But patrol officers like to remain some distance behind a suspect to avoid alerting a driver who periodically glances at the rearview and side-view mirrors. So if you know an officer was close behind you for only a short distance, your best tactic in court is to try to show that the officer's supposed "pacing" speed was really just a "catch-up" speed. Pacing at dusk or nighttime. Pacing is much more difficult in the failing light of dusk or in complete darkness, unless the officer is right on your tail.
In the darkness, the officer's visual cues are reduced to a pair of taillights. Also, if an officer paces a speeder's taillights from far back in traffic, he or she might have trouble keeping the same pair of taillights in view.
Aircraft Speed Detection There are two ways an aircraft officer determines your speed. Here are some things to consider for fighting an aircraft speeding ticket: Ask for dismissal if either officer fails to appear. If both officers are not in court, ask the judge to dismiss the case. If the prosecution tries to introduce an absent officer's police report or other written record into court in place of live testimony, simply object on the basis that it is hearsay.
Without an officer present, the written report is inadmissible hearsay testimony. Stopwatch and reaction-time error. If the officer's timing is not performed properly from the aircraft, the speed measurement of your vehicle won't be accurate. Since this speed is calculated by dividing distance by time, the shorter the distance your speed was measured over, the more likely it is that a timing error will result in a too-high speed reading. For example, if the officer hesitated even slightly before pushing the timer as you passed the first ground marker, the measured time would be shorter than the true time your vehicle took to traverse the distance to the second marker.
Difficulty in keeping your car in view. If two markers are a mile apart, it takes a car doing 75 miles per hour about 48 seconds to travel between the two markers. It's hard to stare continuously at anything for that long, especially from a plane. If many other cars are on the road, it would be easy for the sky officer to lose sight of your car while looking at the flight instruments. You should raise this possibility on cross-examination by asking the airplane officer about procedures during the flight.
Your goal is to get the officer to admit to not continuously watching your car during the pacing. More About Aircraft Tickets When the aircraft officer identifies a car going too fast either by pacing it or measuring its speed between two marks , the officer normally records the time, speed, vehicle color, and type, along with brief notes on the car, in what's usually called an "observation log.
When an officer times the passage of a car between two points, the officer must accurately record when the car passes each. This becomes more difficult the farther the officer is from either point. This is especially true at dusk, at night, and during bad weather, particularly fog or rain.
Officer's reaction time. Reaction time is the time between observing something and responding to it. Especially where the distance between the two points is only a few hundred feet, an officer's reaction time will greatly affect the speed calculated by the VASCAR unit.
Odometer error. This mechanism is supposed to be recalibrated at least once a year. Since speed is distance divided by time, an erroneously high odometer distance fed into the VASCAR unit will result in an erroneously high speed reading. Here are some of the more common malfunctions and sources of inaccurate readings with radar device: More than one target.
Radar beams are similar to flashlight beams —the farther the beam travels, the more it spreads out. And this simple fact often results in false speed readings, because it's common for a spread-out beam to hit two vehicles in adjacent lanes. Most radar units have beam angle, or spread, of 12 to 16 degrees, or about one-twenty-fifth of a full circle. This means the beam will have a width of one foot for every four feet of distance from the radar antenna.
Or put another way, the beam width will be two lanes wide about 40 feet , only feet distant from the radar gun. So, if you're in one lane and a faster vehicle is in another lane or otherwise close to you, the other vehicle will produce a higher reading on the officer's radar unit, which the officer may mistakenly attribute to you.
The mistaken reading of another vehicle's speed is especially likely to occur if the other vehicle is larger than yours. The inability of radar to distinguish between two separate objects is called lack of "resolution. Although metal reflects radar beams better than most surfaces, pretty much any material will reflect radar waves to some extent. Also, explaining the reason you violated the law like "I didn't see the stop" isn't usually going to get you very far.
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Please reference the Terms of Use and the Supplemental Terms for specific information related to your state. Grow Your Legal Practice. Meet the Editors. Choosing the right strategy can help you beat a traffic ticket. Traffic Ticket Defenses that Can Succeed No matter what violation you were ticketed for, knowing precisely how the offense is defined by law can be crucial to a successful defense in traffic court. Show That a Necessary Element of the Traffic Offense Is Missing Based on the legal definition contained in the statute, all offenses can be broken down into " elements.
Talk to a Lawyer Need a lawyer? Start here. Practice Area Please select Zip Code. How it Works Briefly tell us about your case Provide your contact information Choose attorneys to contact you. Consequently, the last thing that you would want to do is to then discredit his training; however, if you did not gain any advantages when asking time and distance questions, then you should cross examine on training.
As stated above an officer is trained in visual estimation by going out with an instructor and usually a group of students and a radar unit, visually estimating traffic, and comparing their guesses to the radar reading.
Here is what you can do with such testimony:. Q: Officer, I see that you brought in the calibration certificate for the radar you used on the day of the stop. Q: Because if the radar is out of calibration then the readout would be unreliable. Q: And if the radar reading were unreliable, then you could not testify about it here at trial. Q: So it is important to make sure that the radar is kept calibrated. Q: So that your testimony about its readout will be admissible.
Q: And reliable. Q: Officer, you previously testified that the method by which you were trained was that you were taken out to a roadway by a training officer and compared your estimate to that on a radar. Q: Officer, may I please see the calibration certificate for the radar that you used when you were trained? At this point the people will likely jump out of their skin objecting. But it is a fair juxtaposition.
If the radar unit that the officer was trained on was out of cali- bration, then the readings by which the officer confirmed his estimates in training were unreliable. Consequently, his testimony regarding visual estimation are unreliable. If the court overrules the people, as it should, then press the issue: Q: Officer, the calibration certificate? A: Well, I do not have it.
Q: You do not have it? So you cannot say that the radar unit that you were trained on was properly calibrated? A: No I cannot. Q: So you do not know whether its readings were reliable?
A: I guess. Q: In fact, that radar unit was not even owned by your department [It usually is not]. A: No. Q: You do not know anything about the age of that unit? Q: The condition it was in at the time you were trained? Q: The repair history?
Q: How it is stored? Q: So if you cannot testify as to the calibration and reliability of the training radar, we really do not know if your visual estimations are reliable?
At this point the defense has set up a motion to either preclude expert testimony or strike all of the previous testimony regarding visual estimation. If there is no evidence that the radar used to confirm the visual estimates in training was calibrated and in working order, then there is no evidence that the officer learned to make sufficiently accurate visual estimations in the first instance.
This makes his testimony inherently unreliable and it should be precluded from trial. You can also impeach the general way in which the training was done. Visual estimation training is usually done in a group and not one-on-one with an instructor. Consequently, the group may have conferred with one another on a visual estimate, which could influence the training and skew the accuracy of a particular student's results.
Furthermore, no independent tests given and graded. In other words, the very nature of the way in which the training is conducted, coupled with the fact that there is no independent grading or testing done upon completion of the training, may lead an officer to believe that he has the requisite skill to accurately visually estimate, when he in fact does not.
This conclusion can establish a faulty speed estimate, and beat a speeding ticket. If a laser unit is employed it must be pointed by hand directly at the vehicle and a trigger mechanism pulled much like shooting a firearm. Most local police principally use Doppler radar. State Police routinely use both. Knight , 72 N. By Ave Mince-Didier. Nobody likes to get pulled over, but if a police officer does stop you, you need to know how to talk to the officer.
The main thing to remember is that a police officer approaching your car has no idea who you are and whether you pose a threat.
The reality is police officers are killed during routine traffic stops, and for this reason, officers will always approach the situation as though you are dangerous. The following tips can help you talk to police, keep yourself safe, and maybe even prevent an arrest or a ticket. Before the officer approaches, place the car in park, turn off the ignition, roll down your window, place your hands on the top of the steering wheel where they can be seen, and, at night, turn on the interior car light.
Move slowly and do not make any furtive motions—cramming something under the seat can give the officer probable cause to search the car. Do not start digging through your glove box or pockets looking for your driver's license or registration until the officer asks you to do so. The officer might think you are reaching for a weapon and act accordingly. You should always cooperate with any lawful request of the officer. Give the officer your name and address if asked.
A police officer does not have to tell you why you were stopped, at least not initially. An officer can ask you to get out of the car or stay in the car. You should do as asked and remain cordial. This is definitely a situation in which it does not hurt to be polite. Let the officer start talking. Usually, the officer will first request your driver's license and registration.
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