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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.
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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
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?"
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...
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?
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...
Just when I was thinking these cameras were a bad idea, you had to post that. Running a light once, because you're lost is inexcusable.
My mom totaled her car that way. She's still driving and doesn't hold herself responsible. After all, she was just lost. It's not like she was drunk. Those people should go to jail. grrrr
Obviously the car looked fast.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
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.
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.