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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)
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.
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.
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!
I've seen an inexperienced, young cop in traffic court lose something like eight cases in a row because he could not produce evidence...
...I don't understand why he bothered to show up that day, other than to get paid.
That was an inexperienced young cop turning into an experienced young cop. No doubt a painfully embarrassing lesson.
I'd say his evidence was clear enough,
Really? I use Google Tracks on my cycling trip to work. I typically come to a full stop for about 10-40seconds at 2 red lights during my half an hour commute, and average about 25km/h moving speed. Yet when I look back on the graph of my speed vs distance traveled the graph never shows that I come to a stop, only that I've slowed down. I've also got a hill on the way to work. My record going down this hill is 56km/h for a few seconds according to my bike trip computer. Google Tracks never shows me as having reached 50 on that same trip.
Was my bike computer mis-calibrated? Unlikely since the last 200km bike trip Google Tracks and my bike computer both showed the total distance traveled to be within 1% of each other. So I ask you, do you think that time averaged samples of speeding data is evidence to be used against a specific point sample?