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Fighting The Typical Radar Ticket
On a sunny Monday afternoon, you are driving to a nearby community. As you enter the outskirts of town, you begin to decelerate from highway speeds. As you round a corner, you notice a police car parked off the road on a sidestreet, just behind a tree and a few bushes. As you pass by the police car, you detect a flurry of activity and a block down the road the police car is behind you with lights "ablazin."
The officer walks up to the car and he asks you if you know why he has stopped you. You stammer something about not knowing why he stopped you and he replies "I clocked you on my radar going 39 miles per hour in a 25 mph zone." He then takes your license, walks back to his car to check your record and eventually returns with a ticket for speeding.
Seems pretty hopeless, doesn't it? You aren't positive just how fast you were going, but you know you weren't speeding in the sense of driving too fast for conditions or in anyway that could be described as "reckless." Yet, the officer says he clocked you on radar and a radar reading is proof positive of your speed.
The situation isn't as hopeless as you might first suspect. Let's jump ahead to the testimony the police officer will give at your trial.
As the lead witness for the prosecution the officer will testify that he observed your vehicle entering the Village of Podunk and he estimated your speed to be 40 miles per hour. He activated his radar device, clocked your vehicle for 3 seconds and locked your speed in at 39 miles per hour. He will also attest to his training and skill with a radar device and assure the court that he is an expert in radar operation.
Now, let's return to the steps you can take to develop a strong defense to this, the most typical of speeding tickets.
You should return to the scene of the crime with a camera, a 100-foot tape or similar measuring device and a friend to help you. Park your car where the police car was parked and determine where he could have first seen your vehicle. Measure this distance and take a photograph that captures this scene. Also take photographs of signs, utility lines, and traffic using the same roadway. Take a picture of your car as it was parked where the patrol car had been parked.
Next you should determine how far your car would travel in the time it took for the officer to "observe your speed, at least one or two seconds, and the three seconds he will have claimed to clock you before "locking in your speed." (A vehicle traveling one mile per hour will cover 1.47 feet per second. To determine how far you would travel at any claimed speed you simply multiply 1.47 times the speed. In this example you would multiply 1.47 times 39, your speed in miles per hour. Be prepared to show the court how you arrived at this distance (See Fighting "Time Over Distance" Calculations.). Take a photo that shows where your vehicle would be at the time the officer claims to have "locked in" your speed.
Here's a sampling of the kinds of things you might learn from the above exercise: There were metal signs that could have reflected the radar signal, utility lines that may cause spurious signals, traffic patterns that could readily cause another vehicle to be the cause of the officer's radar reading, or the fact that the distance you would travel, according to the time sequence the officer is likely to testify to, would result in serious cosine errors.
The "cosine error" will prove to be very troublesome for the prosecution. Here's why. Let's assume that you determine that the earliest the officer could have seen your car was when you were 260 feet away. At 39 mph your vehicle would be moving at 39 X 1.47 feet or approximately 57 feet per second. Assuming at least one second for the officer to see your vehicle and engage his radar device added to the three seconds he will claim to have clocked you, or four seconds total, during which you will have traveled 228 feet. This puts you only 32 feet from the officers car at the time he "locked in" your speed from his sidestreet hiding spot. The angle of his radar beam to your direction of travel would result in a very serious cosine error. (You would have to be going 150 mph to register a 39-mph reading on a radar device at this type of angle. The officer will have already testified that he estimated your speed at 40 mph, therefore no one will seriously suggest you were actually going 150 mph!).
Radar operator manuals such as those provided in the NMA Legal Defense Kit (also available for sale from the NMA) include cosine error tables as well as descriptions of cosine error. Most courts will accept these manuals, give them judicial notice, to validate your arguments.
In reality, here's what really happened when the officer clocked your vehicle. He waited for the first glimpse of a vehicle and triggered his radar device; the number 39 popped up instantaneously. The truth is the "39" could have been a reading from his heater fan, another vehicle he didn't immediately notice, or the result of a reflected reading off of a metal sign that captured the speed of a vehicle in the opposite direction. He really doesn't know. But what he does know is that the script to uphold a radar reading in court requires that he claims to "have observed you speeding, estimated your speed, and verified his estimation with a radar reading of at least 3 to 5 seconds." In more cases than anyone wants to admit there was no radar reading of merit, just the officer saying he had a radar reading to intimidate the ticket recipient.
A combination of court case requirements and proven radar operation procedures have evolved to protect motorists from bogus radar based tickets. The scripts the police use when testifying are designed to fulfill the requirements of these cases and radar operator requirements spelled out in official training manuals. They often forget that hard facts that are easily proven can disassemble contrived testimony.
By using "discovery", "Freedom of Information laws" and "interrogatories" you can assemble enough information to have a good idea of what the officer is actually going to testify to during your trial. Attending a previous court hearing will also give you a good idea of the local script being used by police officers who are testifying in radar cases. You can use their own testimonies to undercut the prosecution's case. When you prove to the court that what the officer has testified to is physically impossible or technically in violation of proper radar operation procedures there will be little choice but to declare you "not guilty."
As you can see from reading this general overview, your situation is not as hopeless as you first thought. You can fight your ticket if you are fully prepared. With specific information on the technology that was used to measure your speed, knowledge of the Discovery Laws and Public Record Laws for your state, and other information on speeding tickets you can win!