I need a radar detector. I have recently been accused (and cited!!) for 85 mph by an over-zealous state trooper when I know for a fact was traveling below 75..!
Was the speed limit posted at under 75? If so, the judge only has to figure our how much you owe since you've already admitted/confessed to breaking the "law".
Like the old saying goes, "We've already established you're a whore. Now we're simply negotiating your rates."
Since people seem interested in commenting to this.. I will add a bit more color into my perspective.
Yes, I was speeding, knowingly, guilty of said crime, and willing to accept the citation for exceeding the speed limit.
The issue for me is how much over the speed limit I was traveling. Like I said, in my humble opinion, the trooper was a bit over-zealous with the charge; I know that I was not traveling at that speed.
In fact, the process this trooper uses to calibrate his radar gun for ensured accuracy does not include calibrating his vehicle speed input to the radar guns. So when this trooper is bouncing microwaves off you while he is moving in your direction, his vehicle speed input into the radar gun must be correct, or any value the gun reports (which corrects for his vehicle speed) will be incorrect.
To illustrate: Trooper is driving towards me at 55mph. I am driving towards him at 75mph. The speed differential is 130mph. Without the gun's vehicle speed input into the radar gun's computer, his gun will show 130mph. If the vehicle speed input is working correctly, his gun will show the correct 75mph (130mph - 55mph = 75mph).
In my case, the trooper admits that his radar gun calibration process does not take vehicle speed input into account. And in my case, he was unable to tell me at what rate he was traveling towards me (although he was traveling up a slope and was not using cruise control), because he relies on that closed loop system to operate properly. And in any case, speedometers vary as the circumference of the tire decreases with normal use.
If his radar gun determines its own rate of travel via a GPS input (or its own GPS signal receiver/processor), then the same argument he used against me (that my GPS is considered invalid) could be used against him, because we were in a wooded area and he admitted he was not using cruise control (hysteresis algorithms tend to require a bit of history at the expense of realtime accuracy).
All of this could have been avoided if I had been using a radar detector.
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