What is Digg?155 Comments
- thedarkwolf, on 07/18/2008, -3/+50It's seriously disturbing. The cop claimed he was going 62 but the GPS indicated that he was going almost exactly 45 (the speed limit). I want to know how such a huge mistake could be made. I know radar is not perfect, but 17MPH off?! My guess is that the cop didn't even look at the radar, just saw a teen and pulled him over, making up some number for how much he was speeding.
- inactive, on 07/18/2008, -21/+62GPS can only report average speed
Police radar reports instantaneous speed - Sajentine, on 07/18/2008, -5/+46So basically the cop's equipment was faulty (or he was lying but lets give him the benefit of the doubt), why is there no apology from the cops and how is anyone else supposed to get a fair shake at justice when there is that much of an error? While this is only a fine they have still basically robbed this guy of his time and effort without any real evidence behind them other than equipment that they have no way of knowing if it is working correctly.
- johnnick, on 07/18/2008, -9/+42FTA - "it tracked his speed, sending signals every 30 seconds" The radar gun would have provided an instantaneous measurement, and unless the GPS device reported during the precise second the radar device was taking its reading, the judge shouldn't have tossed out the ticket.
- benologist, on 07/18/2008, -3/+35GPS can still get you off the hook. If you're able to knock the cop out with your gps unit before he records your number plate.
- d4ktu, on 07/19/2008, -1/+30I'm pretty sure if I'm going 17 over, then I see that a cop just nailed me or possibly nailed me, I'm going to go from 62 to 45 in less than 30 seconds.
- jjb123, on 07/19/2008, -2/+30Saw the cop and slammed on the brakes.
- inactive, on 07/19/2008, -3/+28Yep, what we have here is a judge that doesnt really understand the tech in question. Radar guns are damn accurate, and while its possible this one was broken (or the cop was lying), I dont see how the GPS could prove that.
Whatever, at worst the kid got lucky and got away with speeding. - darkstar949, on 07/18/2008, -0/+25Could just be the radar gun wasn't calibrated correctly, or depending on the situation, he could have been clocking a different car and didn't realize it and / or pulled over a similar looking car.
- ICanRead, on 07/19/2008, -0/+23This is great. I am highly suspect of Police Officer behavior when giving out tickets based on my own history. I have gotten 3 speeding tickets. The last 2 the officers flat out lied. Period. 4 years and no ticket, but I still have a bloody speeding history.
As a driver you have no recourse. I do not even have to get into why he was asking a Born in the USA, accentless citizen for his Green Card when he already had my License and Student ID and why he made me sit in his car with him while he wrote out the ticket.
The whole end of the month, hit your quota, court fees to keep the judicial system running on top of your taxes you pay.. is just *****. On top of that they have the nerve to call me every month for donations to the Fraternal Order of Police.
Technology should hurt these ***** blackmale tactics. - tidu, on 07/19/2008, -0/+22But GPS can also get you on the hook, if they somehow pass a law allowing the cops to check the data...
- rhinitus, on 07/18/2008, -2/+20I have a feeling my parents would have just sucked it up and paid my ticket instead of dropping thousands of dollars on legal fees...
- gcnaddict, on 07/19/2008, -7/+22"it tracked his speed, sending signals every 30 seconds"
Those who try to say that the GPS measurements shouldn't have been trusted over radar needs to keep something in mind:
There's no way the kid could have (let alone would have) accelerated to 17mph above the speed limit and decelerated back to the speed limit all in 30 seconds time. There is *no* reason to do that. It's not fun. It's not practical. It looks awkward as *****, and it's just as bad on the breaks as it is on the fuel tank.
See why the device was accepted now? - Smashure, on 07/19/2008, -1/+16Just so you know, that whole "the cop has to show you his radar readout" fallacy is completely wrong. You can't, and shouldn't argue a ticket in any way on the side of the road. If the officer WANTS, he can even write you a ticket for other reasons while he stands there.
The place to argue a ticket is in court, in front of a judge. - bagelmaster, on 07/19/2008, -0/+11Maybe it's their vehicle? If the car belongs to them they have every right to worry about what he's doing with it. But if he owns it, I encourage him to rip that ***** out and shove it his overprotective parents' asses.
- ajb2015, on 07/19/2008, -0/+11they do have a way of knowing whether it works correctly. its called calibrating, and often cops don't do it.
- SolituSneiku, on 07/19/2008, -2/+11hmmm...my Garmin actually can tell me what my top speed has been, and I usually reset it everyday since I never speed so I don't have a problem with tickets anyway
- Avaseal, on 07/19/2008, -4/+13Ya but does it also work the other way around? I'd be pissed if I was cruising along in the middle of a deserted highway when I get a little notification thing pop up on my GPS GUI saying that I've been ticked for speeding.
- VacantThoughts, on 07/19/2008, -1/+10I love when the Police call me to ask for donations, their is nothing like giving the bitch calling a good "***** THE POLICE".
- iofthestorm, on 07/19/2008, -0/+9Haha, I don't know if that was a Freudian slip but I think you meant to type blackmail.
- seanc6610, on 07/19/2008, -0/+9it comes out to more than $190 when your insurance rates go up. and since insurance for teenagers is so damn high anyway, i'd take the legal fees over the points on my license and insurance hike.
- xptoast, on 07/19/2008, -2/+11I had to recently pay up since I didn't want to take the chance of getting a higher fine if I was proven guilty which by radar and a cops word is easy to prove even if the radar is broke and he was lying. We need this stuff available for proving stuff. ***** cops bug me.
- DeathfireD, on 07/19/2008, -2/+10I agree, if you ever have a question about the speed they say they caught you going at, just ask them to show you the speed on the gun. It's perfectly legal to ask them as long as your nice about it and not all "Show me the proof pig!". My friend asked once because he was questioning his own speedometer readings and wanted to know how much it may have been off by. He ended up getting off with just a warning once the cop figured out my friend was honestly concerned with the correctness of his own speedometer lol.
- kashk5, on 07/19/2008, -0/+8It's just about the ticket, it's also the insane insurance rates the family would have to incur were he to simply pay the ticket. Remember, the kid was a teenager living in California, so the family is already being raped by the insurance company.
- justinbaker, on 07/19/2008, -1/+9not if you have "tracks" on
with my garmin, it takes a reading every few feet or so, and i can pull up my exact speed at anytime along the track - bagelmaster, on 07/19/2008, -1/+9Doesn't the state have to repay those for basically falsely accusing you? I have no idea how courts work, but that seems fair that the losing party pay court fees and what not.
- dizturbd2, on 07/19/2008, -0/+7And Judge Dredd comes knockin if you don't pay them
- netneutrality, on 07/19/2008, -0/+7I need me an open source GPS.
- Khast, on 07/19/2008, -0/+7Okay, I got a speeding ticket about 2 years ago, which I got thrown out. I have a digital dashboard (Which was tested at .0001%+/-) and I was going up a hill...the officer said I was going 75MPH...in a 60.
How I got it thrown out, my car couldn't even do 50 up that hill, as it was old and tired. (And now resting in a junk yard @400,000 miles on it's odometer. IT was a good ol' car, and even till it got scrapped it got 32MPG...for a V-6 Land Yacht, not bad.) - inactive, on 07/19/2008, -0/+7 Yeah but basically everyone caught speeding was speeding so what good is GPS? That's why the limits are kept so ridiculously low. In NYC the limit is 50mph on the highway and the pace of the traffic in the morning is about 65-80mph. This allows the Police to pick people out at will and ticket them.
- hardwareguy, on 07/19/2008, -1/+7Some cops are just retards who pull people over for the hell of it.
Did you know that you can ask to see the radar to confirm.
Once i was heading back home from work early in the morning.
To keep from falling asleep i rolled the windows down, blasted the radio as loud as it would go.
I was doing 35 mph and a cop stopped me saying i was going 70 in a 45 zone.
I asked to see the radar, and he told me he was going to give me a reduced ticket for 55.
I still asked to see the radar and that i needed his badge information, he refused to show me and told me he was letting me off with a warning.
Two things I've learn't over the years:
1) Know your rights
2) Never be rude the the cops, even when they are being obnoxious - johndi, on 07/19/2008, -1/+7Or someone else was. The problem with the way Radar is used it that there is no way we know which car the officer was tracking. It's surprising that people accept it as evidence because there is no proof that the vehicle in question is the object being measured. If the vehicle isn't the only object in the beam you can get erroneous readings. Laser is better, but still subject to operator error. Radar camera's are also better since they actually take a picture of the object.
- kashk5, on 07/19/2008, -0/+5Especially when the cops themselves seem to be doing it all the time?
- dning88, on 07/19/2008, -1/+6Post Sponsored by Garmin
- kashk5, on 07/19/2008, -0/+5That's definitely one of the pieces of evidence you should request ASAP after getting a ticket. It's real helpful in court if you can prove the radar gun was faulty.
- Charun, on 07/19/2008, -7/+12He sped up 17 mph, got clocked by the radar gun then slowed down 17 mph all within 30 seconds? Why would anyone drive so erratically?
- dampeal, on 07/19/2008, -4/+9Buried for duplicate content, same story submitted yesterday.......
http://digg.com/gadgets/Speeding_Radar_Gun_vs_GPS - Risingashes, on 07/19/2008, -0/+5I'd love to have automated cars personally.
Driving is a useless and dangerous activity. - ShellShock11, on 07/19/2008, -0/+5Who doesn't want to learn how to cheat the system?
- inactive, on 07/19/2008, -1/+6Are you kidding? Not everyone drives a slow ass Prius.
At only 45, I could easily double that up to 90 in 20 seconds and come to a dead stop in the next 10 if I wanted to. Hell my car runs the quarter in 12ish seconds at 114 MPH. 0-60 in 5 seconds. Granted I have a fast car, but its still just stock.
Going up and down 17 MPH in 30 seconds is so easy that its hard to find a car that couldnt do it. - futebollounge, on 07/19/2008, -0/+5my argument was always questioning how the radar can be right when i am here watching my own speed-o-meter as im driving. now how can your toy be right when the speedometer showed me that i wasnt speeding. although you werent there to witness it, i wasnt there to witness the radar catching me speeding so i think we should call it even and part our ways.
although i have yet to try this. - teh_techie, on 07/19/2008, -0/+5No no... it's not a "God" given right for Diggers. It's just something we choose to do - and has nothing to do with "God".
- Alucard66, on 07/19/2008, -2/+6best to argue it to a judge but doesn't hurt to ask to see the radar, they should show it to you under any reasonable circumstance
- Wolfboy, on 07/19/2008, -0/+4That blog is a bit confusing and appears to be wrong - the kid has strong evidence on his side, but he has not yet beaten the ticket.
The blog says that Shawn Malone was found "not guilty." His local newspaper says the trial is not over - that it has been postponed until October.
The manufacturer of the GPS issued a news release yesterday that says Malone is using the GPS to fight the ticket (plead not guilty) but it does not say he has beaten the ticket. If he had, I'm sure that they would have said so.
The blog says the GPS sends a signal every 30 seconds. It looks like a lot of the Diggers think that means it figures his speed every 30 seconds (thus all the accelerate/decelerate in 30 seconds arguments)
The GPS evidently knows the car's speed pretty much constantly. Then, every 30 seconds, it "phones home" with the data (speed, location, etc.). The unit in the picture is primarily sold to companies that want to monitor how and where employees drive company vehicles.
Hometown newspaper article:
http://www1.pressdemocrat.com/article/20080712/NEW ...
GPS maker's press release:
http://www.prweb.com/releases/gps/tracking/prweb11 ...
It looks like Wired, ARS, /. and others confused the statement "plead 'not guilty' " in the press release with "found not guilty." - anubis2night, on 07/19/2008, -2/+6I live in Sonoma County and I can tell you that the cops here often give faulty tickets. I had a ticket a couple of years ago going down a hill where a couple of bike cops had a speed trap set up. They clocked me at 60 in a 35 zone and pulled me over just after the intersection. Because of the speed involved I wasn't allowed to take traffic school so I went back to the site and drove it twice taking careful notes of both where the officers were located and where I was pulled over. I then went out and bought a digital measuring wheel and went back to the site. I took 20 something pictures documenting both the on ramp, the speed limit and the turn where the cops hide at the bushes. Fortunately for me you could see evidence of the tire tread marks off the curb where the cops take off after people. I was careful to take pictures of the device and it's current measurement at this location, then I went to where the marks on the ground were and snapped a few pics of the intersection about a 100 ft away and then where I was pulled over. Lastly I continued to measure off the distance it would have took for the cops to have caught up with me had I been speeding and calculating the time to brake, I walked that distance off and snapped a few more pictures. The final spot where I would have had to been pulled over would have been on a different street from where I was pulled over. In the end I turned in 7 pages of evidence along with a print out of the specs for a BMW bike used by the officers here. My $355 ticket was dismissed. My wife received a ticket last year, and after my ordeal I've instructed her to keep a camera in the car, when she saw the lights on she snapped a few pics off of her speedometer, I had her write up a trial by declaration and enter those pictures into evidence, her case was dropped as well. At the time one of the court people mentioned that this stuff happens a lot. In fact many people never realize that cops have to be certified for training with radar / lidar and the devices do as well. More often than not they don't keep it up to date or simply use pacing to estimate your speed. And as with everything in life when you introduce the human element into any equation your bound to get some errors.
- anubis2night, on 07/19/2008, -1/+5Actually that's a fallacy. Cops don't have to show you their radar, as it's a safety issue and if you go to any cop forums you'll find out that they pretty much hate people that question them. Your more than likely just going to piss them off. The best thing to do is be nice thank them for their time, then when they tell you your free to go turn your car off and take notes. Note the time of day. The traffic on the street, the conditions, anything that the officer did or said that might indicate that he wasn't in full control of his faculties. Then once the cop has left take pictures, takes lots of pictures. Leave your car where you were pulled over then document as best you can what happened. Try to recreate what happened without moving your car. Walk the incident if you can. And keep a visual record. Digital camera's have metadata embedded into the pictures that date and time stamp when the picture were created so it's easy to show as evidence. Next go to court and request a trial by declaration, write it up using the notes you took at the scene, then include all the evidence you took at. Make sure to show the date and time stamps. This should be more than enough to get out of the ticket if you were not guilty. The reason for this is simple: traffic tickets are issued not for safety but to generate revenue for the state/city. If they were really concerned with safety they would simply put a governor on your vehicle and it would keep you from speeding, but alas this is a business. So as in any business they want to maximize profits. Now in order to do this they process as many tickets as they can as quickly as they can and as such they offer you traffic school or they offer you a chance to fight the ticket without the option of traffic school. Most people take the traffic school and leave it at that. They don't realize that traffic court is bluffing most of the time. If you have a lot of evidence and a strong argument in a written declaration they have to have a judge review that case. They also have to have a court clerk file the proper paperwork then they have to get the officers testimony (though it's only a one sheet form) then they have to file the paperwork, now all of that add's up but is still worth it if the ticket is a couple hundred dollars, but if you show that you have a means to argue and have sufficient cause for appeal then you might know your rights if they deny your written declaration. At this point you can opt for trial de facto (in person) and at this point you can file for discovery for evidence on both the officer, his file, his training, and his equipment. Then you can ask for the traffic survey for the street that you were pulled over on. All of this generates more man power than the original cost of the ticket, hence it's often just dismissed. Of course it all goes to attitude, wording of your declaration and your knowledge of the laws, but if done correctly they will just as likely pass on your case. And in the event that they do make you pay for the ticket, more often than not the charges are reduced and you can still request traffic school. Plus you have the comfort of knowing that that few hundred dollars that you might have to pay will end up costing the city / state many hundreds more in time and wages...
- inactive, on 07/19/2008, -0/+4GOODLUCK! Getting an apology from a COP is like getting an apology from a PIG! Oh ummm wait a minute...
- inactive, on 07/19/2008, -1/+5Have you ever met a teenager before?
- Mononuclear, on 07/19/2008, -0/+4This doesn't do much for me. It would get me in much worse trouble. I have only had 2 tickets and both times the cop wrote me up for much less than what I was actually going. I may have been going slower when he used the radar and the other one was an undercover that paced me (which they can use as a speed here) but each time my top speed and average speed was well above what they wrote me the ticket for. The GPS data here would hurt not help.
- Isohunt, on 07/19/2008, -3/+6Between the "Garmin" updating your speed every few feet and the never speeding thing I'm pretty sure you guys are all full of ***** :)
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