said he did and he paid it.
Its people like my neighbor who encourage this abuse by paying.
Rule of thumb. Fight ALL tickets. Never allow them to profit from the racket and we'll hopefully get the racket more under control.
Been around long enough to know this doesn't actually happen. Good story though.
I was once in a traffic court in New Jersey dealing with other matters, so I got to watch them do the easy cases first. The officers all start off saying "Here's my radar gun, model X, I calibrated it first thing that morning, here's the results, blah blah." I have no way to tell if they're telling the truth, but they've at least got the story down to say they're doing everything by the book.
Last time I actually got pulled over for speeding was years ago, out in the Colorado mountains. Cop stopped me, said "Sir, we clocked you at 64mph, we're within township boundaries so the speed limit's 55", and he and I both knew I hadn't been going anywhere near that slowly, and that he was giving me a number that I couldn't argue with, plus it sounded like it was just under the boundary between the cheap ticket and the expensive ticket, and I apologized and said I should have been paying more attention, and he let me off with a warning.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The key was challenging the officers training and the calibration of the radar. The GPS was completely unnecessary. That fact that the officer could not validate his radar reading meant that, in the eyes of the law, he had no evidence. No evidence = case dismissed. If the calibration date were given but it was a little old, *then* the GPS data might have been useful. If the radar were calibrated recently, the defendant probably would have lost. An officer of the law wielding an official, calibrated instrument vs a consumer device of unknowable accuracy whose data could have tampered with is no contest.
The GPS data is no better than your word; it could be easily faked.
It is not from an independent, trusted third party.
Basically the whole story about the smart phone and the GPS data is a long-winded way of entering a "not guilty" plea.
I've seen an inexperienced, young cop in traffic court lose something like eight cases in a row because he could not produce evidence.
Everything from speeding, to red lights, to parking more than 30cm from the curb.
I had a brilliant defense planned against my charge of running a yellow light, but I didn't get a chance to present it; the judge asked the officer for evidence first, and since there wasn't any, all I had to do was enter my plea of no guilty.
I don't understand why he bothered to show up that day, other than to get paid.
I crossed a cop for about 3 hours in Vista County (San Diego). The judge recessed twice for a break during my cross. By the time I was done I'd gotten him to admit he had no idea how the thing operated (beam width, etc) and didn't know a single warning from the owners manual. I even pointed out his unit had been duct taped (an aftermarket modification). Still found guilty. The lack of certificate was your ticket killer.
I think the state couldn't prove its case, and judges tend to respect people who at least try to put up a decent defense (road was empty and relative in ER) — showing up with an app that showed your top speed and avg speed, that's more impressive than a sob story any day, imo.
(I always have to delete my in-car computer data when pulled over... my top speeds fall in category of wreckless driving, and I'm paranoid cops will check it out. But good for this guy staying @ or under speed limit... or 'adjusting' the data before the trial.)
If the officer can't testify that his radar device is properly calibrated than there's no evidence that anything it provides is valid. But go ahead and think it's your phone...
In Germany its a standard recommendation that if if the police catches you when speeding to ask for the calibration protocol of the device. There is a good chance you never will hear again from them.
And as a physicist: i agree. A meter which you have not calibrated and tested as prescribed in the instructions is worth nothing - there is no evidence that anybody was speeding; i would agree that he was speeding if the difference of measured vs allowed exceed the calibration range.
Radar measures instantaneous speed while most GPS software records position deltas over much much larger time scales (many seconds) to conserve resources (battery,cpu,storage)
The 5.0 invest great deal of time and effort selecting areas where vechicles are most likely to exceed the posted limit at a given locale even if only for a few moments.
Increase the number of ways Google can spy on you => get out of speeding tickets!
A few years ago, my wife was caught supposedly speeding at 40mph in a 30mph limit by a static camera.
When she was sent the forms to fill in to pay the fine (we're in the UK, the Police like to mug honest drivers politely before taking them to court), we asked for copies of the photos and, when they arrived, my wife was convinced that the timestamp on the photos was out by about 30 minutes, even though there was a statement with the letters stating when the cameras had last been calibrated.
As it happens, she had been coming back from a hospital appointment on the other side of town when she was caught, it was an easy task to get the consultant she had seen to write a short letter stating when her appointment had started & finished - this, in effect, proved the time on the camera was wrong & therefore brought the camera callibration into question.
Despite writing back to the police and sending them copies of the consultant's letter, the police still issued a summons for her to appear in court and we were prepared to fight it - but three days before the court appearance, we received a letter from the police stating that they were dropping the case.
It's more about having your wits about you and checking EVERYTHING before automatically paying up.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Would have to be a steep fine to get me to even consider disputing in court during the work week
a smartphone saved my life!
i was in a little dingy with a fishing rod setup waiting for a bite
i was playing angry birds on my phone
when suddenly a shark rams the boat and knock me overboard!
i start swimming like crazy for the shore, phone in hand
after 20 seconds i look back and see the shark coming toward me
for some reason it stuck around the boat, but was now heading for me
10 seconds later i hit shore and took a look back and the shark was gone!
as people gathered to see if i was okay i checked my phone and saw a missed call
now they tell me a speed boat saw what happened and intercepted the shark
but I can't help but imagine that the incoming call signal was an importannt factor
true story
Great. Now every self righteous nerd is going to think that by carrying a GPS enabled phone they'll be able to logic their way out of a ticket.
You know what I say? Show me proof kid or it didn't happen!
The lack of calibration is all that is required in the UK, whether or not you wave your (also uncalibrated) whatsit at the judge makes no difference. He might as well have said "The speed gun wasn't calibrated, and I have a marshmallow.", the result would be identical.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
This had nothing to do with that telephone, but all with the uncalibrated radar gun.
"To avoid any misinterpretations about his ruling, he chose to clarify his decision by citing the lack of evidence on the officer's part."
If Sahas accidently farted in court, would the title have been "Smart Phart gets ......?
Privacy is terrorism.
There's this concept called reasonable doubt. You might have heard of it? You introduced it. As the defendant, that is ALL you have to do. That's why you skated on the ticket.
I've seen the inside of a lot of police cars: I wire them up to do what they do, and have for years.
I've never been requested to integrate a radar (or other speed indicator) into a video system. Many video systems these days do have GPS, and will record the officer's speed plainly on the video, and some of them allow some manner of interconnection to another speed-measuring device, but again: I've never seen that. In fact, I've never even done much radar installation: Usually, the officer takes care of that himself by simply attaching the widget to the dashboard with velcro and plugging it into an available lighter socket.
Mind you, cars in Real Cities might be configured differently (I work with relatively small departments in my corner of Ohio). And I'm reasonably sure that I recall seeing radar data being displayed over video on some episode of COPS or similar at some point or another.
But the point is this: It's entirely likely that even if video of the stop does exist (and can be subpoenaed), that doesn't mean that any telemetry also exists.
Kid-proof tablet..
You mean Storm Troopers?
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
The app gave the information to the driver that the speed was inconsistant with the cops calculations. Giving reason to dispute the ticket otherwise they might of just paid the ticket.
a friend of mine worked for a vehicle manufacturer, on engine control management and calibration. he took a car out for a drive one day, and was asked to obtain the figures on the engine's highway performance. so he rigged up a dot-matrix printer (1980s...) to a laptop, which dutifully printed out the speed and fuel economy figures every few seconds.
whilst driving down the highway, with cars zooming past and honking him on either side due to his religious adherence to the posted speed limit of 55mph, a police officer, irate at having missed the speeding vehicles, picked on my friend and accused him of driving at 70mph.
in court, my friend simply provided the evidence of the printer and pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of driving at 55.5mph in a 55mph speed limit...
Doesn't modern day cars record information like when it turns, stops, brakes, speed, and the GPS? If not, then I want that option on my car. Showing that evidence in court should be irrefutable in my opinion.
"the judge said that he let me off because of insufficient evidence but OBVIOUSLY it was because my SMARTPHONE PROVED EVERYTHING OH YEAH"
Thankfully it seems the days of the "infallible police officer" in at least traffic court are coming to an end. With GPS & "Black Boxes" drivers now have evidence disproving the accusations of faulty equipment or incompetent/lying officers. While I am sure that a good number of cases of false accusations are just a technical/operator snafu, I've heard that there are more than a few officers who have boasted that they've gotten a radar reading off of one speeding car and waited for someone who they wanted to "check out" and used the previous reading as a justification for the pull over. And that's if radar/laser gun has any logging/output capability.
If Sahas Katta were to go back to that court and judge with an expert witness on the GPS technology she used, and presented evidence that the officer falsified evidence against her, then on award of a ruling as to that, each and every conviction he ever obtained could be overturned and he would furthermore lose his career as a police officer. Well worth the effort to get rid of a bad seed. I bet Google would sponsor her too.
I know there are plenty of stories of judges who don't understand technology, but I feel an urge to comment on this one. GPS is not that uncommon now. Your device communicates with a satellite and tells you where you are. How can a judge not understand that the device recorded locations over a length of time, thus calculating the speed of the device and vehicle? This isn't like trying to understand the mechanisms of identifying computers over networks by protocols, that might get a little complicated.
I have a hard time with this because the judges are treated like bloody gods in their courtrooms and that's just ridiculous. They're obviously not any better than anyone else.
"To stop the terrorists."
They have nothing to do with safety and everything to do about scamming money from the public in order to support irresponsible bureaucrats.
Words to men, as air to birds.
Hay, In the first place the police officer can see if a car is going fast right! Then he/she should use the radar gun.
If a car is going slow there is no probable cause to use the gun. As a result, he's going faster than 25 but there is no proof/evidence to back it up.
The judge went out of his way to say that it was not the phone that caused him to rule for the defendant, but rather that it was the prosecution's complete lack of any supporting evidence.
The headline should be "Judge acquits speeder for lack of evidence. Defendant's GPS data immaterial"
... because I thought that cops were such super-trained and super-honest individuals that radar speed guns were no longer needed as evidence. http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/06/03/2133222/Guess-My-Speed-and-Give-Me-a-Ticket-In-Ohio
But I thought only Imperial police were so precise...
The article starts saying one thing, but ends saying another.
This style of headline reporting is a lot like when you see headlines like "Dog Saves Family from Fire" and "Virgin Mary Cures Cancer". Except, in this case, the judge can actually explain his rationale, rather than laying the active cause at the feet of something which cannot be proven.
"He mentioned that he was not familiar enough with GPS technology to make a decision based on my evidence"
and i will guarantee he is no familiar enough with radar technology to make a decision in any other case ..
He would have gotten out of it without the smartphone. It's b/c the officer didn't have the radar gun evidence. Note that the smartphone owner didn't say he had any of the corresponding information about his phone's GPS (training, accuracy, calibration, etc). This would be a story if the two devices presented conflicting evidence and the smartphone's prevailed.
I know they are only doing their job, but if you knew how many times i heard and even been privy to the cop just posting a random number, especially when the cop pulls over 5 cars on 1 gun run....almost impossible to get 5 readings within the distance from the initial capture to the end mark (where he stands) as we were traveling within the norm, but also within a 70km zone....I have yet to see any judge give sh*t to cops because they waste people's time like that.
Got out of a parking ticket once (the parking inspector stood ten feet away, watched me park in an empty slot in a carpark, then walked away as I approached him to ask if the parking spot was valid (the lines were half-faded). When I returned to the car and discovered I'd gotten a ticket, I replied back to the local parking authority with the details and advised that if the prosecution continued I would be asking for that particular parking inspector's records for the past five years to be audited to determine what percentage of his tickets had been challenged.
The ticket was dropped like a hot potato.
If I'd pulled off a radar-gun lack-of-evidence ticket-slip like the one in the article, I would have been asking for an audit to be conducted on the last two years of tickets for both the cop in question and anything involving that radar gun. Just to make the point that authorities do NOT get to walk away scot-free when they accuse people without bothering to follow procedures. Doing so - or even attempting to do so - should result in burned fingers. And yes, I say this as a long-term public servant myself.