Radar gun question

But that’s not what your previous post said.

Is that what you meant to say? Or do I misunderstand.
A traffic citation is a summons. If I clocked you doing 72 and I put down 84 that’s technically perjury, a felony. I can write the ticket for less than I clocked you at but on the report I have to note that I discounted it. The judges around here get pissed when we do that because they want to be the nice guys and knock down the violation.

No way can I write a ticket for more than I nailed you at. I’d quickly end up to my eyeballs in shit.

Don’t just pay it if you can help it. Showing up in court, in my experience, will result in a much lower fine than paying by mail. But then you have to weigh the costs of driving 100 miles to appear.

Thanks for this post, and it confirms what I’ve thought all along. A cop would be crazy to write tickets for higher speeds than he believes were the case. I typed “believe” because while I think there are erroneous tickets written, as in the OP’s case, due to user and equipment error, I don’t think there are a lot of rogue traffic cops out there making up traffic tickets. I’d say the OP was the unfortunate victim of an honest mistake. And I’d also venture that radar errors are not as uncommon as the cops and courts pretend to believe.

As for the study showing the vast majority of tickets being written for more than 10 MPH over the limit, that seems like an eminently good thing to me. Writing someone up for less than this is pretty chickenshit, IMO, unless there are extenuating circumstances.

I didn’t know you had to indicate that you were giving a break by writing a lower speed. Is that a universal requirement, or something only your local jurisdiction requires (to the best of your knowledge)?

Around here neither the municipal nor the circuit judges will convict for anything less than 12 over unless there are special circumstances.

Shit rolls downhill. If an ADA kept bringing in cases for less than 12 eventually a judge would chew him out for clogging up the court with such nonsense. The ADA would bark at the departments court officer who brought him the cites, that officer would complain to the Captain about getting barked at by the ADA, the Captain would yell at my Sergeant and he would bitch me out for writing tickets that weren’t going anywhere.

I never write for less than 15 over.

Just anecdotal for Michigan but I had a buddy who was a State Trooper quite a while back. If it was marked down the court in his area didn’t check it. They usually gave someone a break to the next lower fine from whatever the ticket was written as long as they made appropriate noises about it being inadvertent. That’s why my buddy made a point of never, ever, giving anyone a break on a speeding ticket after his early experiences with the system. He either wrote it or he didn’t.

In Wisconsin speeding fines and demerit points are determined in 5mph increments. So if I clocked with laser going 20 over and I wrote you at 14 over that changes what the fine and demerit points will be. Then if the prosecutor were to offer another reduction for a guilty plea and the judge were to convict on another reduction you would have a defendant getting a triple reduction in points & fines. Judges hate that around here.

Also, if I clocked you at 85mph in a 55 and wrote you going 75 I have to put somewhere what the actual reading on the speed device was. It’s a factual thing and if I don’t put it somewhere on the report then it didn’t actually happen. That can gum you up if someone wants to take it to trial. “What did your radar gun say I was doing?” “Uh, I didn’t write it down”. There goes the evidence. Clocking at 85 and writing at 75 but not mentioning the discount is as untruthful as clocking at 75 and writing it as 85.

The “report” BTW is just a paragraph on the officers copy of the cite. I rarely have to do an actual report on a speeding cite.

What state are you in? In New York, you are entitled to a supporting deposition. If you call the court and request one, the officer has a certain number of days to provide it, if he doesn’t, the judge will dismiss the case. I got my mom out of a ticket this way. It’s worth a try.

Note: Sometimes it’s provided to you along with the ticket, check before you call.

Do a search for supporting deposition for the state you’re in.

Outside the edit window.

It was actually a sheriff’s deputy friend of mine who told me a person should always request a supporting deposition. If it’s something piddly, a lot of the time the officer won’t even bother with it.

I’m not a lawyer but even if your app recorded your trip speed the whole time I seriously doubt that would matter. We are not at a point in society where a judge is going to care if you pull out your smartphone in court and start fiddling with it saying it proves your innocence. He’s going to say, “Do you want to go to trial? If so I’ll set a date and you’ll need a lawyer and you can present him with any evidence”. And even if the jurisdiction allows speeding ticket trials, and even if you wanted to pay for one I’d bet a lawyer would tell you that data from any smartphone app is essentially worthless in this case. Purely circumstantial.

Didn’t your cop buddy realize that the vast majority do not fight tickets?

If the defendant took a guilty plea from the prosecutor, why would the judge give a further reduction? I would think if the prosecutor says a settlement has been reached, the judge would accept the plea and move on.

Happens all the time. Guy goes into court expecting to plead guilty to an agreed deal of 10 over instead of 15 (when the Dep got him at 20) sees that others are getting a better deal and then asks the judge if he can plead to defective equipment -speedometer (less fine, only 2 points) or some kind of muni code violation Stopping, Standing, Parking on a highway, which isn’t even a moving violation. No points, nothing on a driver record. Judge looks at prosecutor who says “yeah yeah, whatever”. Guilty, $250.

Remember, this is a large metro area. If everyone who got a ticket demanded a trial the courts would get so jammed up the system would collapse! :eek: Unless there is an accident or DUI involved a simple exceeding ticket is easy to plead way down. They just want their dough.

This is also why shitty drivers get to keep their license.

Apparently GPS can beat radar gun in court.

Regarding insurance, I can’t speak for others, but when I was with American Family they always knew. I assume they ran a check every few months, or at least at renewal time.

I’d strongly suggest going to court. I’ve never had speeding ticket not lowered (both points and fine) by showing up in court. I always pleaded either guilty or No Contest and the judge always changed the charge to Faulty Speedometer and dropped the amount over by at least 10 or 20mph (that is, into the next increment). So 19 over would go to 9 over. It could knock a hundred bucks off the ticket a quite a bit off how much your insurance gets raised.

In the city I work in there’s often a speed trap in front of my store. There’s days where I’ll see the cops pull over 10-20 people in a few hours. I once asked them about that and was told that they don’t, by department policy, pull anyone over (in that area, for only speeding) unless they’re going at least 15 over. As he said, at 15 over people are tearing past your driveways at at least 50 mph, usually closer to 60. That’s getting to the point of being scary.
In fact, I’ve had some close calls, pulling out onto the road and suddenly realizing that a car was much closer to me than it should have been since it was going way faster than I assumed it was. We’ve had a few accidents happen that way, including one fatal one (elderly customer vs drag racer).

Now, regarding defending yourself. This is more or less hearsay and it’s from, probably 20+ years ago but when my uncle first started out on the force and was in a patrol car he always said that if you get a ticket, challenge it in court by asking what the calibration schedule is and when the gun was last calibrated. He said it most likely either wasn’t calibrated recently or the cop will give you a bunch of ‘I dunno’ answers. It should be enough to get the charges dropped. But, like I said, this was a long time ago from a (at the time) very, very new officer. Could be totally wrong. However, just googling it (but not reading the links) at least suggest that it’s a thing. It may be worth looking into.

I hear you, but what is the difference (both fine & points) of 19 over vs 7 over? Admitting 72 as your defense to save $x & y points might be worth it.

Probably depends upon the dept. Around here, most depts have dedicated traffic units who pretty much only do speed enforcement & accident investigations. You better believe their calibrations are accurate & up to date. However, if you’re driving thru Mayberry, you might get away with that.

If you plead No Contest you very likely won’t be asked how fast you were actually going. I’ve had plenty of speeding tickets (in several different counties) and it’s always been - how do you plead?/No Contest/I’m changing it to Faulty Speedo and reducing it from 22 over to 15 over, or something along those lines. I’ve said virtually nothing other than agreeing to be under oath and pleading guilty or no contest.
I don’t want to get this into a gray area in GQ or suggest lying under oath, but unless the question was directly asked, you could just say that you really don’t believe you were going that fast and that since you were in the right lane and being regularly passed by other drivers it’s possible that the officer clocked someone else.

There’s a pretty wide area between departments large enough to have people that ONLY do speed enforcement AND regularly (and properly) maintain their equipment and have the appropriate logs to prove it and Mayberry.

Again, I’m not saying it would work, I’m just suggesting that the OP do some research on that angle.

YES. That is exactly what I was trying to say.

It may not be official department policy (or, at least, no one seems willing to ADMIT that it is policy) but the fact is that the cops who write the tickets know that writing someone up a ticket for going 56 in a 55 will just make everyone mad, including their own bosses. This situation gives the cop an incentive to always put down a number which is more than 10 mph over the speed limit. And 99.7% of the time, that’s exactly what they do.

Now, whether that incentive is enough to convince a cop to falsify the information on a ticket, that’s another discussion. I don’t know how often it happens, but 20 years ago it happened to me. I got pulled over doing 56 in a 55 and he wrote “65” on the ticket. It was a lie.

BTW, the cop also admitted to me why he pulled me over. He noted that I was in a lane which eventually became an “exit only” lane and he said I waited too long to merge back into the regular traffic, which was going slower than I was. But driving in a lane which is not yet an exit only lane but will eventually become an exit only lane further up the road isn’t against the law. I concluded that he lied about my speed because that’s the only way he could justify pulling me over. But the truth is that he was annoyed at me for not merging early enough.

The only pressure I’ve seen is from other cops saying “Why are you being such a dick.” I have never heard of anyone getting into trouble for writing a valid ticket. 1mph over is a valid ticket. Still makes you a dick for writing it but it is valid. If any boss tried to get someone in trouble for writing a valid ticket it would be an immediate grievance.

It still doesn’t make any sense what you are saying. It’s not like people driving 10mph over the speed limit is a rare thing. There is no need to falsify anything. Just wait a minute for the next car.

I’m sure you are convinced you did nothing wrong. And maybe you didn’t. But I have seen too many people do obvious violations and be totally convinced they didn’t do it to assume that you are correct.

IIRC from an earlier thread some jurisdictions will not allow a +1 ticket like that.

Possibly. In NJ the statute specifically says it is a violation. The lowest fine for speeding is defined as “exceeding limit by 1-9mph.” Points start for violations from 1-14mph. I personally don’t know anyone who doesn’t go after bigger fish but it is valid.