Well, how?
There was an old British movie I recall seeing on ABC some years ago called Ask A Policeman, and in it, the local constable hides in bushes (for comedic effect) with a stopwatch and times how long it takes for a car to travel between two predetermined points. From that, he is able to work out the speed of the vehicle, and whether or not it is exceeding the relevant speed limit, and he presents this as evidence in a trial and it is accepted (as the word of Policemen usually was back in those days).
So, I’d say that’s how it was done, at least in the UK.
Hmm. I guess if the officer is in a car he can always “pace” a vehicle and match the speed with his own, too.
Exactly. A police car, usually unmarked, would follow you for a while and see the speed. A possible defense was that his speedometer wasn’t correct and they would get their speedometers calibrated every month.
ONce my uncle was speeding on the road from DC to western MD. He saw a police car (marked) going the other way, make a U-turn and start to follow him. He slowed immediately and the cop followed him for 20 miles at the legal limit before finally giving up.
(In the UK) One way was to follow you. When they stopped you, they’d say something like ‘I’ve been following you for 3/10ths of a mile and your average speed exceeded blah blah blah’. When I was a kid I seem to remember police cars that only looked like police cars from the back.
There were also automated variants on the “measured kilometer” principle, where two pressure-sensitive strips are laid down 1 km apart, hooked up to a timer, with the cop waiting down the road.
I believe VASCAR has been around since the 50’s.
+1 for beowulf
VASCAR
As a motorcycle riding hellion back in the UK in the 80s I got a lot of tickets. They were usually from a plod in a panda who had followed me for 1/4 mile or thereabouts.
There is/was also air surveillance. Iowa would paint big white spots on the freeway, every quarter mile or so. An airplane would fly along the road, clocking how long it took a car to get from dot 1 to dot 2, then radio in info on the speeders, to a car below.
According to The Ticket Book, police officers’ experienced judgment of a vehicle’s speed has often been accepted in court.
I remember when I went to Mexico, the officer hid behind something and jumped right in front of my SUV. There was no tailing, just his “expert” judgment that I was speeding. It took a while for me to determine this since I don’t speak Spanish. I then had to bribe him with a $20. I later noticed that those “in the know” would simply swerve around him and keep driving. He would just wait for the next victim.
I think at one point they also had a lower tech gizmo where 2 pressure strips would be placed on the ground, and as the car drove over them, speed would be registered.
@Tastes of Chocolates: Do you have any cites for that? Airplane speed traps was the common explanation I got for those white lines on the road growing up, but I never actually heard anything concrete about it.
That’s it. In the absence of a device to dispute, the default goes to the officer. He was trained to know how fast you were going. And you have nothing in your tool box to dispute it. No pacing or other procedures were needed.
It was much more low tech and in many ways it was more of a nuisance than something to be feared.
The fine might be $10 and there were no “points” and your driving record wasn’t a matter of information that was shared by different states. The insurance companies weren’t able to track things closely so your rates weren’t affected. You got caught, paid the 10 bucks and went on your way. The implications of a speeding fine were not nearly as severe as they are today so drivers weren’t so apt to challenge the veracity of the method under which they were caught.
When speeding started to become a more serious violations with greater implications the citations were challenged more often and the police had to implement methods that were more impervious to a court challenge such as radar and lasers. It became more of a cat and mouse game.
The point is that, back in the old days, a speeding citation had none of the implications that it has today.
In Oklahoma (and probably other places) when you got on the toll roads, your toll ticket had a time stamp on it. When you got off, they checked the amount of time you’d been driving against the miles you drove. Not enough time = ticket.
Around here, I think that the police prefer to base a speeding ticket on observation. Any trials with the officer testifying about his experienced eye boil down to word against word, but a citation based on radar will be challenged with questions about the radar guns calibration history and its care and maintenance, about the officer’s location, traffic and weather conditions, etc, etc.
I used to drive on the HE Bailey Turnpike fairly often, but I never received a “toll ticket” of any kind. Just threw my coins into the basket, or handed cash to an attendant if I needed change, and sped on my way. I did not have to stop upon exiting the tollway. But that was quite awhile ago. Is this “toll ticket” recent?
My experience was with the Turner and Rogers Turnpikes, and this was back in the 60’s, even before they were known as I-44.
Many states (most notably California) have laws on the book that essentially outlaw time over distance speed traps. These date to the days before RADAR when this was the only way of citing someone for speeding an exact amount over the limit. I’ve always assumed that the laws were meant to force the police to give more “unsafe speed for conditions” tickets than “X over the limit” tickets, but that by the time RADAR came along the anti-speed trap fervor had died down and so they never bothered adding RADAR and similar devices to the statute.
But the wikipedia page for “speed trap” says it was just because there was too much operator error involved in time/distance traps, so I dunno.
I was driving the HE Bailey in the 1970s. I guess either they used a different system or the practice had been discontinued by then.