Guess Your Speed In Ohio

[Guest_Jim_*]

Actually with some handhelds if you pull the trigger before your target is in sight it can give off a false reading or it will not read at all and just beep at you. The new guns are a lot better but the old ones my god a damn bird could affect the readings lol.

 

Now it doesn't state unless I missed it he said he confirmed with his radar gun, its possible it was not calibrated. I may have missed this as well but he doesn't say if he was moving or not, if thats the case and he was moving then thats a whole other issue in itself.

 

With onboard radar you always get bounces of objects usually matching your speed or double your speed. There is also the case that when a vehicle is approaching you and if your speeds the exactly the same it will show double on the display read out. The equipment is getting better but you sure have to pay attention.

That first part you wrote, do you mean the gun is not aimed at the car yet? Obviously though, if there is something else for the waves to bounce off of, the result will be affected though.

Sorry about bringing up movement, the officer was stationary at the time, so that is not an issue (first paragraph of the ruling, and I forgot it by the end).

The officer testified he was certified to use the RADAR gun and has experience with it, so we should be able to assume he would have operated it correctly. Calibration I cannot speak to, as I have not calibrated a RADAR gun before. An interferometer, yes, but not a RADAR gun.

If we were to consider the possibility that the reading was double what the driver was doing, that would put the driver at 41 mph, which then contradicts the officer's visual estimation, which is used to determine who to aim the RADAR gun at.

Yes, he did confirm the speed with the RADAR gun, paragraph six of the ruling. After he visually estimated the speed, he then "observed that the radar unit indicated [the driver's] vehicle was traveling at 82 miles per hour."

It seems to me that the procedure was completely correct and the standard procedure for all RADAR units. The throwing out of the RADAR testimony was because the defense threw doubt on the officer's ability to use the RADAR gun, which is something that only the officer's testimony states he was qualified for. Do not read that as though he may have been lying, simply that it does not say anything to the contrary in the ruling or article. Perhaps not so surprisingly, the article is written with the slant of the the driver is a victim here. The ruling is more unbias and reasoned (for example, the article states "[the officer] said he decided to write Jenney a ticket for 79 mph -- closer to what the radar calculated instead of his own estimate" while the ruling has the officer's testimony I mentioned earlier, that it was to give the driver a break). I really cannot find anything wrong with what has happened here, aside from an apparent lack of interest by the article's author, to not investigate something as simple as if the officer was RADAR gun certified, which would immediately remove this debate if he is.

[Bosco]

Ya so if he was standing then the only way the speed would be affected is if there was another large vehicle in the way, but since that was not stated I am assuming it was that car and that car alone.

 

Ya not proving you are certified to use it I guess would cause the case to be thrown out same as if it was a Roadside Screening Device.

 

I have a feeling this law will get challanged to many times and they might make some changes to it, in the mean time I think the officer might want to make sure that certification is up to date, valid, and brought to court next time

[Guest_Jim_*]

Ya so if he was standing then the only way the speed would be affected is if there was another large vehicle in the way, but since that was not stated I am assuming it was that car and that car alone.

 

Ya not proving you are certified to use it I guess would cause the case to be thrown out same as if it was a Roadside Screening Device.

 

I have a feeling this law will get challanged to many times and they might make some changes to it, in the mean time I think the officer might want to make sure that certification is up to date, valid, and brought to court next time

The law has been challenged before though. The ruling references six times before this has been brought to court, if an officer's testimony of their opinion is enough to uphold a conviction. Provided the officer is properly trained, they say yes. The law will only change if this one case is made more exceptional than the others, and if no one reviews those cases or this case.

[bilcliff]

P Platers?

here in australia we have a different licensing system. you start on your Learners Permit (L plates) with an accompanying driver. when you pass your test you move to Probationary ("P Plates" ) for 3 years. and then at the end your fully licensed. but with the Probationary stage you have to display a "P Plate" in your front and rear windows. like these

 

cops over here tend to target "P platers" more than regular drivers.

[rrob]

If you change the headline and the way the facts are laid out, you get a different impression of the story. The officer was following the rules. He suspected speeding, clocked him with radar to confirm and wrote a ticket. From the headline and beginning of the story, some poor guy was just driving along minding his business when out of the blue he's nailed for speeding based solely on an patrolman's whim. By the end of the story I was annoyed with the reporter and editor.

[ebarone]

As someone who's been wrongly accused of speeding (1am, 2 cars on the road, I had my cruise control at 65, other guy went FLYING past me, I got a ticket for 92mph) I'm siding with the driver on this one. Taking an educated guess at the speed of a moving car is all well and good for reasonable suspicion of violating a speed limit, but its ZERO good for use as proof of the crime. The dissenting justice hit it right on the head, in order for this to be proof of the crime, you have to verify that every police officer can get the exact speed right 100% of the time. Otherwise, there is always reasonable doubt about the exact speed of the car. In Virginia, if any part of a ticket is wrong, or unsure, you dont get the ticket. My dad got a ticket once with the wrong date on it, and when the judge looked at it he said "well, if you cant even get the date right, what else on this did you get wrong?" Then threw the ticket out.

 

If this officer cant even bring his RADAR certification to court.... what else cant he do right? Use the RADAR properly? Judge speed properly? Identify the proper car? I'm not saying he's incompetent at his job, I'm just saying that there is reasonable doubt that in this case he pulled over the right car and wrote the right ticket. Reasonable doubt is ALWAYS the key to our justice system.

 

Thats not to say if the officer is certified and judges someone's speed to be 90mph that theres reasonable doubt that a crime was being committed. But you always need proof thats better than "within a few mph," which is what the article says the officers are trained to do. If you're going 90, theres no reasonable doubt that you werent speeding. But in this case, the officer was off by 10mph according to a RADAR system that he couldnt prove he even knew how to use. He couldnt prove it so much so that it got thrown out. So in essence, the officer judged 73 mph, and wrote a ticket for 79 mph. How can ANYONE say there is no reasonable doubt in this case???