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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."
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.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Relative to my car, I was travelling at virtually 0 mph!
When another car partially blocked the officer's view of Krioukov's car momentarily, the officer could have missed the brief yet crucial timing of his stop. At least, that's Krioukov's version of the case.
Physics explained what the officer saw (or thought he saw) but another car explains what the officer didn't see (Krioukov stopping at the stop sign).
Years ago I was pulled over by a cop who claimed I was going 45 in a 30, which I knew to be complete bullshit. I was driving a car that could barely produce 70hp under really great conditions, with 500+ pounds of friends in the car (in addition to my own mass) and had just come to a complete stop and made a right-hand turn less than 100 yards prior. In other words, the cop was claiming that my woefully underpowered car from the 70s was accelerating like a modern Porsche.
He handed me my ticket, and I went to the court hearing at the scheduled time, date, and location. In that county the first meeting is with the DA, you have no option to see a judge that day no matter how much you ask for it. That county was over an hour's drive from work, a place I had never visited prior to the date of the offense. The DA made me an offer; take a plea bargain - which would not be reported to my insurance so long as I was not ticketed in their county again for a year (and carrier a lesser fine) - or come back at a later date to plea my case before a judge.
I decided my time was worth more than that, and took the plea. I could have taken the second hearing to plead my case before a judge, but the amount it cost me to drive there and back, plus time taken off of work, was likely more than the small fine I paid them that day.
That said, congrats to the professor for so handily showing the error in the cop's measurement without making them look like a baboon.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The cop had an obstructed view of his car by a car in front of his, he braked very hard, stopped briefly, and then started again. He then used fancy graphs with the judge. Cool, but according to him he didn't actually break any laws. F'n TFS.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Are you sure this isn't a plot line the Big Bang Sitcom?
The article was posted on April 1. (Need I say any more?) See the discussion on the PhysicsBuzz blog for details.
http://physicsbuzz.physicscentral.com/2012/04/physicist-uses-math-to-beat-traffic.html
Because I knew accurately what my momentum was.
The vast majority of stop signs are stupid and should be replaced with yield signs.
My father was a physicist, and expert witness for automobile accidents (the fees he earned paid for our ski cabin in Breckenridge, Colorado). He also NEVER had to pay a traffic fine for speeding, or other such. Why? Because he was able to prove that the technology used was fatally flawed, and that the speeds measured, in the situations specified, were scientifically impossible! He was able to beat both radar and lidar (laser) speed detectors used to measure his speed. Myself (an engineer), whenever I have contested a ticket for speeding, have been exonerated because the accusing officer did not appear in court. Gotta wonder... :-)
http://arxiv.org/abs/1204.0162
The Proof of Innocence
Dmitri Krioukov
(Submitted on 1 Apr 2012)
A way to fight your traffic tickets. The paper was awarded a special prize of $400 that the author did not have to pay to the state of California.
If you think this really happened, find a citation for the case that doesn't end up back at this same article.
It turns out that humans are really poor at estimating velocity unless they conform to Newtonian accelerations very closely.. While there has been a lot of research on these issues, I'd like to refer to one of my favorite papers, Sverker Runeson's 1975 paper "Constant velocity — Not perceived as such".
http://www.springerlink.com/content/nt61hh074k7123q5/
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.
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.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
I once used physics to argue that a speeding ticket I received was bogus. I explained that even if I was traveling at the speed the officer claimed (unlikely in the underpowered subcompact I was driving, since I'd just gotten on the freeway), he could not have caught up with me and paced me at that speed in that short distance. I also suggested that a more likely explanation for the ticket was a bumper sticker which identified me as gay, and the fact that I was leaving a (peaceful) civil rights demonstration. (This was in the Midwest, in the 90s.) I was still found guilty, but the full fine and points on my license were not assessed.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
a) a physicist professor (postdoc, well-known in his field worldwide) at my university was ticketed for speeding based on a radar gun reading. In court, he presented an analysis that showed that a radar gun reading would be inaccurate under the conditions where used. The judge determined that the analysis was irrelevant and fined the prof.
b) I was involved in an automobile accident. I was cited for running into the other car. A physicist friend of mine and I put together an analysis based on physics that showed that the other car had to have run into my car. It was pretty cool because it so closely matched what happened (physics works!). However, my insurance company, the prosecutor and my attorney all dismissed the analysis as irrelevant.
Agreed. You guys over in the States put Stop signs at almost every intersection. Was surprising to me as an Australian the first time I drove over there ... in AU we tend to put stop signs only on the occasional intersection where the view of potential oncoming traffic is obstructed for some reason (e.g. there's a tall hedge along the side of the road until just before the intersection). But in the absence of any such obstructions, the ubiquitous Give Way (equivalent to US Yield) sign is used instead.
This, in combination with the considerably lower speed limits in suburban/residential areas, makes getting around suburbia in the US a lot slower than I was used to.
Like so: http://cardriving.com.au/Photo/Driving_straight_ahead_through_an_intersection_on_a_minor_road_Give_Way_sign.JPG
Thank you.
I am John Hurt.
That you don't need to be right, as long as you can explain whatever it is you're explaining in a technical way. I know very few judges that are going to be capable of following this kind of math, especially with some of the wild assumptions he comes up with in the paper. He's intentionally talking over their heads. He could be measuring the diameter and deceleration of a cream puff going to the moon for all they know. Well played.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
This argument is a shameless piece of sophistry.
It's central argument is "I did stop; a car just passed in front of me and you didn't see.". This is then expanded into 4 pages of unnecessary and probably disingenuous over-analysis.
The entire argument breaks down in FIG 5. Leaving aside this nonsense of measuring angular speed(The human brain interpolates just fine), the author compares two curves in which the equated angular speeds of the car do not translate into the same linear speed. Indeed, at the occlusion point at t~1.5 s, the car corressponding to the blue curve would be travelling at 15m/s, verses the car at constant 8m/s that it is being compared to.
And this is even before we begin talking about how the author is really comparing a car at constant speed to one which reverses back into the stop sign and then drives forward.
I think this kind of thing is described as "sophomoric", and in that that word describes a second year student who is full of their own knowledge with no concept of their own ignorance, I would have to label it as such. The cop was right, pay your ticket Mr. Krioukov, and don't darken the door of the maths department for a very long time.
May the Maths Be with you!
"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.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
I was always into photography and this was the 70s. My father got ticketed for parking on a cross walk in our small town around midnight. It was the dead of winter and snow covered all the streets. He wanted to fight it so I photographed the place in the middle of the day showing how thoroughly the snow covered the streets making it impossible to see the cross walks. The judge took one look at the photos and motioned for the cop to approach the bench where he chewed him out for wasting his time on such a ridiculous case. It is possible to fight tickets with evidence but so rarely do people have evidence to fight them with.
I want to see a future, where you immediately, go online with the cop to a live judge via skype on the ipad, so that there and then can decide if the cop is wrong, then the cop is to pay a fine.
I tell you, the whole justice system , plus the education system and the medical system needs a complete overhaul redesign and be 100% wireless.
Its way overdue for teachers to be obsolete, except helping the 'challenged' few, s burn those text books, put all courses online and exams online, and marking online, what a teachers for again? Keeping the peace? taking roll calls?
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Traffic cop is ultimately one of the most important law enforcement jobs in America. They serve more arrest warrants than anybody else and are the ones most likely to be visible to the population at large. Now, if the officer didn't see the car drive through without stopping, then the ticket shouldn't have been issued.
"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!"
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
Speed limit on the main street between myself and the nearest 24-hr convenience store half a mile away was 45 (I know, I should have walked. But all I wanted was to get it over with so I could sleep). I got pulled over for "drag racing" even though the streets were entirely empty other than myself and a cop waiting on a side road. To be fair, I was getting up to speed limit as quickly as possible so I could get it over with. But I was also "paced" at 60, which means he did not clock me but instead estimated my speed based on speeding up to catch up to me after turning off his side street. He included the streets where all this happened, so this gave me all the distances between incidences that I needed.
I used simple integrals to show the velocity/position relationship, along with the factory specifications of my car. End result is that the judge said he had no idea at all what I was talking about, and the ticket was dismissed because "it sounded right".
This is why you never ever ask for a jury trial on speeding ticket. The jury will toss everything out and find you guilty of speeding. USe the judge and the law to get out of the ticket.
-- A computer without Windoze is like a choclate cake without mustard
Because I knew accurately what my momentum was.
Liar. Just by observing it, you have altered it. Unless your car is made of some bizarre substance that changes its mass in reference to the velocity change you initiated by looking at the speedometer and trying to figure out where you are at the same time.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Ugg... A police force may not be able to stop a "real" crime from occurring or even solve it once it has. But, It could be prevented by making the police in an area more visible. I.E. traffic tickets generate revenue for the police, safer roads for motorists, and deterrence for criminals. There are more benefits if you are willing to disband the mentality that the police are largely out there to waste your time and their own.
Generally speaking, highway patrol and state troopers will always cite you for an infraction. Town and city cops will let things slide depending on your attitude.
of arguing "I did stop, but the officer's view was obstructed by another vehicle and hence he couldn't have seen whether I did or did not" and having the officer agree that his view was obstructed.
I wish cops would just not pick people on the little tiny things and just let things slide, unless its BLOODY obvious.
Running a stop sign is not a tiny little thing. If the officer actually observed the complete failure to properly obey the STOP sign, a ticket should have been issued.
Cars failing to stop ARE a safety issue. And if the law was not being vigorously enforced, there are many jerks on the road purposefully ignoring STOP signs or red lights when they feel they can get away with it -- road safety would be much worse.
Lives are saved when people don't run stop signs because they're afraid of getting a ticket.
I wish cops would just not pick people on the little tiny things and just let things slide, unless its BLOODY obvious.
Cops shouldn't let things slide they should just be more certain when they issue a ticket. IE they should not make an assumption about a violation, they should actually witness it (or get testimony from a witness). Ever been driving and wonder if someone on a cross street is going to stop? Unwittingly, many people that roll stop signs slow down cross traffic resulting in delaying when the 'roller' would be able to pull out if they had just stop so everyone knows what they are doing. People who only use their blinker 'when necessary' never see the person they nearly hit because no one knew what the hell they were doing.
Seeing as he was driving a Yaris, he could have used a cinder block for a right foot and not even done HALF that.
Now that he has managed to use physics to get out of a ticket for allegedly running a stop sign, he can use an even simpler argument to get out of a speeding ticket, if he is traveling east to west.
Let's say he is going from Spokane, Washington to Seattle. Speed limit is 70 mph, and the cop determines he was doing 85.
All he would have to do is remind the officer that at Seattle's latitude, the Earth rotates west to east at a speed of 707 miles per hour. And since he was moving in the opposite direction of the Earth's rotation, then he was actually traveling at negative 622 miles per hour.
Of course, he wouldn't want to get busted speeding in the other direction after pulling this off, unless he is prepared to pay a super hefty fine for speeding at 782 miles per hour in a 70 mile per hour zone.
This space unintentionally left blank.
Without the maths, the defence is "I actually did stop briefly, but your view was obscured by another car". I would hope that in the interests of justice the simple version would also lead to an acquittal, the judge realising that if the police couldn't see the car at the time there is reasonable doubt. I expect it was more of a case of "wer'e not going to pay for a mathematician to support the prosecution on a trivial case like this.
In the UAE, all stop signs are treated like yield signs by the drivers... but there are not really 4 way intersections an when there are, they are in construction zones with no traffic volume - it's like a dangerous 4 way yeild and the intersection gets closed until they put up traffic signals. I don't think the accident rate at stop signs are any higher here than in North America, but I'd love to see some real data.
120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
I'd also like to highlight - the same goes for school bus stop signs. If you briefly stop at a stop sign when there is no on-comming traffic, you will be honked at and get scowls of annoyance.
120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
teacher tried to use physics.
Judge asked if he was Perry Mason.
The whole court room laughed. Found guilty
I'm sorry, but running a stop sign in an intersection with good visibility in all directions most definitely _is_ a tiny little thing, and it's a shame both that the law doesn't treat it as such, and that the sign is in the intersection in the first place.
In the UK, at least, stop signs are incredibly rare. (I live in a major city, and can only think of one, which is on private land not the main road system.) On the other hand, give-way signs (either triangles next to the road, or double-dashed-lines on the ground) are incredibly common; I think those are probably the equivalent of US yield signs, although I'm not sure how direct it is.
And 4-way stops are unheard of; in the UK, if something like that were needed, they'd put a mini-roundabout there instead.
(1)DOCOMEFROM!2~.2'~#1WHILE:1<-"'?.1$.2'~'"':1/.1$.2'~#0"$#65535'"$"'"'&.1$.2'~'#0$#65535'"$#0'~#32767$#1"
I'm actually glad that stop signs are used so heavily in U.S. Seeing how so many drivers cannot properly navigate something as simple as a roundabout (just today I witnessed a guy driving obliviously right into it in front of the car circling on it, despite there being a prominent yield sign at the entrance), I shudder at the thought of what would have happened at your typical cross intersection which didn't have a 4-way stop. At least the stop sign has "stop" written on it...
If you ever see the process for obtaining the driver license in U.S., you'll understand why they stick 'Stop' everywhere.
This, in combination with the considerably lower speed limits in suburban/residential areas
And this, by the way, varies a lot depending on the location (even within a single state). Where I live, most roads in residential areas are either 30 or 35 mph, with an occasional 40 - which makes it same or faster than e.g. Auckland, where, from my memory most such roads are 50 km/h, and very few are 60. On the other hand, driving a few miles to the west would get you to Seattle, where they seem to really love 25 mph signs, and occasionally grudgingly settle on 30.
This article http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,448747,00.html seems to suggest the contrary.
... did anybody notice the date in the sideline of that PDF?
If you go up to a stop/give way sign at a fairly high speed and brake heavily at the last second, you're an arsehole. What people do that fail to realise is that they make people on the road they're joining or turning into nervous as hell. They've no idea if you're a late braker or if you're going to pull out in front of them and potentially cause an accident.
If he did drive his car as in that graph, I'd hate to be a passenger in his car with those g-forces. Heck even if he took twice as long to slow as in those graphs it would be pretty unpleasant if he did that every time he stopped. Besides which most cars can only manage ~-0.8gs and that's being done by professional drivers in ideal conditions with no regard for tire life. I suspect if you stretched out the graph for a more realistic acceleration of -0.5gs it wouldn't look more damning than supporting of his argument.
In the UK all STOP signs are yeild signs, and you can fail your driving test for stopping unnecessarily. UK red lights are the other extreme (there is no 'right on red' allowance), if it's red, you shouldn't pass it except in an emergency.
WTF. That's not true. STOP means stop in the UK. GIVE WAY means yeild.
We'd never have "right on red", we drive on the wrong side of the street over here. Some lights have a left turn filter light (green left arrow that comes on while the main lights are still red).
Sigs. We don't need no steenking sigs.
In the UK stop signs are only used when joining or crossing a road with limited view (so you couldn't realistically get a clear view if you kept going). Never understood the US' hatred of roundabouts, they're safer and quicker than 4 way intersections. They simply high speed collisions near impossible.
I.E. traffic tickets generate revenue for the police
And this I think is the biggest problem. It creates a conflict of interest. In my area in Pennsylvania, local cops have been setting up ENRADD devices, which are only legal in PA. These devices are basically two beams of light that your car breaks as it moves through, and based on the timing and the known distance of the two beams, they can tell how fast you were going.
Except that they can't. If the beams are set up in such a way that the first beam triggers on your wheel, and the second beam triggers on your bumper, it can greatly over-estimate your speed (they are only 3 feet apart, it can easily clock you at 60mph while you're doing 30mph). Also, being just beams of light, even if installed correctly, a car coming the opposite direction can be the trigger of the second beam, so that can also produce unreliable results.
They set these things up on the busiest roads, virtually guaranteeing they have a nonstop stream of revenue. They line up 5 or 6 patrol cars in a row to pick up people, and they have the tickets pre-filled out as much as possible (including date, officer name, location, direction of travel, and even the fine and ticketed speed). The only thing left to fill in is to copy over the drivers license and car info. They only ticket you for going 5 MPH over, then write in "Actual speed X MPH" according to presumably what the ENRADD device told them. This way there's no points on the ticket, and most people realize that paying a ~ $110 fine is a better use of their time than fighting the ticket in court (I for example am an hourly contractor, it would cost me more in lost productivity than simply driving to the court house, nevermind however many hours I might be inside).
I mentioned that they have 5 or 6 patrol cars issuing tickets - these are township level cops, in some townships that might be the entire police force, spending an entire day individually earning the police force a few thousand bucks per hour. The tickets are pre-dated, so you know they are going to issue every ticket in that stack before going home. The roads are the busiest roads, so they have the best chance of creating false positive readings.
It's absolutely unconscionable that the police force gets to keep the proceeds of their activity. It creates a mercenary mindset. These cops are going to be incentivized not to increase traffic safety, but to earn a profit. Ticket proceeds should be given to state social programs rather than benefit those who are tasked with enforcing the tickets. Likewise seized property and other form of proceed from police activity should not benefit the police force.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
We'd never have "right on red", we drive on the wrong side of the street over here.
Do you have one-way roads? If so, the equivalent of a right turn on red to a one-way street is legal in some places in the US (and in most, the equivalent of a right turn from one-way to one-way is legal.
Learn to love Alaska
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).
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
ARGH! If you have to explain a phrase after using it, don't use it! e.g. "California Stop".
its "retarded" (ie, pertaining to an action that is performed by a persone with three standard deviations below the level of common sense or intelligence of the average population)
Read what I mean, not what I wrote.
In the northern hemisphere "rolling stops" become possible due to the reversal of gravity.
In PA if the posted speed limit is LESS than 55 MPH you cannot be cited UNLESS your speed was AT LEAST 10mph over the POSTED limit.
Title 75 - VEHICLES
Chapter 33 - Rules of the Road in General
3368 - Speed timing devices.
(4) No person may be convicted upon evidence obtained
through the use of devices authorized by paragraphs (2) and
(3) unless the speed recorded is six or more miles per hour
in excess of the legal speed limit. Furthermore, no person
may be convicted upon evidence obtained through the use of
devices authorized by paragraph (3) in an area where the
legal speed limit is less than 55 miles per hour if the speed
recorded is less than ten miles per hour in excess of the
legal speed limit.
If they ticket you for 5mph over then FIGHT IT.
Oh, and KNOW THE LAW. LEO is last person on earth who you should place any trust in.
The local laws in my area (Alberta, Canada) say you must stop and then *remain* at a complete stop for three seconds before proceeding. A delay that long would have been noticeable in spite of this argument. Are California's laws similar?
- W. Blaine Dowler
http://www.bureau42.com
When another car partially blocked the officer's view of Krioukov's car momentarily, the officer could have missed the brief yet crucial timing of his stop.
If it blocked the officer's view, wouldn't it have blocked Krioukov's view, so he should not have increased velocity again after a microsecond of stopping?
That "proof" is so full of holes. It's sad, and should be illegal, that a judge can accept this without getting it peer reviewed by someone capable of understanding it.
As others have noted the radians per second graph is maybe the same, but the integral of the distances traveled definitely is not.
Furthermore note that his acceleration from the "stop" is the same as his deceleration, which is the maximum rate of the car at 22 miles per hour, per second. So after a little over 1 second he had gone from 0 to 22 miles per hour again. OH REALLY ? He must have had his foot flat on the accelerator, if its even possible for such a small car, is that how he drives ? The cop must also have heard it. Also extremely flawed in that the time of obstruction does not take into account that the other obstructing car was MOVING, or that the bonnet of the larger car would not have obstructed the view. From fig 5, its clear the brief obstruction of the moving car blocked the policemans view for a full two seconds ? Ludicrous.
Laws of Physics were declared unconstitutional by their state supreme court, along with evolution.
Did anyone else notice that the arXiv PDF was posted on April 1st?
I am pretty sure that since there was no accident there was no crime.
I am (and the universe) a pretty strict enforcer of the laws of physics.
-- Terry
As a motorcycle rider, I totally disagree with this.
I've been almost whacked more times than I care to think about as the result of people treating stop signs as yield signs, glancing real quick (if at all) and rolling through. Now that Spring is happening in the Northern Hemisphere, motorcyclists are back out and people are not used to seeing us on the roads due to Winter.
Please, please people. Stop!
I don't know how it works in the 1000s of other cities and towns, but in mine THE POLICE DON'T KEEP THE MONEY. The money from ticket revenues goes to the general fund, just like money from other enforcement fines [health dept, building dept, parking enforcement] and other fees [permits, parking, building, etc] and other revenues [property tax, state aid, grants, etc].
I've been involved in local politics for some time, and I've never heard of a police department that kept the ticket revenue. If you know of one, please provide a citation.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Yeah, traffic flow in the US outside the interstate roads is anything but smooth - the roads are enourmous and still they manage to clog them completely, and you have to stop all the time to stop signs and trafic lights...
While bigger, roundabouts are vastly more efficient (up to a certain point where the flow becomes "turbulent") and also by far simpler to use (when you are used to them and people use their blinkers properly) than most other intersections - just time your entrance and speed into it, and your through in a second without any stopping.
Yeah my experience was mostly in Wisconsin, Illinois and Minnesota where 25 is pretty standard on residential streets ... maybe 30 if it's a trunk road.
Read the paper and the comments on the physics site where the paper was originally posted. Several commenters pointed out that he was driving a Yaris, which could not stop and accelerate in the time shown in the paper. Or without doing complete analysis, the other car was moving at about 20 mph or about 30 feet/sec. A car is about 20 feet long, hence, the cops vision was blocked for less than a second, even without taking into account that the time was really due to the difference in the length of the two cars. If you can get a Yaris to go from 15 mph to a complete stop and back to 15 mph in under a second, you should be drag racing Yarises. If you can' dazzle them with briliance, you can baffle them with ...
I'll reply to you.
So if we're talking about devices vs incorrect settings due to various causes, what about if the driver himself has a video camera trained on the road (and maybe even his speedometer?). Police device reports "you did X". Driver device reports "I did Y."
Is that enough to get the ticket thrown out, or will they take the second short cut and say "Nah, our device is foolproof and you fudged yours"?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
They serve more arrest warrants than anybody else and are the ones most likely to be visible to the population at large.
That is only because the police refuse to put any real resources into investigating *real* crimes like theft and vandalism. If the police took all of their traffic cops and put them on investigating property crimes instead, there would be a huge decrease in property crimes and we could start putting people in jail for real crimes for a change. How many times have you heard about a friend whos home or car got broken into? These criminals are not brain surgeons. They leave tremendous amounts of evidence behind, but the police dont even bother to collect any of it, much less investigate. My car was broken into a few years back, and the perpetrator left about 50 full prints behind. The cops wouldn't even show up (took a statement over the phone!). My wife was a criminal justice student at the time and had access to a fingerprinting lab. After lifting about 3 dozen prints, a friend of ours in the DCJS ran the prints through the database (only a minor violation...), and sure enough out pops a guy we've never met. Had three prior convictions for drug related charges, and one grand theft! This was strike four, and the guy would have been off the streets for good, but the cops failed completely.
Long Story short, the police need to stop worrying about traffic tickets so much, and start doing actual criminal investigations. At any given point, how many cops are tied up in speeding traps? How many real crimes could be solved if those cops were to spend their time investigating instead of sitting in a parked car...
-=Geoskd
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
When Heisenberg was up for the same $400 fine, they cut in half because nobody could be sure if he was guilty or not.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
good post... and on top that, even if he was driving a tesla or something that can do 15-0-15 instantly, its still not safe.
the whole point of stop signs and anti-running laws in the first place is to promote the safety of pedestrians, children, motorcycles, bicycles, and other automobiles.
assholes like this brag about how they 'beat the system' but when they kill somebody they dont feel so haughty.
And this is why we will end up with black boxes that have gb's of internal flash memory, accessible to any cop ( or insurance agency ), perhaps even in real time via wireless, reporting back our movements for several months in the past.
" its for our safety (tm) "
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Running a stop sign is not a tiny little thing. If the officer actually observed the complete failure to properly obey the STOP sign, a ticket should have been issued.
Actually, there is a lot of gray area around a stop sign. Lets say you come to a stop sign at the intersection of two streets in the middle of nowhere with 1/2 mile visibility in all directions and no traffic. Why should you stop? The law? That's just stupid. What if you slow down approaching a stop sign, prepared to stop, and then speed up when the way is clear? Stop signs are an abomination and should all be replaced with yield signs. If we replaced all intersections with roundabouts (assuming there was space), the annual fuel and time savings would be somewhere north of $100B for the economy. A very large percentage of the time we stop at stop signs are unnecessary for any reason other than compliance with the law. Roundabouts are safer, and more efficient as they eliminate the need to stop in many circumstances. Stop signs are bad. they give drivers going in the other directions a false sense of security and cost billions in lost productivity. At the very least replace all the stop signs with yield signs. Better yet, start wholesale replacement of intersections with rotaries and their ilk.
-=Geoskd
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
Generally speaking, highway patrol and state troopers will always cite you for an infraction. Town and city cops will let things slide depending on your attitude.
I would agree with that, with a comment - Highway patrol generally won't bother pulling you over until you hit 20 over or drive in a dangerous/erratic manner; Local cops may or may not pull you over for absolutely nothing, depending on their attitude.
While I agree with you about inappropriate policing priorities, I have to say I find your actions in abusing privileged access to a database to be more offensive than those of the person who broke into your car. Your friend at the DCJS who committed that "minor violation" should have been fired and prosecuted. The fact that you were right in the end does not justify the means, and we must never allow that kind of rationalisation to excuse abuse of public trust when officials have access to sensitive personal information.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I've been wanting to use one of Zeno's Paradoxes to disprove that I was speeding (because, officer, motion is an illusion). I haven't had the balls yet mostly since they've been long disproven by calculus.
You've clearly never been to traffic court.
You: "Was your view obstructed in any way?"
Officer: "No."
You: >.<
It's reasonably streamlined in the U.S.. I hated the European bureaucracy of getting one. In Europe they almost universally always let you feel like they did you a big favor by finally letting you drive, and many people feel quite smug about themselves. Later they extol the virtues of such a system in spite of being treated like shit by the same. It's a phenomenon well known to psychology, apparently, can't bother with a link at the moment.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
I can tell you as a common man that the second you involve yourself with the law, the court, or government in general, you lose. Even if you win in court, you lose. Even if you don't lose money (which is highly unlikely), your loss will come in the form of time, effort, hassle, and privacy.
yeah, it sounds like what may have been obscured is enough to generate reasonable doubt
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
In the past 5 years, my car has been rummaged through 2 or 3 times and egged twice (once bad enough to damage the finish). Frankly, I didn't even bother reporting any of this because, as you demonstrated quite obviously: "what's the point?" Everyone knows that cops primary two functions are: 1) the illusion of peace keeping/safety, 2) revenue generation.
I am extremely thankful when I see officers patrolling my neighborhood. I want to see more of that: drive around the neighborhoods at night and make sure everything's as it should be. They won't be able to serve up any or many traffic violations, but I can imagine it would make burglars and vandals less likely to strike. Yes, I realize I have no evidence of this. It seems that even the many good cops out there have their hands tied.
P.S.: Hats off to all of the officers out there who serve with honor and integrity. We need more of you!
here in NY state:
Left on red is OK if you're going from a one way street to another one way street.
Right on red is OK unless a sign at the intersection specifically says otherwise.
You have to come to a complete stop rather than just slow down like for a regular turn.
(well, OK if the traffic's clear)
just switch the words right and left to think about the UK equivalent.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I don't quite understand why we don't have a 'Yield to cars on the right' sign.
I.e., a sign that would work exactly like a stop sign with traffic, but there'd be no need to stop at if there was no oncoming traffic.
Obviously they'd only be put at places with good visibility.
I think that, in theory, a four way intersection with all yield signs would work like this, but we don't make them. (I'm fairly certain when everyone is supposed to yield, you're supposed to follow stop-sign rules about who can go when. Or rather, the stop-sign rules are just general rules, we just usually use them at a stop sign but they apply at any time when all cars have been given the same instructions. They'd even apply in a hypothetical intersection without any traffic control at all.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Generally speaking, highway patrol and state troopers will always cite you for an infraction. Town and city cops will let things slide depending on your attitude.
My experience has been exactly the opposite; it's the city cops that are totally unforgiving asshole revenue-generation machines, while county sheriffs and highway patrol are much more likely to let you off with a warning (and more likely to be kind, pleasant, respectful, and helpful human beings and not just an armed bully drunk on their own power).
Knowledge != Intelligence
Unwittingly, many people that roll stop signs slow down cross traffic resulting in delaying when the 'roller' would be able to pull out if they had just stop so everyone knows what they are doing.
No shit, and it's not just people who are breaking the law. I am constantly astonished at people who move their car around while on side roads.
Oh, yeah, pull forward randomly while I'm coming up on you. That will surely save you a quarter of a second while pulling out, nicely countering the three seconds you lost waiting for me to get past because I slammed on my fucking brakes because it looks like you're insanely about to pull out right in front of me. (A quarter of a second is more than three seconds, right?)
Same with idiots who wait until the last minute to break for a red light. Oh, wow, you're so much 'faster' than the people who started breaking early...you started waiting a good two seconds later. I'm not sure that actually accomplished anything, as you're still waiting at the light, and of course the people going in the other direction weren't sure you were stopping, so waited two seconds longer to go, making your red light longer...but you sure proved your penis^Hstopping power was impressive, didn't you?
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
California traffic judges are pretty well known for giving the defendent a break if they're put a lot of effort in to their presentation, even if their premise is obviously stupid. Half the time, they'll tell you that point blank. This is from the other half, of course.
They just figure if you put that much work in to it, you've learned your lesson, and hopefully know the line of BS won't work aqain, and will thus stop doing what you got caught doing.
Around here, Police officer noticing you in passing = warning (as long as you are nice), Police officer operating a speed trap = 80-90% chance of a ticket (100% chance if you aren't nice) and Peace officer = ticket every single time (no matter how nice you are)
Umm, y'know, if you RTFA you find that the original article was posted to the arxiv on 1 April :)
-wb-
The problem is (from many years observing other drivers on the road) extremely few motorists have even the faintest clue what a yield sign means. Many people think they mean stop, or merge, or nothing at all, but very few people treat them like "yield"
We have a lot of very poorly designed entrance ramps around here where they use a yield instead of a merge (because they didn't build a lane long enough to actually merge) the occasional person stops, most people try to merge (much to my chagrin when I'm on the roadway they are illegally "merging" on to and have to stand on the brakes to avoid a collision because they can't accelerate enough to merge properly but try anyway)
We also have a yield at a T intersection near my house with excellent visibility and no matter if people are coming or not everybody comes to a full and complete stop, sits for a few moments, and then continues (we can't even get people to do that at actual stop signs!)
I think a more appropriate change that I would love to see, is the ability to treat a red light as a stop sign. I can see no safety reason why one should have to wait for a light to turn green if there is no traffic coming. Come to a full and complete stop, and then proceed if it is safe to do so.
Well not having 4 way intersections is a major design change, especially in cities which are often laid out in a grid. And requiring traffic lights for 4way intersections to be safe is a consider drawback, when you consider situations such as signal light failures, or citywide power loss type events; in countries that treat "stop as stop", you have a safer failure mode..
At the end of the day the important thing isn't necessarily whether the signs mean "Stop" or "Yield"; an important thing is that all drivers adhere to a common set of rules, so that other drivers have predictability.
If the signs mean STOP, then everyone must stop in the manner proscribed by the rules. If the signs mean YIELD, then everyone must yield in the manner proscribed by the rules.
If when approaching an intersection, you can't be sure what the other driver's response to a STOP/YIELD sign is, then you have a safety hazard introduced by the unpredictability
I'm sorry, but running a stop sign in an intersection with good visibility in all directions most definitely _is_ a tiny little thing, and it's a shame both that the law doesn't treat it as such
It's not. If you don't stop and carefully look properly, drivers' danger of hitting a pedestrian or bicyclist are higher, because the amount of time the driver of a moving car has to look around is so limited, that even with perfect visibility, there is not enough time to thoroughly inspect the surroundings, without stopping.
I can see no safety reason why one should have to wait for a light to turn green if there is no traffic coming. Come to a full and complete stop, and then proceed if it is safe to do so.
I can. Drivers in the US when reading the rule would read and understand "Come to a stop, then Proceed"
They would miss/ignore/fail to understand the "Full and complete stop" part, and they would miss/ignore/fail to understand the "if it is safe to do so" part.
Drivers already don't understand the "turn right on red" rule. They understand they can turn right on a red light. They don't understand the "Verify that the intersection is clear of oncoming traffic" in all directions, part.
In the same way drivers misunderstand the rule about Yellow lights. Instead of "Stay out of the intersection, stop if safe to do so; otherwise proceed cautiously" they read "Put the accelerator to the floor, and get into the intersection as quickly as possible".
Humans need social interaction.
What happens if they don't get it?
Some will end up like Genie.
So a teacher showing you multiple approaches
...can be simulated by watching the Khan Academy video on a topic along with videos by its competitors.
cunningly cajoling you to push your boundaries
Why can this not be done through Internet-mediated interaction?
If you're going to go to the trouble of hiring exam proctors, hiring people to supervise minor children while their parents earn a living, hiring teachers for things that can't be taught online (such as basic reading and writing), and somehow providing online access to poor people, you might as well end up hiring teachers.
The school bus stop sign is so kids can walk across the street without getting run over. You're supposed to stop form both sides.
The Official Site of 1337 Pwnage
Is there an Order-in-Council that tells UK citizens to only look one way when crossing? I know we were taught the 38th Amendment was "you are required to look both ways when crossing or drivers have the (God given) right to run you over" in the US.
Actually, there is a lot of gray area around a stop sign. Lets say you come to a stop sign at the intersection of two streets in the middle of nowhere with 1/2 mile visibility in all directions and no traffic. Why should you stop?
For safety reasons you should stop. Usually stop signs are there to control an intersection, but there are sometimes other reasons, such as road hazards. You may think you have 1/2 mile visibility everywhere, but there is a danger there, because the driver's awareness is inherently limited; human vision only has an effective span of 120 degrees, much of that is peripheral vision which has a very limited useful distance; approximately 10 degrees is what you can actually see, the rest is a bit of an illusion created by the brain.
If you are looking straight ahead and side to side, you will still not necessarily notice a car with 1/2 mile visibility; there is a probalistic occurence of the object "catching" your attention so that you unconsciously look at it.
But typically drivers are looking straight ahead; You don't really have clear sight of what is to the right or left of an intersecting road, until your angle to the object is close to 360 degrees, even with high visibility..
There is also the fact that even stronger safety measures are called for out "in the middle of nowhere". The farther you are from civilization, the more likely a person is to die if a serious injury is experienced, because it can take emergency medical assistance too long to arrive
If they chose to put a stop sign somewhere, there should be a good reason for their decision.
I'm all for taking this up with your county planning folks. But it's not up to drivers to override the authorities' careful decisions with regards to road safety, and thereby put themselves and others at risk.
I think a more appropriate change that I would love to see, is the ability to treat a red light as a stop sign.
In some states, motorcycles can. Citation
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
In Alaska, left on red is OK if you are going onto a one-way street, regardless of whether you are on a one-way or two-way street. Though I'll admit that few states do that, but it works well enough.
Learn to love Alaska
until your angle to the object is close to 360 degrees
P.S. Obviously I mean +/- 90 degrees; where an object at 0 degrees is directly ahead of you. Since at 0 degrees you can see an object directly ahead. At 90 degrees you can look out the right window. At -90 degrees you can look out the left window.
At approximately +/- 40 to 45 degrees, an object will be obscured.
Most cars do not have a cockpit that gives the driver an unobstructed view in all directions. There are plenty of blind spots both in front of and behind your car.
Is it really an abuse when the only legal avenue you have to address such situations is completely uninterested in doing anything to help you?
Wiggum to Marge: "Sorry, the law is powerless to help you"
Marge (later, while being arrested) to Wiggum: "I thought the you said the law is powerless"
Wiggum: "Powerless to help you, not to punish you....Take her away boys"
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
Is it really an abuse when the only legal avenue you have to address such situations is completely uninterested in doing anything to help you?
Yes, I think it is. As my father taught me, two wrongs do not make a right.
What was going to come of abusing the ability to access the database in that way? What exactly did they propose to do if and when they identified the person responsible? They presumably can't take legitimate legal action, if their evidence was obtained illegally and becomes inadmissible as a result. <sarcasm> They might know where the guy lives, so I suppose they could just go round to his place, where knee-capping him will teach him the error of his ways. </sarcasm> Nothing good came of their action. All it showed was that someone in a position of public trust is not responsible enough to hold that position.
Of course, the fact that the police didn't do their job stinks. No-one is disputing that. But vigilantism is rarely a useful solution to anything, and when it is, we're usually talking more on the scale of toppling an entire government. If the victims here really wanted to improve the situation, couldn't they have collected the fingerprints (legally) and then gone to the media to show how easy it was and highlight the failure of the police to do their job properly? At least that way, even if their own case couldn't benefit, it would highlight the problem and incentivise those responsible to do better next time.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I use the high tech method of moving my head to patch the blind spot issue. Works great.
If abuses of privileged access all would result in criminals being discovered, I don't particularly give a shit about them.
"Lives are saved when people don't run stop signs because they're afraid of getting a ticket."
Exactly.
But I think this leads to an unfortunate conundrum: when the follow two things combine: 1) a perception that traffic violations are issued by unjust assholes, and 2) teenaged boys (or adult man-children), suddenly the latter group purposefully drives more aggressively as a quiet and desperate act of daily rebellion, which becomes a ritual. A very dangerous ritual.
Running redlights and stopsigns lead to horrific accidents. Its a shame man-boys feel the need to break this particular law and then whine and bitch when they get caught. Why not just shoplift or do something less deadly to exercise their need to rebel?
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Why not just shoplift or do something less deadly to exercise their need to rebel?
Probably partially because stores are much more effective at catching shoplifters than police are at catching red-light runners, and those people wind up jail faster.
Another explanation would be they want to show off. If there were no danger, the little rebels wouldn't feel they're sending the message they want to send
Personally, I think drivers under age 25 should have to have the "black box" or "car chip" in their car, with GPS tracking and data about their driving habits reported to their liability insurance provider on a monthly basis.
And there should no longer be an age-based premium on insurance rates; instead there should be an exponential increase in insurance cost if unsafe driving or red-light running is detected.
Stores use technology such as 'anti-theft tags' and cameras to deter shoplifting. Insurance companies should use technology to deter reckless driving on their dime.
While I agree with you about inappropriate policing priorities, I have to say I find your actions in abusing privileged access to a database to be more offensive than those of the person who broke into your car.
Oh, you must be my local district attorney who regularly throws people in jail for life for defending themselves from thieves brandishing guns while simultaneously only giving 20-25 years for thieves who murder an unarmed victim.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I've lived in a few Canadian cities which "tried" roundabouts. The problem is that they completely screwed up (and I've seen this in both Winnipeg and Ottawa so I wouldn't be surprised if this has happened other places in NA). They gave the right of way to those entering the roundabout rather than those exiting the roundabout. This, of course, make the roundabout worse than useless. As soon as there is any significant traffic, everything grinds to a halt. To this day I don't know what possessed them to be so stupid, but the result is that everybody in those areas hates roundabouts with a passion.
o.O
Isn't that in the traffic rules? Here in Portugal it's:
Sure he was able to win, because he was given a chance to listen to his story with an open mind. It depends on the judge and his mood that day.
I had a cop give me a ticket for the same thing, and I had stopped completely, but because I stopped a few feet in front of the stop sign and from his angle, behind the house , he missed it and thought because I started accelarating after stopping, that I had not even done my stop sign.
I used google maps to explain to the judge the angle he was at, made no sense for him to give me a ticket as anyone stopping a few feet before and not exactly on the line would appear to go through the stop sign.
The judge just smiled and said all the technology in the world wont save me from a ticket, and proceeded to give me my fine PLUS the court costs.
He was lucky is all...the judge was nice enough to let him speak his side and actually thought it through....not all judges do this!!
How is that abuse? A crime was committed. He didn't lift the prints off of a public place. I see nothing morally wrong with investigating a legitimate crime when the police can't be bothered to do so themselves.
The abuse wasn't lifting the fingerprints, it was accessing a private database containing sensitive information about members of the public for reasons other than those that were properly authorised.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Yes, that is how it would work in places without any traffic control at all. But good luck actually finding such a location in America. They put stop signs out in the middle of nowhere, where two roads are perfectly straight and have nothing around for miles happen to cross. And at the end of every single little dirt road that reaches a main road is a stop sign.
I have never in my entire life seen two roads that cross without traffic control. I have seen a very obscure road or two terminate into another without a stop sign, but I suspect those were actually private roads. (Like I said, I'm actually _unsure_ about the yield rules at an intersection without traffic control, and it's not because I don't know how to drive, it's because I've literally never been in that situation.)
That is what we are complaining about. Not what the signs do, which is pretty standardize between countries, but the specific ones used everywhere. You reach the end of the road or a crossing of equal roads, in the US, you have a stop sign or a traffic light, period, so you must come to a complete stop regardless of traffic. (Unless you hit the green light, obviously)
The only place you'll ever see a intersection-based yield sign is at right turn lanes, only for people turning right. It is never used for any traffic that would cross other lanes of traffic. Because apparently Americans cannot figure out how that works. (Yield signs pop up a few other places, like the few roundabouts we have and in some merge places, but that's about it.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
It's not just yield signs. People stop even when directed not to.
We have an four-way intersection here that starts a two-lane highway from three one-lane roads. The left lane of the highway is created from traffic going straight or turning left onto it, and the right lane is created from the right turn. This right turn lane splits off before the red light, so you don't have to stop or yield or merge or anything. You just get in the right-turn lane, keep driving, and tada, you're on the highway.
Guess what people do? That's right, they stop. So they put up a 'Keep Moving' sign, but people still stop, or at least slow down.
I keep hoping they'll put up those white 'can't change lanes' poles, which might help, but I suspect this is a losing battle. Perhaps if they put up a 'You have your own goddamn lane, you morons, so don't yield to non-existence traffic' sign.
Whenever I rail about traffic rules, I remember that intersection and force myself to remember why the rules are the way they are: Because most people appear to be utter idiots who operate their car by rote and obvious traffic signs, and giving them any extra options would melt their brains.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?