Speeding Ticket stories. Come on we all have them.

When I was 14 my parents helped me buy a 1986 Mustang GT 5.0L. I did a ton of work and got it ready to drive by my 16th birthday.

One day after school I took the back road home and just floored it. The speedo stopped at 85 MPH and I had the needle pegged and it was making clicking/grinding noises. I looked in my mirror and saw the blue lights probably a mile behind me. I pulled over turned the car off and had all my paperwork out and my window down before the cop even pulled up behind me. He jumped out with his gun drawn and started yelling for me to hang out of the window... A few seconds later there were 2 more cars boxing me I. Apparently he thought I was going to run so called it in as a chase.

They wrote me a ticket for Negligent Driving 2nd degree (1 step under DUI) for $538 at 70 MPH in a 35 MPH zone and let me drive away. My parents made me ride the bus for three months and I ended up having to go to court to have the ticket dropped. Cost me $100 total and I was on probation for a year. If I got a ticket in that time frame they would have kept my $100, made me pay the $538 and the new ticket and both would go on my record. Looking back now I got off pretty easy but I learned a very valuable lesson that day...

Needless to say, I don't drive crazy anymore.

 

Speed radars are calibrated in car with 'tuning forks' (Gawd I hope some of you know what those are) stored in the police cruisers' glove box. Cost me about $100 to learn that, and I am giving it for free.

Not the only story I could tell, but this one is physics. The others are merely typical.

 

Here's my offering.

Early hours of the morning travelling along the motorway at a good old pace when I notice the car coming up from way back has a block kit on top that suggests it may be a police car so i back off smartish.
Sure enough it was a police car and he simply cruised by leaving me feeling pretty pleased with myself.

Ten minutes or so later I see his blue flashing lights come on a little way ahead and got that sinking feeling.
The sinking feeling soon disappeared when I realised he was pulling over a car in front of him and not me so I indicated out to go around him as he slowed.

At that moment he opened his door and signalled for me to stop as well arrrgh.

He came and sat with with me and explained.
Well sir he said you were going pretty fast earlier on but we saw that you'd seen us and slowed down so we let it go.
Then we were tracking another car, the one they had also pulled over, at a little over 100mph when we noticed you were catching us. oooooops

I was pretty much done for at that point and whilst in the UK we are not obliged to either show or surrender our driving licence on the spot, I did admit liability as he put it down as 85mph on the ticket. In the UK 30mph over the speed limit can be disqualification from driving so not worth the gamble.

As he let me go he said "be careful as you pull away sir, people are travelling very fast along here tonight" and smiled.
The road was totally deserted apart from myself the police car and the other chap.

 

The problem with this method of calibration is that tuning fork resonant frequency can be a function of temperature and I also think it can only calibrate the radar device for given frequency/speed

 

Especially when I was younger I got speeding tickets. And I never complained...just paid them.

I've gotten "slower" or more conservative with age, been a while since I've gotten a speeding ticket.

I guess my opinion or story about them is I never minded if I was speeding, and a police man "caught" me. But I absolutely hate the automated "speed traps", which I see as less enforcing something to improve safety, as opposed to simply a carefully placed revenue generator.

In my local area, there is a suburb which routinely "hides" photo radar speed traps in totally ridiculous or unfair area's.

Okay....it STILL is speeding, but they will put the radar, in an area that is barely marked 30 mph, and where EVERYBODY routinely goes 5 to 10 miles above that limit, and IMO safely.....I think they purposely have an area marked lower than what it should be...and is common, and combine that with hidden speed traps. It makes for great revenue generation.

In my life? I've talked my way out of a share of Speeding Tickets. But I never complained. If I was breaking the speed limit, on the freeway and a Police man pulled me over....I'd always just accept the ticket.

If you're going to send me a blurry photo of me going 40 in a 35mph zone, when nobody was around and it was perfectly safe? Okay....I'll STILL just pay the ticket...but don't tell me it isn't anything but a revenue grab.

 

Hard to believe this. The VNE of a Jet Ranger is 130kts (about 150mph), so I'm not sure how the helicopter could have gotten such an accurate reading. Nice story, though.

My one and only, very prosaic speeding ticket: I was going about 66 in a 50 zone. The cop wrote me a ticket for 59, reducing it from a 3 to a 2 point violation. I paid it and thanked him.

I know. Not much of a story.

Richard

 

"They use a VASCAR technique. An operator records the moment that a vehicle passes two fixed objects (such as a white circle or square painted on the carriageway) that are a known distance apart."
Of course. Now that you mention it, I've heard of this. And if it has its own acronym it must be true.
Richard

 

That is defined as a "Speed Trap" in the CVC and not admissible as evidence in California.

Speed Trap Prohibition

40801. No peace officer or other person shall use a speed trap in arresting, or participating or assisting in the arrest of, any person for any alleged violation of this code nor shall any speed trap be used in securing evidence as to the speed of any vehicle for the purpose of an arrest or prosecution under this code.
Admission of Speed Trap Evidence

40805. Every court shall be without jurisdiction to render a judgment of conviction against any person for a violation of this code involving the speed of a vehicle if the court admits any evidence or testimony secured in violation of, or which is inadmissible under this article.

One of many definitions of a "Speed Trap" in California

V C Section 40802 Speed Traps

(2) A "speed trap" is either of the following:
(A) A particular section of a highway measured as to distance and with boundaries marked, designated, or otherwise determined in order that the speed of a vehicle may be calculated by securing the time it takes the vehicle to travel the known distance.

 

That doesn't tell you how they determine a cars speed and it doesn't mention that cops sometimes lie about how they determine a law was violated.

There are various ways they can accurately determine the ground speed of the aircraft and if the car is pulling away from the aircraft, then the car is going faster than the aircraft. Same as tailing a car with another car to determine it's speed. That doesn't fit the CA definition of Speed Trap

Pre-GPS the CHP story was that they determined the aircraft ground speed by timing how long it took the aircraft's shadow to move between markers on the road. But...the two times I observed them in action in I-5 they flew directly over the road with their shadow well off the road and road shoulder so I suspect they were timing the target cars between markers or just making stuff up.

 

I didn't say the CHP can't legally determine vehicle speed from an aircraft, I even gave two legal ways to do it. What is against the law in California is for them to determine vehicle speed by timing a vehicle between two points. You don't need to be a lawyer to understand that part of the CVC, it is written in reasonably coherant English

 

Being foreign seems to help in America, but not in Australia.

When I was about 14, we were on holiday on the East Coast, and driving from New York to Niagra Falls. The road was empty. Dad had remarkably managed to get a Chevrolet Celebrity up to at least 90 mph (the speedo only went up to 85), and we got pulled over. It was about 8:00pm, and the cop said he would have to call his central office to get them to call Britain to verify Dad's licence. Dad explained that it was 1:00am in Britain, and that Britain was closed. And the cop sent us on our way.

And many years later - about 10 years ago - I was in California visiting my then girlfriend. The rental company had given me a bright red Mustang which might as well have said "Please book me! I am almost certainly speeding!" in big letters along the side. I got pulled over on the road that goes inland from San Luis Obispo. He asked to see my driving licence, and I gave it to him. He'd never seen a Hong Kong driving licence before. He said "You don't look like you're from Hong Kong" (I'm white), and I explained that people of many different ethnicities lived there. Then he said, "Hong Kong's in China, ain't it? Are you a Communist?" Rather than antagonise him - he didn't look like a fellow traveller - I old him that Hong Kong had a separate political and economic system from the rest of China, and that it was a broadly capitalist economy. Then he asked to see my passport; when he was it was British, he asked how I could have a passport and driving licence from different countries. I said it was pretty common, and he just said it was all too confusing, and sent me on my way. Which I was pleased about.

On holiday in Australia (long before I moved here), I got pulled doing 150km/h in a 100km/h zone (in a Toyota Starlet!) in the middle of nowhere in rural Victoria. When I got pulled over, I got out my HK licence, and hoped that I'd get the same reaction as I did in San Luis Obispo. But no: the cop asked whether the Hong Kong Police were still recruiting foreigners after the handover. I said yes, and even told him the website - he said he'd been there on holiday, and wanted to know what it was like to live there. We had a long chat - he was a lovely guy - and then he gave me a $200 fine. And congratulated me on "Winding that ****box up to 150". Ah well.

 

When I was a teenager in my small town the local cops had tripods with radar on them. I was good friend with a few of them and one night I had my motorcycle out around 1am and saw the local sitting at a closed gas station so I stop to chat with him. I told him my speedo feels like its off a few MPH. He said give me a few minute and I will set up the radar at the end of town down by the A&W root beer stand. I said ok and I would be going by at 35. It was a straight shot so I can down the street about 90 and shot by him. After I got it slowed down I turned around and came back and stopped in back of his car and got off and asked him how fast was I going. Oh boy was he pissed, he said are you trying to get me fired and I said no just want to make sure my speedo was correct. No ticket but that's the things u could get away with back then.