Breaking the law is breaking the law, even if it was for that specific moment you exceeded the speed limit. Is there any state that defines you must speed for a minimum time period in order to be issued a speeding ticket? After all, if a radar gun tracks you exceeding the speed limit it doesn’t record the time period of the tracking, just that you exceeded the limit.
Average speed checks are the standard method of enforcing lowered speed limits through (the many) roadworks on UK motorways now - there’s a great big yellow pylon with the cameras on it at both ends of the restricted zone, plus signs saying ‘average speed check’.
In my very subjective experience, it has made the traversal of roadworks typically smoother, because nearly everyone is scared enough to observe the limits - whereas before (with single-location Gatso cameras that measured speed at just one place in the system), you always had people trying to game the system by slowing down for the camera, then madly trying to speed up again.
Jeremy Clarkson tactitly advocated this on Top Gear once, but I’m not aware of it being a very widespread problem - I expect the penalties for being caught doing this would be quite severe.
And this is the win - once the M42 (motorway round Birmingham notorious for traffic jams) moved to Variable Speed Limits (enforced by camera gantries every few hundred yards) average pass-through times increased significantly, and I went through regularly on a friday evening.
Of course, the idea of generalised average speed monitoring on motorways (with on-ramp/off-ramp cameras) is slightly more invasive and worrying. I don’t want a govt agency recording where I go on the m-way/a-roads on a daily basis.
I heard that on French Toll roads you can get a fine based on the time between booths, so the last rest stop on a long stretch always has the fast drivers having a break to avoid too-fast times.
Someone blew up a Gatso camera near our village with a pipe bomb just last month or so - it still has not been repaired.
Si
I think you’re misunderstanding the point. Someone who travel at 100 mph for 10 seconds, and does the rest of the mile at 20 MPH will not be picked out by a “distance over time” method. So although they have broken the law, they do not get caught. Thus it is a false negative, which is what Sapo’s original quote was pointing out.
I have people appear before me in traffic court all the time who say, “The ticket says I was doing 37 in a 25 mph zone. I wasn’t.”
“How fast were you going, then, sir?” I ask.
“Um… I couldn’t have been going faster than 30.”
“Well, that’s faster than the posted limit. Guilty. Next!”
But that isn’t an argument against using the method. Someone doing 100 MPH when there is no cop sitting there with a radar gun doesn’t get caught either but that’s not an argument against using cops with radar guns. False negatives have never been an argument against enforcement, AFAIK (IANAL or law enforcement professional). False positives would be a good argument against it.
I thought I read an apocryphal story once about a driver getting a huge speeding ticket using the “distance over time” method; supposedly two cars shared the same license plate number and were photographed in two distant locations, but the computer interpreted it as one car that could move faster than the speed of light (or something like that).
A little Googling didn’t shed any light on my hazy memory, but I did find an article discussing speed/red light cameras and duplicate plate numbers.
http://articles.courant.com/2008-02-24/business/0802220743_1_license-plate-wrong-vehicle-red-light
Pretty incompetent as a judge then…
You are accepting the defendant’s version of events, then convicting him on a charge and evidence from the ticket/officer that - if you accept the defendant’s story - is incorrect. If the officer’s ticket is not reliable, what basis does he have for bringing the charge? Either the policeman lies or the defendant lies, or worse, the equipment is improperly calibrated or misread and lies consistent. Any of the above is cause for concern. “It says here you killed the man. You slapped his face? Guilty as charged.”
Plus, the difference between the fine for 37 in 25 vs. 30 in 25 is probably quite large. Here, doing 137 in an 80 (km/h) will net you a $600 fine. That’s 80 in a 55mph.
Besides, most jurisdictions ignore a certain level - 5 to 10mph over, rather than fight about whether a person should be fined for doing a brisk walk speed over the limit…
The problem with license readers are many. The police are mandated and funded to investigate crimes, not compile a dossier on the behaviour of regular citizens for no reason and future investigations. (Cue the Stasi references) So are records from the cameras kept or discarded? Once these are commonplace, what? Will crime shows like Law and Order replace “here’s the surveillance camera footage” with “Our database says this car followed the following path all day, stopping at these places.” If the police can see it, can the ex-wife’s attorney subpoena it for divorce proceedings? How about your boss if he thinks you went home early (complaint of “wage fraud”)? Where does it stop? This is what the “privacy” complaint is all about.
Plus, as pointed out, automated tickets go to owners, not drivers. Real speeders get demerits, eventually lose thier license. A vehicle tagged going 100 in a 30mph zone by automated radar sends a ticket to the owner - who is in a coma in hospital.
My favourite story is the kids who take a photo of the teacher’s license, print it out life-size and stick it to their car and run through all the red light cameras in town.
In Toronto the taxis quickly figured out that a photo with more than one car in it was inadmissible, so you would see convoys of taxis from the airport doing 80mph almost bumper-to-bumper. The guy that promised to eliminate photo radar won in a landslide.
Presumably the camera takes actual photos (which are kept) and the character recognition only automates the matching of plates to calculate times. I would not want the only evidence to be “the computer read your license plate” based on some program.
The other problem is that fines and such are scaled based on old-time methods - actual police traps. If you sped, the odds were, say, 1 in 100 of being caught. Fines were adjusted to account for this - you’re also being fined and demerited for the 99 other times we didn’t catch you. If you get caught every darned time - fines should be lower. Yes, don’t speed - then don’t have useless speed limits. The autobahn in Germany has no limits, and things work fine. Why do we need to limit cars to 55 on a limited access road where people can safely travel 80? (and many do).
then there’s immediacy of justice. If confronted by a policeman at the time, you can remember the circumstances and argue your defence. If a monthd own the road you get a picture in the mail, how do you know what you were doing? Would it be just for the state for example, to follow you with cameras and send you a bill for every instance of littering at the ned of the year? The less memorable the event, the more logical that the justice process needs to confront you immediately.
What happens when the officer doesn’t have any tickets in his book for the prior 3-6 months for going 5 over?
And does the state not have a basic speed law? If the sign doesn’t say maximum speed… then the speed limit is not set in stone… at least here in California that’s how we roll…
I didn’t say it was an argument against using the method, I was clarifying the point Sapo made. Duckster was interpreting it incorrectly.
It never occurred to me that a juridiction would issue duplicate plate numbers. Here, Dealer plates start with “D”, truck with “T” etc. However, there’ always the problem of out-of-state plates. How up to date on their geography and palte colours are the guys interpreting these pics - or do they even care or look at them as long as there’s no complaint about the ticket? As the article mentioned - the NYC Stasi send out the ticket, and it’s up to the poor schmuck in Connecticut to sort out that it’s not him, including a court visit for no reason other than lazy (non?)police office. Wouldn’t happen if the diver’s name and driver license were written on the ticket at the time of the offense when it was issued by a live patrol police officer.
Add to that the threat of false positives in other law enforecement issues, if the camera data is kept for future investigations and datamining…
Over the speed limit is over the speed limit. Under Ohio law, within certain ranges, they’re all minor misdemeanors punishable by the same max fine ($150) with no possibility of jail. The defendant has admitted to speeding. It makes no difference, once he’s in court, whether he was a little over or a lot. He has conceded his guilt, and I rule accordingly. Your misdemeanor assault vs. murder comparison is a bad analogy.
Would the officer cite him for being 5 mph over? Probably not. But he is presenting a “defense” which is no defense at all. If he insisted he was obeying the speed limit, and some people do, that would be a different matter.
These pleas are typically entered at arraignment, and the officer doesn’t appear then, so I would have no idea. It wouldn’t make any difference anyway, for the reasons I stated above.
They are not allowed here in Minnesota, either. (My city spent thousands of taxpayer dollars installing red light cameras all over, only to have the Court order them all shut down.)
As I remember, the legal problems were:
- the ticket is issued to the owner of the car, but state law requires issuing it to the driver.
- the ticket was just printed and mailed out; state law requires that a licensed peace officer issue the ticket.
There has been talk of changing the state laws to allow red-light cameras; it hasn’t gone very far. Seems a lot of citizens made their objections known to legislators.
We have red-light cameras in Ohio. Every red-light photo must be reviewed and signed off on by a police officer. The ticket is indeed issued to the car’s listed owner, and if she says she wasn’t the one behind the wheel that day, she must specifically indicate who was, providing a name and address on the form.
OK, I apologize, you have somewhat more intelligent laws there. Where I am, IIRC the law is $10 for each km/h over the limit. So 37 vs 30 means 7mph or 11km/h or $110 extra in fines… not to mention that usully if you are less than 6mph/10kph over the police do not usually bother you - so it’s zero vs. $200. Big difference when you are arguing over $110 or $200 or more. So basically, you penalize a guy for being somewhat honest. In that case, I would insist on a trial, which would cost the state wages and time; but then of course, they ding you for costs for that too - so insisting on your basic right to justice also costs money.
And they wonder why many people have a cynical view of the law.
In several palces in Canada, like some states, processing red-light pics is contracted out. Since the red-light cams product over 3 times more speeding tickets than red-light violations, it’s a blatant cash grab.
I’ve always wondered about the legality/constitutionality of “produce the driver” laws. They kind of make sense, but put the onus on someone to incriminate themselves of others; you lose the “right to remain silent”? What if you honestly don’t know? “I lent the car to Bob, but I think he lent it to someone else - no idea who?” Bob has to also produce the driver, or just prove it wasn’t him? Why should he, it’s not his car… You are demanding an owner tell you something he may not know.
Of course in Canada we have no constitutional rights to speak of, so it doesn’t matter.
If you can set up a camera to get a decent pic of the liscense plate, you can certainly set another up to get a good shot of the driver who was driving at that moment.
That doesnt solve ALL the problems, but it would certainly show WHO was driving at that moment.
Interesting. I wonder if an alibi would work. If you could prove you were somewhere else at the exact time the car was photographed, shouldn’t that be enough?
Most of the speed cameras (and red light cameras) are forward-facing and take pictures of the rear of the vehicle. You could set up a matching front photo, but with the visor down and the right reflective angle, that may not work. Then you still have to do a positive ID from the drivers license photo, unless you force the owner to identify the person - assuming they can. Some places don’t require front license plates. Why do you think most places went to the “nail the owner” laws? It’s easy cash and less hassles.
IIRC the cameras I saw in NZ and Australia (and Britain) were front-facing, but they have simpler more readable license plates. There’s a really good website I saw once that was nothing but vandalized British traffic cameras. The favourite was to hang a tire over the camera and fill it with gasoline. (Petrol?) That pretty much guaranteed the contents were useless. I would think vaseline on the lens would be less obvious…