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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!
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.
There's a big difference between having a GPS tracker running and actually looking at the screen.
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.
Presumably the navigation data is filtered intelligently. A talented undergrad can write a decent Kalman filter, so I'd assume the one Google uses is decent also.
Taking the precision into account, knowing that cars move in straight lines and curves (not jaggies), and that the velocities change relatively smoothly, you can get a much better estimate of the velocity than simply taking the difference of two positions and dividing the time. It won't account for constant biases, but those won't affect your velocity estimate anyway.
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.)
GPS doesn't measure speed by looking at how your position changes; it uses the doppler effect, which is fairly accurate.
http://gpsinformation.net/main/gpsspeed.htm
That's "Bible tracts".
Love,
Grammar Nazi
No, bible tracks. It's tank tracks made out of Bibles and barbed wire. As a tank with Bible tracks drives over an unbeliever demonstrator, there's a chance that they'll repent and be saved, when they can read the Bible while lying crushed in the ground and bleeding to death.
You'd better get your facts straight before you correct spelling errors of other people!
Jesus FUCKING Christ!
Quit saying that!
While GPS *could* use dopler shift, most do NOT! You can't make a blanket statement that they all do. It is utter bullshit.
I emailed garmin on this question:
Dear xxxxx,
Thank you for contacting Garmin International. I'd be happy to help you with your Legend.
The unit determines speed by using the track log data and calculating time/distance between those points.
Please let me know if there's anything else I can assist you with.
With Best Regards,
Debbie B
Product Support Specialist
Outdoor/Fitness Team
Garmin International
Here is something from google groups on the issue:
http://www.mail-archive.com/android-developers@googlegroups.com/msg57902.html
It is pretty easy to show that consumer GPSR's aren't that accurate, speed-wise. I can easily break the speed limit and slow back down with my Android or eTrex being none the wiser.
So please, next time this discussion comes up, remember this conversation? It is like Groundhog Day on /. every time this comes up!
THL phish sticks
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.