Slashdot Mirror
Baltimore Issued Speed Camera Ticket To Motionless Car
SternisheFan sends this story from the Baltimore Sun:
"The Baltimore City speed camera ticket alleged that the four-door Mazda wagon was going 38 miles per hour in a 25-mph zone — and that owner Daniel Doty owed $40 for the infraction. But the Mazda wasn't speeding. It wasn't even moving. The two photos printed on the citation as evidence of speeding show the car was idling at a red light with its brake lights illuminated. A three-second video clip also offered as evidence shows the car motionless, as traffic flows by on a cross street. Since the articles' publication, several lawmakers have called for changes to the state law that governs the way the city and other jurisdictions operate speed camera programs. Gov. Martin O'Malley said Tuesday that state law bars contractors from being paid based on the number of citations issued or paid —an approach used by Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Howard County and elsewhere. 'The law says you're not supposed to charge by volume. I don't think we should charge by volume,' O'Malley said. "If any county is, they need to change their program.'"
In my own area, a Judge has ruled they are not legal.
HexaByte - he's a square and a half!
He is guilty. Clearly guilty of embarrassing some government officials with his so called 'evidence'. Lock him up.
You can't handle the truth.
This happens regularly in the UK too, often with slightly unusually shaped vehicles like flat bed trucks. Sometimes the police paint the road markings used to verify the amount of movement between two sequential photos the wrong distance apart as well (happened near me).
Best thing to do is record your journeys with GPS so you can always prove you were not speeding. In fact all you really need to do is record one journey and then just alter the dates on the log for whenever you need it. UK courts have consistently taken GPS data over speed camera images/radar data.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Well within the manufacturers margin of error!
The cop who signed off on this ticket is obviously not doing his job. This should at least be fraud, if not something more serious. Of course, there's no chance of the thug with a badge getting any sort of charges laid against him. There is no justice in the US.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Speding fines are nothing more than a tax. If we realy cared about the safety of drivers on the road then speeding violations should be delt with using some kind of points system that will eventualy suspend your licence for a while. Instead we have a tax that encintivises harrassments of good citicens by cops. I have seen in many areas where city limits are extended for miles outside of any reasonable resemblence of a city just so the city can garner extra funds from speeding tickets. The use of financial punishment for these sorts of violations only leads to a more controling and harrassing atmosphere from those who reciave the funds (ie our local governments).
"For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice" -- God
This happens with red light cameras quite often locally. Two pictures are required, the first before the stop line and a second after the stop line showing the violation. I know someone who had to have the judge FORCE the prosecution to produce the second picture since it showed him stopped at the line (no violation). I thought he should have sued for wrongful prosecution since the prosecutor clearly knew there was no violation (he resisted producing the second photo quite strenuously), but he was happy enough just to get out of a $400 ticket.
There is a real easy solution to shake-downs such as this. In most jurisdictions a camera cannot write a citation, it still takes a real cop to fill out the paperwork and sign off on it. In situations like this you put that cop in prison for perjury and require the city to pay a $100,000 fine to the person wrongfully accused. That will stop this behaviour overnight.
I'm so glad the no-motion speeding ticket warranted a full-motion video for its newscast...
About 6 months ago. My first speeding ticket in 35 years of driving. And curiously it was for 38 in a 25. Hmm...might have to dig out that info again...
From a point of view at the center of the solar system that car was moving at 30 km/s!
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
A stationary vehicle charged with speeding is not substantial enough evidence to challenge the ruling against the state.
SO Not surprised. Lived/worked in and around that shithole of a city for a decade.
Corruption doesn't even begin to describe it (and yes, that includes O'Malley).
This happened when I was in the military in Germany in the early 90's. Just about to leave for the US and I got a speeding ticket in my mailbox for my 67 VW Beetle. Thing is, that Beetle never even made it onto the autobahn or any other street since I had the engine out of it the whole time and didn't finish the project before I had to leave country. I also wasn't allowed to leave until the false ticket was paid. Back then, if you contested the ticket, you had to write in to get access to the photos. I didn't have enough time left in country for that, so I had to pay the ticket or get an Article 15 (which is like a speeding ticket for your life in the military). I had thought, and still think, that it was a scam played on GI's about to leave the country. I'll have to dig that ticket out and finally request the photos from that bit of glory...
My mother was driving through baltimore a few years back. A couple weeks later a red light camera ticket came in the mail. My parents paid it, only to have it show up again in their mailbox. At first they were really mad that the city screwed up and sent multiple tickets, even though the first payment went through....then they realized the timestamp was about 10 minutes later than the first. Yep, my mother accidentally ran the same stoplight twice in a row because she was lost...
Nothing like putting some road cones down in an area for a couple of years, slapping in some mobile (read: vehicle-mounted) speed cameras and reaping the benefits.
The Baltimore Beltway is notorious for being one giant speed trap. In all of my commuting around that area, I've yet to see any construction zone actually have any workers.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
Maybe a fellow Marylander can help me out with this: if we are truly a democracy, why can't there be a state referendum to either vote Yay or Nay on these cameras? Where I live in Montgomery County it seems like there are speed cameras every mile or so. Would it REALLY be that tough to just have them removed? Seems like a no brainer that you could definitely get the signatures to put it up for a vote.
Living in Baltimore now, What I would really like them to address is this:
Why are the speed cameras concentrated in the predominantly lower class black areas?
Why are cameras that were approved to operate ONLY in school zones ONLY during school hours, issuing tickets around the clock?
Why are mobile speed cameras being used when they were only approved for stationary cameras in school zones?
in libtard cali... the price for me was 480, good that the cop did not show up
I hope this guy's experience moves all of those who got tickets in the same area to file a class action lawsuit against the vendor and jurisdiction that implemented this particular camera system. They should both pay through the nose.
Obviously the car looked fast.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
the "red tail lights" were actually red shifted light from the car
for a couple years. They were eventually removed because people simply ignored the tickets that came in the mail. Tickets delivered by mail are not delivered by a sworn peace officer so they were unenforceable. The state contracted with a private company because sending process servers out to deliver tickets would be too expensive.
There were other ways around the tickets, too. Two car families would register husband's car in wife's name and wife's car in husband's name. If the face in the photo doesn't match the license photo of the registered owner, the ticket would not be mailed. One guy in Scottsdale collected >30 tickets without having to pay because he wore a gorilla mask when he drove past the cameras. He admitted to owning the car and the mask, but denied being at the wheel and no one could prove that he was behind the wheel when the photos were snapped.
I have an idea for making traffic safety laws about traffic safety and not revenue generation:
Pass a law that says all proceeds from moving violation citations go into a statewide fund. Then every 12 months, the funds are distributed evenly to every licensed driver in the state who has a 36 month clean driving record. Good drivers get rewarded by bad drivers, who pay into the fund with their tickets, and municipalities can't turn traffic laws into a cash cow with bullshit like speed traps, red-light cameras with short yellow lights, and other shenanigans.
photo tickets don't go on you they go on the car
dear dear .... next thing you'll know is they'll be 'tazering' Women for wanting to buy too many iPhones ... ...
ohh wait
Fight this bureaucracy if you let them have an inch they will take a yard its happened in Melbourne Australia where they have speed and red light cameras on almost every street corner and now the the people that don't drive but write the law have said that going 4 miles over the speed limit is speeding its a fucking shame that we let the bureaucrats take over our personal freedom day by day
http://www.volokh.com/2012/12/13/now-theres-a-speech-restriction-for-you/
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Here in Edmonton there was a now famous case of someone getting a automatic photo ticket from a 'speed on green' camera. The police said he was travelling at over 100 kph. During rush hour. On a major stop and go road, where going faster than 40 kph would be simply impossible.
The police hand delivered the ticket. The delivering officer insisted it was legit.
Took it to court. Took it to the media. The judge threw it out right away. The media had a field day with it.
Due to the backlash the city had to immediately stop all speed on green cameras. If they are not accurate they are useless. It was revealed that the cameras are not accurate, the police have to manually go through all the photos and filter out the obviously wrong ones.
Now our intersections have while lines curiously in the middle of them. To calibrate the cameras, I figure.
The pictures of "Evidence" shown on the ticket are likely not showing evidence of the speed infraction, but of the car that committed the speed infraction. A radar or lidar gun was pointed down the street, observed a car speeding, then took pictures of the offending vehicle as it moved up to the stop light (pictures from the rear of vehicle more likely to show plates, some people don't like to put plates on front of their car). Analogy: a shooting is committed, when the officers arrive they take picture of the suspect. The suspect presents these pictures in court and says, "Look, your honor, this "Evidence" doesn't show me with the guns in my hand, therefore they prove I didn't do it." Ummmm, no.
The vendor on his video link goes into detail about all the checks that are done, and at one point says "a minute to do this, a minute to verify that, a minute to check this..." etc.
The main article then states that "a single officer may check 1400 a day". OK, time for maths! There are 480 minutes in an 8 hour day, assuming no breaks for potty or lunch. We'll assume the officer is equipped with a sandwich and depends. But he obviously is spending LESS than "a minute" reviewing the entire citation so lets go down to seconds.
28800 seconds in his breakless-day, / 1400 citations, means the officer is averaging no more than 20 seconds per citation review. If we add up the vendor's recommended "minutes" to be about 3 per citation, the officers are being pushed to spend 16% of the expected time reviewing and approving these citations.
This is the police department's fault. If an officer is approving more than 500 citations a day, he's spending less than a minute on each review and is either not being given adequate time to do his job, or is just plain pencil-whipping/shortcutting to be lazy or work his quota/metrics.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Really? And what are you going to do if they don't change their programs? Oh, I know the answer: nothing.
Florida recently passed a state law regulating guns in the state. The law explicitly preempts any local laws. Good start.
But, then they added teeth:
"Ay public official who passes or enforces gun regulations below the state level faces a $5,000 personal fine and could even be removed from office by the governor for enacting or enforcing local gun laws."
See, it's one thing to say "duh, hey, you ain't supposed to do that". It's quite another to say "You can't do that, and if you do you will personally pay a $5,000 fine".
If you're serious about keeping municipalities from awarding contracts for speed cameras that are based on volume then you need to amend your law so that any officials in any municipality that does award or pay on such a contract is personally fined. It'll end tomorrow.
While you're at it you need to point out to your AG that an officer perjured himself when he signed off on this ticket. He needs to be prosecuted.
Do you have ESP?
Sounds like they put Rawls in charge of the speed cameras
"Hey officer, I see your units speed ticket issue rate is down this
quarter. Your ass is on the line if you don't have those cameras
bag our beloved dept. some more cash by the weekend"
Yhat makes the camera should pay 4 million to the victim of state fraud.
Re:Crooked cop...
perhaps a tired bored cop who can't discern the truth in 24 seconds per citation?
.
The article initially said that the officer reviews 12000 tickets per day, but that seems to have been fixed to say that the reviewing officer sees 1200 tickets per day. For an 8-hour maximum day, that means 150 ticket reviews per hour or 2.5 per minute.
That means the officer views the images/video for 24 seconds for each citation for a continuous 8 hour day if she gets no breaks or lunch time off; if she gets lunch time and break times, then the officer spends less than 24 seconds per ticket. Imagine how boring/laboriouus/teeeedious that must be. So of course some will say that sure one or two or more mistakes will slip through with that kind of assembly-line human amazon turk kind of review process, but that kind of mistake is unacceptable!
I just got nailed with a $50 fine for right on red without a stop. The times that you can contest a ticket are 8:30 to 2, Monday through Friday, so if you work normal hours, you have to take time off work. Oh, and you can't make an appointment at a specific time unless you have 5 or more violations to contest. Looking at the video that they provide on-line, I clearly stopped before turning right. I took the time to fight it on principle. The "judge" agreed I did stop, but I stopped at the corner, not at the white line across the road 25 feet before the corner, where you can't see the oncoming traffic. Doesn't matter. Statute says you must stop at the line. And here's what the NYS DMV website says under "rules of the road": Right on Red - At many intersections in New York State, governed by traffic lights, you may make a right turn when the light is red. You must come to a complete stop, check the intersection for vehicles and pedestrians, and proceed to make a right turn when it is safe to do so. Not a word about stop lines or the like. Nice business.
I'm still waiting for this stupid GEICO advertisement to finish loading. Still waiting.... meh... Baltimore's video feed is not... worth... my... time....
Put some honesty back and just call them cash registers, that's all they are.
If you don't have them right now (where I am, we don't) **FIGHT THEM TOOTH AND NAIL** because once your municipality is used to these revenue streams, they will not ever let them go, and you won't find a politician that is going to abolish them (since either cuts will need to be made, or other taxes found/raised).
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
http://www.collegehumor.com/video/294109/f-you-baltimore
Didn't used to be. Time was, the need to move the body left the invesigaor wonderign about the scene. So the chalk outline _was_ the thing to do.
Times change. Don't judges now by then, nor vice versa. 8-)
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
In the state of Maryland and in Baltimore City and Baltimore County, there is a MAXIMUM I. Q. (intelligence quotient) that is required to be a policeman, deputy sheriff, lawyer, or judge. That Maximum I. Q. is 40 (aka as moron, idiot, embicile, mentally challenged, retarded, and other various terms)!
too damn fast.
A police officer friend parked his police car in front of my garage. As we talked, he noticed his speed detecting camara mounted on the dash had registered my garage at 11 mph! Not wanting to get a speeding ticket for my garage, I asked him about this. He said that heat waves coming up off his hood had given a false reading. This can happen when heat waves rise off of a hot highway surface.
Whenever one person (or company, or whatever) is punished with a fine, such as a traffic violation, or punitive damages by the court system, that money should NEVER be used to help anyone else. Otherwise, there will be incentives to punish. Instead, the money should be destroyed. The fine, no matter how large, should be converted to currency in the form of older, worn-out bills. These bills would then be publicly incinerated.
Nobody must get any benefit by punishing someone else. This also solves the problem of windfall lawsuits; most of the windfall is in the form of punitive damages. (Compensation is a different story; of course the perpetrator must pay to compensate victims.)
Anyone see any flaws with this logic? Or am I a freaking genius? ;)
--- wad
Incorrect. Cars can't be charged with a moving violation. The ticket goes to the registered owner.
Contrast parking tickets, which are levied on the car, and are generally enforced by requiring payment before the state motor vehicles department will allow you to renew your registration.
Only Ferrari's and other high powered sports car look like they're going 38mph while parked