I was probably going faster than 30 mph, so yes, I was probably speeding.
When it comes to these citations, there’s not a lot to “get out of,” aside from the $40 fine. It is a civil penalty and no points are assessed. Even with two citations, my lost time at work is worth far more than cost of the tickets.
Yes, the Camera Operator was present at the very beginning of the session. Eventually he wandered off and his supervisor stayed around to answer questions and read the “On this date this vehicle did such and such at this location” statement before each hearing. I understand that this practice is a little controversial because according to the wording of the MD statute, if requested, the Operator himself is supposed to be present and available for questioning at every hearing. But it was clear that the Operator didn’t understand any of the questions that earlier defendants were trying to ask so his supervisor was telling him how to respond anyhow.
I have a pdf saved somewhere. If I can come up with a sufficiently obscure host, I’ll link to them and to a google map of the camera location.
Anyone in the middle of an intersection almost a full second after the light has turned red is a hazard to everyone on the road, and deserves to pay every penny of their multi-hundred dollar fine.
I think you are missing a major point. The speed is determined by radar and the “200 to 300” calculations thing is a reference to how often radar speed calculations are taken. It is not a reference to how often photographs are taken. So your whole calculation is wrong. It may well be that the photographs are taken less than 1/300th of a second apart and that the radar was absolutely correct.
I know you think that the citations are saying that the speed calculations are done using the photographs but I just don’t think that can be right. Firstly, what you have quoted is I suspect badly worded but just means the photographs are used as evidence to identify the car, not the speed.
Indeed, how could the photographs have been used to calculate speed since as you point out the photographs don’t include any scale road markings to allow determination of the distance the car travelled between shots. Without that it would be impossible to come up with anything more than a ballpark speed.
Arithmetic is easy, what’s hard is getting the right starting point.
Our OP assumed that the photos corresponded with the speed readings. Does he have any evidence that the photos correspond with the speed readings?
Our OP estimated the length of the stripes from a satellite photo, a nice round 10 feet.
He then concluded that he was going 13% over the speed limit, contrasting with the citation’s >20% over the speed limit.
If those stripes were 11 feet long, his calculation would have put his speed 10% higher, or 25% over the speed limit, just like the citation says.
So, on the one hand we have elementary math that relies on unfounded assumptions about the operation of the machine, and distances roughly measured from satellite photos. On the other hand, a professionally designed and calibrated speed measuring device.
You may be right that the photos do not correspond to separate radar readings; that is why I explained my assumptions rather than just telling the judge I had estimated my own speed. At that point the judge (or Camera Operator Supervisor) could have said, “your assumptions are wrong.”
For those who are interested, here is a blog post about some recent challenges to speed cameras in another MD location. On it, you can see the photos used. Interestingly, these photos include fractional second time information which mine did not. The post says “Speed camera images are typically taken a few tenths of a second apart,” but does not cite a source.
I’m not responsible for the accuracy of their claims.
In Montgomery County, typically there are three stripes painted across each lane in the photo zone, perpendicular to the direction of travel. Clearly they don’t have a problem issuing citations without the stripes, but based on my observations, I think the stripes will show up at this location as soon as they get around to painting them. I don’t think they’re simply decorative. They even have stripes laid down in areas where mobile speed cameras are moved in and out.
The recorded images are evidence of a violation. They aren’t necessarily the instrumentality used to determine a violation. All they do is help determine car/driver.
As is indicated by the second paragraph.
You don’t really think they actually use the photos to measure your speed, do you?
I can tell that you know how to do math, which is very heartening.
If an engineer who works for me comes to me with a result, and based on my experience, it doesn’t “smell” right, my first step is not to redo the entire calculation. We’ll start by making some reasonable assumptions, do a quick check, and then compare my result to hers. If the two are very far apart, there’s a problem. Then we’re going to have to dig deeper into the calculation and figure out what’s going on, why is there a difference in our results.
I am very comfortable that my assumptions for this situation were “conservative,” that is, I picked the outer bounds of reasonable values for the variables. The fact that different numbers would have yielded different results is true, but not particularly relevant.
I explained to the judge yesterday morning what my conservative estimate of my own speed was. I explained how I had arrived at my estimate. I explained that their system’s speed reading was significantly higher than my conservative estimate. Her response was not “Your assumptions were wrong,” or “Your math was wrong,” or “Perhaps the camera should be recalibrated,” or “Maybe we should look into this,” it was “You wanted to check the machine’s math? How bizarre.”
The citation explains that the unit measures speed using radar. The radar speed reading then triggers the camera.
The purpose of the photos is not to identify the driver. The quality is not good enough and the documentation states that the citation is always sent to the registered owner of the vehicle. The photos are used to identify the car, via a closeup of the plates.
If the photos are only needed as evidence of presence, rather than speed, the citation would only require one photo. All of the citations include two photos, with the car in two positions. (And then a closeup of the plate.)
The Washington Post did an article a few weeks back bemoaning the use of speed cameras (in Olney (Mongomery County), MD no less). The author argued that the speed limit was archaic and unreasonable that speeding doesn’t automatically equate with unsafe driving and that the county uses the speed cameras as a revenue grab.
Neither the author in the piece nor the OP seem to have an answer to the bigger question. To wit, what is so fucking hard about driving the speed limit?
It’s relevant if the judge has no basis to share your comfort. She doesn’t know you from a hole in the ground. You say 10 feet is conservative, she doesn’t have any basis to believe it, unless you put a tape measure on the ground and photographed it. You say you assumed 300 shots per minute, she doesn’t have any basis for believing that’s correct, because you are not privy to the operational details of the machine.
You calculated 34mph, the system said >36mph. That is certainly significant in some applications, but not in the world of speeding tickets. One can certainly imagine a car attempting to slow down when approaching the camera, getting radar’ed at >36, and photoed a fraction of a second later at 34.
I’m guessing that it’s rather unusual for folks to try and prove a calibrated radar machine wrong over a $40 ticket. I would also personally find it unusual that someone would advance an argument that still showed their speed to be over the speed limit.
That really depends. In some of these cases people shouldn’t be speeding. They have some cameras around schools, the original intent of the cameras they said. All of those speeds are 25 and they actually have 35 speeds before and after the school.
I know of a couple of places where the speed is 50, then drops to 30, and right after the 30 sign is a camera. Then the speed goes right back up. There is no reason in some of these cases for the speed to just drop and go right back up except the cameras. Right on MD 118, near MD 28 the limit is 40 by my daughter’s school. Her school is off of the road by a bit so no kids are near the road. But then the limit just drops to 30 and there’s the camera. There’s no reason that I can see for the limit to drop.
I’ve never seen these cameras be for safety no matter what the politicians say. They don’t put them near where kids play, nor where lots of people walk, they put them where the speeds are slow for no reason. I’d be more for them if they did have them around schools and parks and the like.
No argument here. I said in my OP it was a waste of my own time, which I knew at the outset.
As I learned yesterday in court, the machine is calibrated once a year by an outside contractor. Its “functionality” is checked daily by the contractor who owns it (the Camera Operator).
Later commentary by the judge indicated that she found that to be unusual, although she did not characterize it as “bizarre.”
It was the radar that measured your speed. Your only defense would be to see if the calibration before and after your citation were good. If one was off then they would not be able to prove it was working when they caught you. You going in and basically saying you were speeding but not as much as they said as a defense could be seen as bizarre.
ETA calibration is probably the wrong term. Just like hand held and vehicle radar units there are before and after use checks. If those are fine and you don’t dispute that it was your car, you don’t have a case.
I have enough experience of lower court standards to not doubt for a moment that off the cuff comments may have been made from the bench that were not well thought through, and that the prosecution’s witnesses probably didn’t do a great job of making out their best case.
Nonetheless, I suspect the judge ultimately had the same thought about your case that I did. Namely that the thrust of your case can be looked at from another, and in my view much more likely, angle. To wit, it is far more likely that your obviously flawed assumptions were off by 20% than that the radar was off by 20%.
Your assumption as to the time interval between shots was based on nothing. You just grabbed hold of some *other *time interval (that between radar speed calculations) and used it as a proxy for the interval between photographs, even though you have no evidence whatever that these intervals were in any way linked.
You may as well have used the figure for Chewbacca’s reaction time as your photograph interval, because at least then your assumption would have contained an amusing cultural reference and hence been funny, instead of merely fundamentally flawed.
So basically you did not dispute that it was your vehicle, and you did not dispute that you were speeding. Instead you disputed that you were not speeding by a basically meaingless degree(in termsof fines/criminal charges) and used sources the judge could not easily consult or confirm, and thats assuming your methodolgy was correct and the judge could determine that. So I’m guessing it was just a way to show your disdain with the system.
Red light camera tickets are sources of “tax” revenue nothing more, traffic court judges are not used to defendants putting together exibits like a murder one case.
You’re not the first to try the mathematically impossible defense to a speeding ticket, hell some people use GPS and all kinds of stuff. It doesn’t change the fact you got nicked for a “tax” and the tax collector(judge) was not qualified to entertain it.
You’re lucky she reduced it, those I’ve seen would not be amused.