This isn't about right or wrong, it's about preserving the speeding ticket cash cow.

They didn't exactly agree, subby.

More importantly, if this sort of device had existed for my parents to install in my car when I'd been a teen driver, we would have had some serious problems. And what kind of parent does this? An email alert if you go over 70? Holy Christ, that pretty much rules out any interstate travel. Pinging your speed limit every 30 seconds? Jesus. If you trust your kid enough to let him drive on his own, trust him enough to let him drive on his own. Don't teach him that embracing Big Brother begins in the home. Sniveling little weasels.

I wish more people would fight tickets like this. They may get the $190 but it surely cost the court more than that to get it.

EvilEgg: This isn't about right or wrong, it's about preserving the speeding ticket cash cow.

This. For God's sake, it's not like they were going to actually rule in a way which would provide an absolute defense against a speeding revenue ticket. Why, that'd open up the door for perhaps hundreds of cases where money would be lost people could obtain justice.

Oh, and Pocket Ninja, I will bet you dollars to doughnuts that Mummy and Daddy were sold that GPS thingy by their insurance company, who offered to reduce their teenager's insurance premium from "daily assraping" to "occasional random assraping" levels.

They may get the $190 but it surely cost the court more than that to get it.

The county spent over $10,000 on the case, mostly on an expert witness to answer the following question:

If a car is stopped at point A at time T1 and moving 45 miles per hour at point B at time T2, what is the maximum speed of the car if A and B are 2,040 feet apart and T2 is 30 seconds after T1?

I get "over 45 miles per hour, probably near 55 miles per hour."

Too bad y'all can't read. Try RTFA. The kid was speeding....

0 mph..... 45 mph 30 seconds later. Of course there isn't a car or a teenager that can go 0-62 in 20 seconds and then slow down. The cop and his radar gun have to be wrong.

morons.

evidence doesn't matter - you show up in court, you're ass is paying that fine. But...if you force the court to spend $400 to collect on a $120 fine, then they'll start rethinking the whole scam.

I've driven 70 in a 45 in my younger days. If this guy did 70 for, say, 15 seconds and then slowed down to 25 for 15 seconds, I would think that the gps would report an average speed of 45.

Weaver95

There is a reason Massachusetts now charges $20 to contest a traffic ticket, and $50 more to have a real judge hear the case.

ZAZ: Weaver95

There is a reason Massachusetts now charges $20 to contest a traffic ticket, and $50 more to have a real judge hear the case.

that's ok - you can still drive the cost of a trial up well over what it costs them to write the ticket in the first place. try filing discovery requests or for a change of venue.

ZAZ: Weaver95

There is a reason Massachusetts now charges $20 to contest a traffic ticket, and $50 more to have a real judge hear the case.

Is this new? I just left the commonwealth less than six months ago and i never remember having to pay to get a hearing (and I had quite a few tickets).

map (new window) of area in question

real shaman: Too bad y'all can't read. Try RTFA. The kid was speeding....

0 mph..... 45 mph 30 seconds later. Of course there isn't a car or a teenager that can go 0-62 in 20 seconds and then slow down. The cop and his radar gun have to be wrong.

morons.

My preshhus snowflake would NEVER break the law!!!

(sic) (said in best "kyles mom" voice)

Where was he headed again?

ZAZ: Weaver95

There is a reason Massachusetts now charges $20 to contest a traffic ticket, and $50 more to have a real judge hear the case.

Why isn't this unconstitutional? I'm not saying it is, I'm just curious as to why not. I'd think that if the State wants to charge you with breaking the law, you'd have the right to defend yourself. I've never studied law, much less constitutional law, though, so I'm just talking out my ass here.

/at least it's a nice ass

In her five-page ruling, Commissioner Carla Bonilla noted the accuracy of the GPS system was not challenged by either side in the dispute, but rather they had different interpretations of the data.

I see.

My guess is one interpretation leaves the door open to ignore GPS data when trying to boost revenue.

And so it begins...

At issue was the distance from the stoplight at Freitas Road - site of the first GPS "ping" that showed Malone stopped - to the second ping 30 seconds later, when he was going 45 mph.

Bonilla ruled the GPS data confirmed the prosecution's contention that Malone had to have exceeded the speed limit.

"The mathematics confirm this," she wrote.

So, from Zero to 62 to 45 in 30 seconds? Forgive me if I'd like them all to show their work in confirming this mathematically...

/now, if they've also got pictures of the smoke plume and patch of rubber this kid must've laid down...

Pocket Ninja: They didn't exactly agree, subby.

More importantly, if this sort of device had existed for my parents to install in my car when I'd been a teen driver, we would have had some serious problems. And what kind of parent does this? An email alert if you go over 70? Holy Christ, that pretty much rules out any interstate travel. Pinging your speed limit every 30 seconds? Jesus. If you trust your kid enough to let him drive on his own, trust him enough to let him drive on his own. Don't teach him that embracing Big Brother begins in the home. Sniveling little weasels.

Going over 65 on most freeways is speeding. They give him the 5 mile an hour buffer. He's still underage, he can speed when he's older. For now he can stay on the right half of the freeway.

Kudos to the parents for fighting. There's already been enough stories of tickets having to be overturned because police departments cant prove their radar guns are accurate since they don't have the source code.

daveinaz: I've driven 70 in a 45 in my younger days. If this guy did 70 for, say, 15 seconds and then slowed down to 25 for 15 seconds, I would think that the gps would report an average speed of 45.

I gather that it doesn't even report averages, just speed at T₁, T₂, T₃, and so on, where T₂=T₁+30s, T₃=T₂+30s, etc.

The kid easily could have and probably was going whatever speed the cop said.

Cops are not out to get you. Speeding kills plenty of young drivers. The sad part is that these parents are so overbearing that the kid let them drag out a speeding ticket case for years rather than tell the truth.

His fault, their fault, just a shame they didn't have to pay court costs.

That headline is about as accurate as using a 30 second GPS interval to defend against a fully calibrated instrument for a single point in time.

Speeding isnt about how fast you were going on average, 30 seconds ago or every 30 seconds.. its about how fast you are going across a miniscule amount of time relative to the speed rating for that piece of road you occupy.

Plus, lets face it. The average kid with a system like this installed knows how to game the GPS and if there is an angle where he can speed, they'll do it.

So, is the GPS reported speed an average based on the two 30-sec-apart readings, or is it an instant velocity at the time of the reading? Makes a big difference.

Malone's stepfather, retired Sonoma County Sheriff's Lt. Roger Rude, said Bonilla's ruling does not change his belief that the GPS proved Malone was not speeding that day.

He called the calculations referenced by Bonilla "flawed" and said her ruling weighed heavily in favor of police testimony.

"The impression I came away with, at least in traffic court, is that you are guilty until proven beyond a reasonable doubt," he said.

That is the best part of the whole article. I guess this guy is finding out that the jackboot of justice isn't quite as cool when it is being planted in your ass.

This guy probably spent his entire career defending the belief that police testimony is perfect and unflawed.

Some one just do the math. Do I have to do it? Really? And I wanted to go shower. It's noon. It's time to pretend to be awake.

But if no one else will...back in a second...maybe.

ChubbyTiger 2009-11-08 11:59:09 AM So, is the GPS reported speed an average based on the two 30-sec-apart readings, or is it an instant velocity at the time of the reading? Makes a big difference.
=================================

GPS is not instantaneous (it takes on average 1/4 of a second not including any overload). But for a car, it's close enough.

Weaver95: evidence doesn't matter - you show up in court, you're ass is paying that fine. But...if you force the court to spend $400 to collect on a $120 fine, then they'll start rethinking the whole scam.

That.

Traffic fines are a tax on inattentive drivers. In that, I carry no issue against them.

Something tells me that the state wouldn't hesitate to use GPS data when it happens to be in their favor. This is what happens when you have a system set up in this manner. What judge in their right mind would rule in a manner that may ultimately endanger his/her paycheck?

/just another example of corruption as far as I'm concerned
//not unlike certain "public domain" rulings in recent history

ChubbyTiger: So, is the GPS reported speed an average based on the two 30-sec-apart readings, or is it an instant velocity at the time of the reading? Makes a big difference.

A GPS can't read "instantaneous" speed. All it has to work with is a timestamp and a location (the latter being somewhat inaccurate). Speed is calculated between two readings, and the fastest reading you can get is once per second (satellite limitation).

dlewis6: Cops are not out to get you. Speeding kills plenty of young drivers. The sad part is that these parents are so overbearing that the kid let them drag out a speeding ticket case for years rather than tell the truth.



Oh really?

How about a study from George Mason's Economics department:

Political Economy at Any Speed: What Determines Traffic Citations? (new window)

So if he sped up to the 62mph in the first 20 seconds, it'd be an acceleration of 1.386m/s/s. Then the slow down to 45mph would be 0.760m/s/s.

A pretty good average acceleration, if I remember right, is around 3m/s/s. On newer cars. NOT newer Formula 1 cars or anything. Just a standard car. Again, IF I remember right. I don't know about decelerating, but this all sounds incredibly possibly. And dare I say it? LIKELY.

qsalsaq: Why isn't this unconstitutional? I'm not saying it is, I'm just curious as to why not. I'd think that if the State wants to charge you with breaking the law, you'd have the right to defend yourself. I've never studied law, much less constitutional law, though, so I'm just talking out my ass here.

Because just about every jurisdiction in the country has moved traffic violations from "criminal" to "civil" infractions so that they can specifically deny you your Constitutional rights.

qsalsaq: Why isn't this unconstitutional?

Massachusetts doesn't concern itself with the Constitution.

Haha. Idiots.

Idiots being the parents.

Question is if the GPS data had shown him speeding where a radar gun did not, would that have been enough to also earn a ticket?

Because when you go to this much trouble to nail someone who was within 5 to 10mph of the speed limit, this would seem to be more about paying the ticket than whether or not he was endangering other drivers.

Here's a map of the area. Point A is where his GPS shows him traveling at 45mph. Point B is where the 2nd GPS ping shows him traveling at 45mph.

The GPS pings occur every 30 seconds.
Point A and Point B are 0.4 miles apart (That's as accurate as I can get with Google Maps, maybe someone can do better).

If you travel .4 miles in 30 seconds, that's .8 miles in a minute. 60 minutes in an hour (.8 *60) gives us an average speed of 46 miles per hour.

When I started making my map and everything; I'd read the article and I really wanted the kid to be wrong. I've certainly known people to who would randomly floor their car for no apparent reason when they were kids....I figured this was going to be a case of that. But no, I used the information in the article and it's pretty cut and dry. Short of something being mis-printed; they shafted an innocent kid with a ticket to avoid more innocent people from getting out of their tickets.

So, really, we're supposed to believe that a kid doing 45mph and just happens to know that his GPS pings every 30 seconds, and exactly after one ping, he decelerates to the point where he can then floor it to 62, only to slam on the brakes before the 2nd ping...in such a way that the 2nd ping shows him going 45mph and the average rate of travel between point A and point B are ~45mph.

It's disgusting. Cop gives kid a ticket because he's a kid and because his performance review is going to look at how many tickets he's given out (*cough* quota *cough*). Judge knows what's up, but doesn't want to risk the cities future revenue stream as more and more people have an accurate, near-real-time measure of their speed.

I guess the jokes on us, since both the cop and the judge are paid with our tax dollars.

Seriously disgusting.

So....Where do you get those cameras mounted in your car behind the drivers seat that show you and your speedometer and record the whole time the car is on? I'm getting one of those. Let some judge try and rule against real time video/audio footage.

misanthropologist: At issue was the distance from the stoplight at Freitas Road - site of the first GPS "ping" that showed Malone stopped - to the second ping 30 seconds later, when he was going 45 mph.

Bonilla ruled the GPS data confirmed the prosecution's contention that Malone had to have exceeded the speed limit.

"The mathematics confirm this," she wrote.

So, from Zero to 62 to 45 in 30 seconds? Forgive me if I'd like them all to show their work in confirming this mathematically...

/now, if they've also got pictures of the smoke plume and patch of rubber this kid must've laid down...

What kind of car was the kid driving? Because I'm thinking this maneuver would take me 7-8 seconds minimum, and could easily be done within the 30 second window without burning rubber.

devildog123: Malone's stepfather, retired Sonoma County Sheriff's Lt. Roger Rude, said Bonilla's ruling does not change his belief that the GPS proved Malone was not speeding that day.

He called the calculations referenced by Bonilla "flawed" and said her ruling weighed heavily in favor of police testimony.

"The impression I came away with, at least in traffic court, is that you are guilty until proven beyond a reasonable doubt," he said.

That is the best part of the whole article. I guess this guy is finding out that the jackboot of justice isn't quite as cool when it is being planted in your ass.

This guy probably spent his entire career defending the belief that police testimony is perfect and unflawed.

This!!!

Pocket Ninja: They didn't exactly agree, subby.

More importantly, if this sort of device had existed for my parents to install in my car when I'd been a teen driver, we would have had some serious problems. And what kind of parent does this? An email alert if you go over 70? Holy Christ, that pretty much rules out any interstate travel. Pinging your speed limit every 30 seconds? Jesus. If you trust your kid enough to let him drive on his own, trust him enough to let him drive on his own. Don't teach him that embracing Big Brother begins in the home. Sniveling little weasels.

I agree with everything you're saying, but it pisses me off even more that he was found guilty anyway. This quote from TFA says it all:

"The impression I came away with, at least in traffic court, is that you are guilty until proven beyond a reasonable doubt," he said.

Yup, that's pretty much what traffic enforcement is like around here.

/and the worst part is, it's always speeding, which a) everyone does and b) is comparatively not that dangerous
//but not using signals, cutting off other drivers, running "blushing" lights, etc. is A-OK
///and you're expected to drive like an asshat if you're a cop apparently

People need to remember that the speed that the GPS reads out may not necessarily be calculated by the thirty second pings. For example, my GPS updates my speed every few SECONDS. So it is, for all intents and purposes, an "instantaneous" speed. The thirty second 'ping' is just reporting, every thirty seconds, this instantaneous speed, and will not take into account what occurs BETWEEN pings, only, AT the pings themselves.

Fark_Guy_Rob: .4 miles in 30 seconds is indeed (assuming you did that right) 46 miles per hour. However, I think the article said that he was at a stop, and then was accelerating during that time period. That needs to be taken into account.

At least he didn't get popped with a fat sack of Northern California sweetleaf.

Fark_Guy_Rob: If you travel .4 miles in 30 seconds, that's .8 miles in a minute. 60 minutes in an hour (.8 *60) gives us an average speed of 46 miles per hour.

.....

So, really, we're supposed to believe that a kid doing 45mph and just happens to know that his GPS pings every 30 seconds, and exactly after one ping, he decelerates to the point where he can then floor it to 62, only to slam on the brakes before the 2nd ping...in such a way that the 2nd ping shows him going 45mph and the average rate of travel between point A and point B are ~45mph.



Wouldn't an average speed of 46 suggest he was going much faster than that at some point? The first GPS ping was at a stop light going 0mph. There would be an awful lot of below 46mph in there. So to make an average of 46mph, there'd have to be a pretty similar amount of above it too.

And the numbers I posted above don't suggest any real flooring it or slamming on breaks or anything. Just regular speeding.

Lemures
You are 100% correct. That changes everything.

/Foot - mouth - etc..

From this article, it sounds like the GPS data was pretty weak. If it only records every thirty seconds, you have:

2:00:00 pm: Stopped at a stoplight at point X.
2:00:30 pm: Travelling at 45 mph at point Y.

That really doesn't say anything about what he was doing between those times. If the prosecution could show that the only way to get to point Y in 30 seconds is to travel over the speed limit, then you'd have to conclude that the GPS data doesn't prove shiat.

It seems pretty clear if you just run the numbers, those provided by me and by Fark_Guy_Rob, that he was speeding. Fark_Guy_Rob had a creative interpretation of what they could have meant, but he gets it now.

Case closed. Where's OUR money?

Weaver95: evidence doesn't matter - you show up in court, you're ass is paying that fine. But...if you force the court to spend $400 to collect on a $120 fine, then they'll start rethinking the whole scam.shiat, you show up in court you're gonna WALK, man. I got 4 tickets at once (don't ask) in Miami. Cop didn't show. About 40 people walked.

dlewis6: So if he sped up to the 62mph in the first 20 seconds, it'd be an acceleration of 1.386m/s/s. Then the slow down to 45mph would be 0.760m/s/s.

A pretty good average acceleration, if I remember right, is around 3m/s/s. On newer cars. NOT newer Formula 1 cars or anything. Just a standard car. Again, IF I remember right. I don't know about decelerating, but this all sounds incredibly possibly. And dare I say it? LIKELY.

This. Is it really hard to imagine a teenager flooring it when the light turns green, and then quickly slowing down when he realizes he's doing 20 over / sees the lights in his mirror?

The problem is what, exactly, the GPS reports in terms of speed. If it simply checks every 30 seconds where he is and extrapolates an average speed from the distance since the last ping, then he was speeding.

If it keeps a tally of the kid's speed and simply reports what it was at the time of the ping, then he wasn't speeding.

He went from a dead stop to .4 miles away in 30 seconds. If he simply averages out at 46MPH, then he was obviously going above 46mph to reach that average.

ZAZ: If a car is stopped at point A at time T1 and moving 45 miles per hour at point B at time T2, what is the maximum speed of the car if A and B are 2,040 feet apart and T2 is 30 seconds after T1?

No. The GPS says he traveled .4 miles in 30 seconds, or about 45 miles per hour. However, he was stopped at some point in that .4 miles due to a traffic light, so he had to have been going faster at some point to make the distance over time calculation = 45mph. To solve this, you need to account for acceleration and jerks, and it's been too long for me since I did calculus.