@mmeister: My sentiments exactly. Think about it people, how many speed traps have you seen in places that are likely points of accidents vs. likely points of speeding? The thing with traffic tickets is that it's an EASY WAY TO TAX. If it's a choice between passing a general tax to fund the police force OR having the police force write a shitload of tickets, what do you thinks going to happen? Many small towns will also only ticket out of towners, thus receiving the benefit of a tax without the cost to the local population.

dabu

Similar case happened in the UK with a physicist/mad scientist type and a laser speed thingy. Physicist won, laser evidence was thrown out over the GPS data logger the physicist had installed in his car.

cmdrfire

@Maark: I mean, I don't speed to be some punk endangering people on main street. I drive 80 on the tollways in the Chicago area just like all the other nuts up here :) Driving slower/speed limit does save gas though and is responsible when you're in town...

AngrySicilian

This from my GPS log

23:38:59 339 ft 66 ft 0:00:04 11 mph
23:39:03 338 ft 134 ft 0:00:01 92 mph
23:39:04 336 ft 452 ft 0:00:08 39 mph

Do you see a problem?

RADAR works at the speed of light...GPS will have to come a long way to win in court. It has a + or - 1mph accuracy.

sguth925m

It has been awhile but when I was in high school we had a highway patrolman come to our drivers ed class and talk about defensive driving. During his lecture he said that more accidents in our area where caused by people going to slow as opposed to speeding. People think if they go 15mph under the speed limit in the passing lane they are driving defensively, it turns out their just idiots like I always thought.

dwight-schrute

@AngrySicilian and @mmeister: You are right on the money. Speeding tickets are not about "safety" at all, no way no how.

Maark

Somebody wake me up when an invisible car cloak is invented so I don't have to worry about being visible to the naked eye, let alone get caught for speeding.

Nerdelphia

@mmeister: I wouldn't go that far, but I appreciate the sentiment.

AngrySicilian

Police and their radar guns serve only one purpose: to generate revenue. Sadly, the judges are participants in this ultimate money scam. Cops would never lie, so their word holds more value than yours. Of course cops have to make their quotas, but that never seems to play into the minds of judges.

Welcome to the world of "we want your money". Wonder what that motorcycle copy is doing? Writing up a good $500K a year in tickets, that's what. We are viewed as nothing more than a revenue source to those that are supposed to serve us.

Safety? Please -- if they cared about safety, they wouldn't be hiding in the bushes. Cops use fear and intimidation as their main weapon and show little regard for speed laws they are enforcing.

Sadly, I see cops as nothing more than government approved thugs shaking you down for money.

mmeister

Way too many supporters of big brother type technologies on this thread.

Live Free or Die.

AngrySicilian

@ReductiMat: Yes, any speed greater than zero can result in an accident. I doubt anybody would dispute that. BANMOJO's comment is that the LIKELIHOOD goes up with speed. That being said, I believe it's when the driver exceeds his or her ability is when the likelihood skyrockets. For example, my girlfriend's little brother has a far higher chance of causing an accident at 35 mph than I would at 65 -- he just doesn't pay attention to his surroundings.

@ideaman2020: Not really. That only works if you've only travelled in a straight line. If you pull a U-turn and arrive at the same spot 30 seconds later, did you really move 0 mph? I'd assume that the 30 seconds are "spot checks", reporting the current speed at that moment.

psyrex

I was once pulled over in a large red Jeep. It took me minutes to get up to 65, if I was driving downhill with a good tail wind. I got pulled over and the officer said I was doing 80. I laughed and said I doubt I was going 65. I already had my id, insurance and registration in hand. He came back a few minutes later and said I was probably right. I didn't get the ticket.

All of these cases are going to end up getting thrown out if the data that is generated and stored on the GPS unit is not secure. This goes beyond encryption and time stamping. It is going to have to be device specific and I bet asymmetrical. That is, the data should only be coherent on a particular device and that verification that the data was created and stored on the device would come from a secondary portion of data that can't be decrypted and verified by anybody else other than the manufacturer. A self generated Message Digest code, like MD5 wouldn't cut it either.

DeadWriter

typo: "GPS vis Radar"

Also important to remember is that this isn't your everyday GPS for navigation. This particular teenager had a record for speeding, and his car was fitted with a GPS-based speed logger by his father, who is a sheriff. They were protesting the radar because the gps data should cut both ways: to catch speeding and also report non-speeding.

Most consumer navigational GPS's don't log your speed (as far as i know), and there has been uproar when this type of "feature" has been proposed.

wlcrm

Well, when you think about it, it's perfectly logical that the GPS "evidence" is flawed.

If it's only measuring every 30 seconds, there's nothing to say that you didn't go 90 mph for 10 seconds then slow down to 30 mph for 20 seconds. The GPS would show you moved at an average rate of 50 mph for those 30 seconds.

But the radar got you when you were doing 90....

ideaman2020

as a former Sonoma county resident this does not suprise me. It may have a thin veneer of yuppie-ness in some areas. But Sonoma county is where the chicken incubator and Winona Horowitz (Ryder) are from. Not to mention Night Ranger. Its a cow town. From Sebastopol to Petaluma.

calaverasgrandes

"but it's a well known fact that speeding raises the likelihood of an accident"

Bullcrap. A shitty driver will get in an accident regardless of speed.

If people want incapable people of driving cars, then at the very least set the limits to the 85th percentile. Not some arbitrary number politcal whacks dream up in order to appease the sheeple or to drum up city coffers. Once that is done, enforce variance on both sides of that number equally.

ReductiMat

Uninirregardless to that fact.

Radar didnt really win, either. The defendant just didnt have enough data.

Every three seconds woulda been better.

kou5oku

@hco22boy:

If this was actually true (busiest 35 mph road in the city during rush hour.) then how were you speeding?

Y2KGTP

DUDE! $450 is really steep! I mean crap! That's like a brand new 30" LCD!

whiteknight

We're almost to the point (probably already are but its too expensive still) where every new car made can have a system installed that would automatically give a warning, then a ticket, for speeding, anywhere. This would 1) cut down on accidents a LOT and 2) make going to court irrelevant.

When I was young and stupid I sped a lot. I never caused an accident, but it's a well known fact that speeding raises the likelihood of an accident. Hey, if everyone had the ability to drive like Schumacher, the roadway would be a safer place, for sure. But we're forced to drive along with every other asshole that passes the joke of a drivers test we have to take in the states, and it's just like in school -> the lowest common denominator keeps everyone else back. c'est la vie. It sucks, but the alternative, being unknown, may suck even worse. (hey, we can hypothetically be tortured for YEARS before finally being killed, if some psycho really wanted to. who says the afterlife, if it exists, is all paradise and roses? maybe all the people we hurt and kill in this life wait for us on the other side, gathering power in the next realm, and when we finally arrive unleash 'hell' on us :^)

jk, but maybe not. who knows?

banmojo

I had this same thing happen to me last two years ago at age 16, the cop claimed he clocked me at 81 on the busiest 35 mph road in the city during rush hour. I have a feeling that the judge did not believe this, as he only ticketed me $450, where as my friend got a ticket for 63 in a 40 and had his license pulled by the same judge. Despite the ticket i paid, i consider myself pretty lucky in comparison to my friend.

hco22boy

If it's an easy tax then I'm all for it. I haven't had a ticket since I was in my teens, 10+ years ago. I went to traffic court for bad tabs & it was full of 16-25 year old idiots with multiple moving violations including speeding. Paying a ticket is too good for them.

I drive fast too. (Of course I SLOW DOWN when the conditions are good.) When the conditions are good I do 70+. I was driving back from the mountains Sunday and doing 75 on the freeway. If I get busted for doing 80 I'll take it like a man & pay my fine. I know what I'm doing and the 65 mph limit with +5 for honor's sake really isn't that bad. If you want to do 80, or 90 then I'm glad to see the cops ticket you. It's not safe. Fundamentally you could be out there with your driving gloves & your razor sharp reflexes but there are thousands of things that are out of your control. Being a good driver is essential, I'd love to see innattentive or stupid people lose their licenses, but being "good" isn't the end-all-be-all.

reverse

@IMCHASE15:

Sounds like he didn't want you that badly. Cops don't get "stuck". That's what the flash-y lights and the sirens are for.

willentrekin

@djdare: But real crime doesn't collect any revenue.

HollywoodBob

Cop almost got me for speeding today...but he got stuck at the intersection trying to pull out and get me...and let's put it this way...he couldn't find me.......
:D
I have something to be thankful for Thanksgiving now!

imchase15

@dabu: and @mmeister: i would like to add to this, think about what happens when a real crime is actually committed. For example a couple of years ago I went to a movie at the movie theater right behind our mall, pretty busy area, and I went to a 7:30 show, so we're not talking dead of night, no one around. Came out of the theater and my passenger side window is busted out, my dash beat to fuck, my cd player not stolen, but the face ripped off, and everything beaten to a pulp by someone obviously pissed that they couldn't snatch my alpine, my 150 disc case of cds (completely full, all of purchased real cd's not burnt garbage) was taken, and my trunk riffled through (nothing in there really of value...). But my point was, the cop shows up, 2 hours later, proceeds to tell me basically that these things happen, and there's nothing that they can do, and basically sends me on my way. Before she got there, the dude from the theater came out to clean up the glass and was telling me about how this happens in this same parking lot every night of the week, and they don't bother to do anything about it. Mind you this is in a suburb (50,000 people) that is insanely policed because its the snobby rich suburb. But I'm ranting now, my point is, cops are supposed to protect me from people who don't care about my personal freedoms, but instead they take the easy way out. They go after things like speeders that are easy targets with a quick pay out, and ignore real crimes like home break ins, and things of this nature. Think of anyone you know who's had their house broken into or their car stolen or something like this, what do the police always say "well these things happen, there's nothing we can do..."

To me, its bullshit, there is something they can do, but they choose not to. In my case, i knew they had popped the trunk, from the inside of my car, you have to hit the release, so we know, they put their hands on that latch, and on the outside of the car to lift the lid, but do they even pretend to fingerprint, and act like they care, hell no.

djdare

If they could determine exactly where the officer bounced his radar beams off the car, and how fast the GPS said he was going at that point, the defense would have a stronger case, but not an automatic victory. The question would then be: why should the judge believe the GPS over the radar?

Doesn't GPS have a margin of error in location, which would translate into an error in determining speed? True, the prosecution has the burden of proof, and the defense need only raise reasonable doubt. But if the GPS margin of error is sufficient, it would fail to raise reasonable doubt.

Even if the difference between the alleged speeds (radar claimed 62, GPS claimed 45) is enough the overcome any GPS speed error, why believe the GPS over the radar? What's the evidence that GPS is more accurate?

Barcard

Um...@XTC46: RADAR is in the EM spectrum. It works at the speed of light. Well, the BEAM bounces at the speed of light. The processing is probably a tick or two slower. Same with Laser or LIDAR. All EM spectrum. Audio ranging (those big horns you see in old WWII movies, listing for enemy propellers over the White Cliffs of Dover) THAT's speed of sound.

himself

@sguth925m: RADAR works at the speed of sound, not light(huge difference). Laser works at the speed of light.

xtc46

Ever hear of Kelley-Frye? The cops should have challenged the introduction of the GPS evidence under this case law. At that point the judge would have to hold a hearing to determine the scientific validity of a GPS to determine speed. The Defendant would have had to bring in an expert at their own cost or testify about it on their own. Then the Officer asks the court to take judicial notice and GPS won't be used in court again.

sguth925m

radio waves don't travel at the speed of light?

klew

Radio waves, like all forms of electromagnetic waves, travel at the speed of light. Unlike the speed of sound that changes depending on the substance through which the sound wave travels, the speed of light is a constant. The speed of light has been measured to be about 9.836 x 108 ft/s (2.998 x 108 m/s) or 186,200 miles per second. Speed is defined as a change in distance over time.

sguth925m

xtc46: Who told you that ? They're wrong.

6street

All GPS systems have a margin of error in their position information (many hand held ones (not car ones) will display this). This margin constantly changes as information changes and more satellites are found etc.

Since the GPS is unable to physically measure speed it works it out by dividing distance travelled by the time you did it in. Since this margin of error means that your distance can change quickly (position can jump around) this is not a totally accurate measure.

I currently have a Garmin GPS here, despite lying on my desk it is reporting a speed of between 0 and 10mph WITHOUT BEING MOVED.

So, GPS speed measurements are not accurate. I cannot vouch for radar however.

sparx104

Originally, speed enforcement was purely for the public's well being, since the second year of its inception it is mainly used as a cash cow.

With available, and affordable technology there is no reason that we need to waste money paying police officers to hand out tickets.

If the authorities truly wanted to make driver safety the top priority, then they would make it more difficult to obtain a license and would require re-testing every five years (or even annually if they had to).

If monitoring traffic is necessary, than it seems like an easy process to automate. It would not be difficult or all that expensive to install mechanisms on public roads to prevent speeding (e.g. photo radar cameras at every intersection)

Fierock

xtc46 Who told you that ? They're wrong

"Electromagnetic radiation (which includes radio waves, light, cosmic rays, etc.) moves through empty space at the speed of 299,792 km per second."

[www.qrg.northwestern.edu]

[science.howstuffworks.com]

sguth925m

@ WILLENTREKIN

Actually, in most jurisdiction's that do not have traffic preemption devices....its policy that if an EMS vehicle (police fire ambulance) approaches an intersection that is blocked (meaning if there is three lanes, the light is red, and all three lanes have a vehicle at the light) they have to turn the lights and sirens off before they get to the light, otherwise the stopped vehicles will think they have to drive through the red light. I am assuming this is what the guy meant went he said the cop was blocked my the intersection.

njams13

Well, it does put forth an interesting point if you think about it. If it's not enough evidence to use to acquit someone of speeding, is it enough to convict? If the same standard applies to both sides, then by this precedent, you couldn't issue a ticket using GPS.

rich73

@sguth925m:
Uh, you're saying that in four seconds your car went from 11mph to 92mph, and then a second later you shaved 53mph off your speed?

Kered

@psyrex That only works if you've only travelled in a straight line. If you pull a U-turn and arrive at the same spot 30 seconds later, did you really move 0 mph? I'd assume that the 30 seconds are "spot checks", reporting the current speed at that moment.

As far as I know, a GPS, only recives a signal from a satelite to determine location, and based on and internal internal clock calculates speed. So in your example it should infact show 0mph. unless ofcourse it recives location more often and calculates an average for the 30sec.

4p0c

@psyrex: "If you pull a U-turn and arrive at the same spot 30 seconds later, did you really move 0 mph?"

You're just elaborating on the same point I made. It's not accurate enough.

If it's actually doing "speed spot checks" every 30 seconds, then it's even worse. I could do 50mph for three seconds, then 90mph for 27 seconds, then 50mph for three seconds again [assuming I can time it to the checks]...

ideaman2020