The Laws of Physics Trump Traffic Laws

New submitter HeLLFiRe1151 sends this quote from Physics Central: "Here's a practical application for your physics education: using math to successfully beat a traffic ticket in court. Dmitri Krioukov, a physicist based at the University of California San Diego, did just that to avoid paying a fee for (purportedly) running a stop sign. Krioukov not only proved his innocence, but he also posted a paper detailing his argument online (PDF) on the arXiv server."

Comments

I love that conclusion

[damn_registrars]

As a result of this unfortunate coincidence, the O's perception of reality did not properly re ect reality.

It's too bad that statement cannot be quickly supported in many other cases.

honestly Officer,

[Anonymous Coward]

Relative to my car, I was travelling at virtually 0 mph!

Re:honestly Officer,

[shutdown -p now]

So, wait, are you saying that you didn't even know where you were?

That's reckless driving right there.

Re:Partially Blocked View

[Anonymous Coward]

I swear Judge some where in the multiverse I stopped.

Gravity and breasts

[romit_icarus]

Nothing new, I say. I've often seen traffic laws being trumped by nothing less than a generous show of cleavage, which always seemed to defy at least one of the physics laws, namely gravity.

Re:Gravity and breasts

[Anonymous Coward]

I've tried that, but I guess my man-boobs aren't generous enough.

Re:No, you don't know if I was "running a stop sig

[Beardo the Bearded]

I always get stuck trying to figure out why the triangle has so many sides. It does gives me something to do while I wait for it to turn green.

Re:Don't mess with physicists!

[lightknight]

Remind me to do that the next time we are in court.

"lightknight, you've been accused of speeding. How do you plead?"

"Your honour, let's talk firmware. I will show you, as a Computer Scientist, in hexadecimal, where the error in the code of that radar device exists."

"Case dismissed. Now, can you help us with our printer? It keeps printing blank pages."

Re:I was going to try something similar...

[Anonymous Coward]

You should have appealed to the newspaper. A headline of "xxx Court claims to be Above the Laws of Physics" would have been entertaining.

His first sentence in the intro

[Concerned Onlooker]

"It is widely known that an observer measuring the speed of an object passing by, measures not its actual linear velocity by the angular one."

I would have found him guilty based on that sentence alone and fined him for gratuitous use of a comma and a blatant misspelling.

Re:I was going to try something similar...

[bhcompy]

I successfully tried something similar(explaining my way out of a ticket, not math). Cop pulled me over for a busted taillight, then cited me for driving without a seatbelt because I had undone my seatbelt to get my wallet prior to the officer arriving at my window. Thing is, my car(72 Chevelle) had the most annoying seatbelt warning buzzer in the world and it does not go off automatically after a short duration(like modern cars). I explained what I did to the officer, who didn't believe me, so I asked the officer to put the car in gear and tell me if they can drive with the buzzer from hell buzzing at them in its constant high-pitched whine. Cop relented, gave me my fixit ticket, and let me on my way.

Quantum Physics trumps everything

[CanEHdian]

"But officer, since I didn't observe the stop sign, it was both there and not there at the same time. It was there after YOU observed it, but by that time I was already gone!"

Re:Quantum Physics trumps everything

[sjames]

So clearly, the officer is at fault. If he hadn't gone and observed the stop sign, it wouldn't have been there for you to run.

Re:go catch real crooks cops

[itsdapead]

WTF. That's not true. STOP means stop in the UK. GIVE WAY means yeild.

True, but actual STOP signs are very rare - I can't think of one that I pass regularly (other than on barriers and roadworks where they mean "stop and stay stopped until someone takes the stop sign away"). In the US, equal-priority "4-way stop" junctions are ubiquitous where, in the UK, we'd probably have a roundabout, traffic lights or give one road priority and use "Give Way" signs on the others.

We'd never have "right on red", we drive on the wrong side of the street over here.

I think that maybe, just maybe, the GP actually knew this and thought the audience would be able to translate it into "left-on-red" for UK use. AFAIK in the US it is based on the 37th amendment to the constitution which states that every American citizen shall have the right to scare the bejezus out of Limey tourists on crosswalks (who were looking the wrong way anyway).