holy crap! that's damn near genius, i'm going to have to give that a shot, overpaying a tad, but given my recent luck it won't work. I got pulled over AGAIN by CHP yesterday, this time for having tinted front windows and no front plate. I got a "fix-it" ticket. I saw him way a head of time and was going 40 in a 45mph, so you can't imagine my preparedness to be very pissed when he pulled me over after i passed him. The front plate thing, well, i was just waiting for that one, no biggy, but now i have to strip my tinting. Does anyone have any tips on how to get around this fix it ticket? It says it can be signed by a cop OR an authorized something something... hrmm. My new method of driving is going to be: if you see a cop, stay 500 feet behind them no matter how slow they are going.


|| loren.cox ||

In reply to:

---

Kids don't try this at home: You should never do the e-brake trick in a panic. It should only be done gently. If you lock up the rear wheels, you could spin the car. Not a good thing.

---

But gosh it's fun in an empty parking lot...

Dave Clark
Austin, Texas
12g Blue MK2
S/N was 80000329 -> now 90000970

Related trick: in a manual transmission, just downshift and let the engine slow down your car. This must be done smoothly to prevent your car's nose from diving, making you look guilty.

That's what double-clutching is for ...

________
Donato
MkII/Blue/40GB/080000565

I wouldn't get your hopes up vis-a-vis overpayment having a protective effect. This topic triggered a mild parietal lobe (or some other lobe, I can't seem to remember) urban legend seizure, and indeed I found:

http://www.snopes2.com/autos/law/ticket.htm

Jim

are you calling Muzza a lier!? heheheh.


|| loren.cox ||

"are you calling Muzza a lier!? heheheh"

Never in life. I just don't want him to have a heart attack when his next insurance bill arrives. (And don't misplace that refund check!!!)

Jim

Gotta love the internet, keeping us up-to-date on Urban Legends.

___________
Tony Fabris

"are you calling Muzza a lier!? heheheh"

Never in life. I just don't want him to have a heart attack when his next insurance bill arrives. (And don't misplace that refund check!!!)



This is not urban legend! It HAPPEND to ME!

15 months and still driving. hopefully by the time that it catches up with me, the other points I aquired will have rolled off my licence.
There has been no adjustment to my insurance amunt either.

What erks me is that they set the traps in these tiny towns which you usually slow down for anyway (OK I didn't that time but we weren't in the town), but on the open stretches of road where you can see for 3 Km of straight and could easily get to 190kph, there is nothing. Ever.
grumph

Murray 06000047
I don't think, therefore I am not.

Muzza,

Trust me, I believe you (and may all of our luck hold -- I've had 4 tickets in 12 years and managed to avoid any negative insurance impact so far...). What the page I referenced asserts is that there have been claims made about overpayment regarding systems in multiple countries and it questions any cause-and-effect relationship. Essentially, if you took a random sample of 10,000 people with tickets, then put them in a 2x2 "overpaid/no overpayment" x "insurance hike/no hike" grid, could overpaying be shown to have a protective effect statistically? Or is the fact that some folks never see the points/hike a fluke?

OOT: Years ago in WA, you could check a 3rd box on the ticket and go before a magistrate to plead stupidity and beg for mercy; if your acting skills were up to snuff, you could get a 6-month probation after which the ticket would disappear *forever* (so have I had 4 tickets, or maybe 5, or...?). Unfortunately, the state supreme court decided that this was an overextension of magisterial authority, so now the best that 3rd box will do is perhaps get your fine reduced. The good old days, sigh...

Jim
(trying to do my part to help set relevant records for OT thread length...)

"and may all of our luck hold -- I've had 4 tickets in 12 years and managed to avoid any negative insurance impact
so far...)"

Insurance comapanies usually only increase your rates after a ticket if you call and ask how much your rate is going to go up. They don't check up on your dmv records because that costs them money. They depend on people to call in and tell them.

Sean

I'm told that if the target is changing speed too quickly, the gun assumes it's a bogus reading

I think that was true of older style guns, but the new ones can lock onto you so quickly that this may be a futile maneuver. Don't know for sure, though...

I got stopped two days ago, 54 in a 40 zone. I would guess I was doing an honest 55 when the V-1 went off. I have faster than average reflexes, and I am quite sure I took 10MPH off that 55 speed in less than one second from the time the V-1 sounded. (The trooper was using instant on radar). Almost certainly I was decelerating hard within 1/2 second of the time it sounded. His total on-time was no more than 1.5 seconds. By the time I went by him (we were headed towards each other) he already had his flashers on and was preparing to U-turn to come after me.

I must say that my feelings of invinciblity with my Valentine One have been considerably shaken! That instant-on radar is deadly quick. FWIW, he was between 1/4 and 1/2 mile away when he triggered it. He must have had an urgent radio call or something because he let me off with a warning. I would have liked to chat with him for a while about the capabilities of his radar system... but somehow it just didn't seem like the right time to do so.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

Any UK people using one of these :

http://www.morpheous.co.uk

or these :

http://www.gpstrapalert.com

and would care to comment ?

- --
Rod, UK Mk2 64gig Red S/No.341 2xDell RioReceiver

I have seen some pretty stealthy ones recently

Best speeding enforcement work I ever saw was in California in the mid 1970's. That was back in the days when CHP were not allowed (by state statute) to use radar.

I was driving down I-5 in a Porsche 911, 10--15 MPH over the speed limit. Up ahead is an overpass, with a CHP car parked right in the middle, roof flashers silhouetted against the sky, visible literally miles away. Of course, I slow down like a good boy and drive under him, and watch my mirrors to make sure he doesn't come down and follow me. A mile down the road, the highway goes around a turn, the trooper is still up on the overpass as it goes out of sight in my mirror. I'm safe, speed back up to 80 or whatever it was I had been doing.

Five miles later I see a dark colored car coming up on me fast -- he's still a mile or so behind me, no way he could be pacing me, so I slow back down just in case... Imagine my surprise when the flashers light up. It's my buddy from the overpass, telling me I've been running 75 in a 55 zone.

"How do you know?", I ask him. He grins, and tells me how it works...

He saw the Porsche go by under him, and said to himself, "I'll betcha he's gonna be going about 75 mph once he feels safe." He let me go around the corner, then from a mile behind me he starts driving at 75 MPH. Pretty soon on a straight stretch of road, he sees me go under an overpass or over a bridge or some other easily discernible landmark. He takes an odometer reading. "Look, the Porsche is 1.2 miles ahead of me." Three miles later, he gets another odometer reading. "Look, the Porsche is now 1.4 miles ahead of me. I've been running steady at 75, he's gaining ground on me. Time to turn on the flashers."

I don't think he wrote me up, don't remember after all this time. But he was so good, I wouldn't have complained if he had. That was honest work that I could respect!

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

The Detector itself IS visible from outside the car in daylight, but you have to look for it, as it's mounted VERY high

Right. Mine is mounted in the very top leftmost corner of the windshield. From outside the car, you can't see it from the front unless you crouch down becasue the top five inches of the windshield are very heavily tinted (the radar/laser sensors are just barely below the tinting so the sensitivity is not affected) and you can't see it from the side because the view is blocked by the windshield post. Rear sensitivity is unimpeded because it "looks" over my shoulder to the rear. The power lead is fed inside the windshield post, under the headliner, directly into the V-1, with maybe an inch of wire actually exposed.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

Some interesting statistics here:

Does anybody remember the column in Car and Driver magazine a couple months back... one of their staff did a bit of research about the types of vehicles most likely to be involved in rollover accidents because the NHTSA in its infinite wisdom had determined that if you put vehicles on a tilt-table and tip them, the ones with the higher center of gravity (i.e., SUVs) fell over first. God only knows how many millions of dollars they spent coming up with this incredible scientific breakthrough.

So then C&D magazine went to the "real world" and started examining actual accident statistics. And guess what? SUVs were less likely to be involved in rollover accidents than Corvettes, on an accident/mileage basis.

Then they looked further--- and found that two door vehicles of any kind were more likely to have rollover accidents than four door vehicles -- even when the two-door/four-door vehicles were variants on the same basic model. And station wagon variants of the same car were enormously less likely to have rollovers.

The conclusion reached by the magazine was that the driver was a far more important determining factor than the type of vehicle -- that people who bought two door cars drove more agressively than drivers of 4-door vehicles.

But did that stop the NHTSA from promoting SUVs as dangerous and more likely to be involved in a rollover? Of course not. You can always lie with statistics, and the insurance companies are fully cognizant of this.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

Sean: "Insurance comapanies usually only increase your rates after a ticket if you call and ask how much your rate is going to go up. They don't check up on your dmv records because that costs them money. They depend on people to call in and tell them."

In the U.S. I think this varies quite a bit from state to state. Where I'm at in Washington, insurance companies rely on self-confession on renewal forms up to a point, and they don't get any reports from out of state so far as I am aware. However, I have friends in Massachusetts who have been hammered by automatic reporting of points from DMV to insurance companies, and New Jersey also sounds this way based on some conversations I had while working on a project there. I think some of the east coast states even share point/violation data with other states in the region. From Muzza's post, it sounds like CA is *supposed* to work this way. I suppose it could also vary by the aggressiveness of the particular insurance company.

Jim

"By the time I went by him (we were headed towards each other) he already had his flashers on and was preparing to U-turn to come after me."

I bet there was a second trooper on the Grassy Knoll.

Seriously, it's my sense that one of the main reasons police issue warnings is that their bust isn't of a quality that they want to spend time defending in court. I don't know enough about any radar to doubt the potential deadliness of new instant-on units, but maybe his display *really* read "55MPH (+/- 65 MPM, 92 percent confidence interval)".

OOOT: I am reminded of an old physics teacher's defense for running a red light: "Well, officer, I was going so fast the yellow light looked green..."

Jim

You are right, im sure it varies from state to state. I'm in texas, and we don't have a points system on our licenses. Maybe the high risk insurers are more aggressive about checking dmv records.

Sean

"Well, officer, I was going so fast the yellow light looked green..."

I actually remember there was a limerick along those lines. Don't remember it exactly, though. Went something like:

The renowned astrophysicist, Gene
had the fastest machine on the scene.
He drove faster than light,
and with no cops in sight,
he'd blueshift the red lights to green.



___________
Tony Fabris

Mmm, in the UK they have to take the lowest speed measured in a period/distance (I think on the road it's 1/4 of a mile), which means braking sharply may well mean that you don't get a fine/points, even though they know you were going faster simply because they can't take the peak speed.

They'll still stop you and use excessive amounts of sarcasm though.

Hugo
(who once got off with 125 in a 50. Whoops... well, I had no idea it was a police car following me - it was very dark - and I'd just had the turbo fitted to the MX5 and, well, he couldn't keep up... (good job, he'd only got up to 100 trying to follow me) after that point I started driving a bit slower)

Greetings!

Is that KPH or MPH?

Paul G.
SN# 090000587 (96GB Smoke)

Is that KPH or MPH?


I'd sure as hell HOPE it was mph... A cop that couldn't exceed 100 kph would be driving what???? A yugo?

And a MX5 with forced air injection should certainly be able to top 125 kph without breaking a sweat.

MPH. You run out of gearing at about 130 on the MX5.

Hugo

In reply to:

---

Seriously, it's my sense that one of the main reasons police issue warnings is that their bust isn't of a quality that they want to spend time defending in court

---

So that got me to thinking... should i challenge this ticket. I'm fairly certain he didn't pace me, 'cause he pulled from the side of the road and had a light on me pretty quick. Has anyone had any experience showing up in court and fighting it? or is it not worth the time and effort, and possibly detrimental?

*the young one seeks advice*


|| loren.cox ||

To challenge the ticket, you need to be sure of what method the cop was using to clock your vehicle, and you need to be pretty sure it wasn't solid. Also, it's important that you didn't admit your speed to the cop after he pulled you over (admission of guilt doesn't look good for you in court).

The only way to get the ticket thrown out is to make the cop look like an ass for ticketing you without proof. If he's got any kind of a solid clocking (pace, radar, time-trap, airplane), then the best you can hope for is a reduced fine from a lenient judge.

Other things to hope for:

- Cop doesn't show up to defend the ticket (happens sometimes, especially if he has to take the day off work to defend the ticket). In this case, you automatically win.

- Cop used an inappropriate clocking method for that stretch of road (for instance, if he used radar, then a traffic survey must have been completed for that road within the last 5 years or the ticket is invalid).

- If he used radar, hope that the gun wasn't calibrated and/or he doesn't have the paperwork to prove it was calibrated. This one's unlikely, but you can hope.

Whenever you get pulled over, you've essentially got two choices:

1) Don't admit anything, expecting to challenge the ticket in court. Do this if you don't think he clocked you solidly. If he tries to get you to admit your speed, simply say, "I don't believe I was going that fast." Don't lie, and don't say you didn't know how fast you were going (that's BS and will piss him off more).

Depending on the cop, you might be able to convince him to drop the ticket and let you off with a warning. If he didn't get a solid clocking on you, he might be talking to you just to "feel you out" and see if you'll admit to a speed. In that case, you can gently and politely (without threatening) imply that you don't think he's got any proof and it won't stand up in court. Some cops will just drop it right there. Others will call your bluff, write you up, and say "see you in court."

2) Fess up, admit your speed, apologize, and hope the cop will be nice. If you think he's got you dead-to-rights, but you were driving politely and you're not acting like a jerk, he might just decide to be nice to you.

This second thing might not work too well, for you, Loren, as your Rice Rocket won't impress an HP officer.

___________
Tony Fabris

Especially when he sees that your passenger is playing Gran Turismo 3 while writing you the ticket!!

This second thing might not work too well, for you, Loren, as your Rice Rocket won't impress an HP officer.

Thats one of the reasons I love my '94 Grand Prix Sedan. Cops tend to look at it and keep looking past it. I've been thinking about getting a WRX, but that stands out quite a bit more than the 'family mobile'. Maybe I'll just wait for the Evo to be released in the states

I have friends in Massachusetts who have been hammered by automatic reporting of points from DMV to insurance companies

How does this work? The department of motor vehicles does not know who is providing the driver's insurance. I mean, it could be Allstate or Geico or Joe's Shoe Repair and Insurance Emporium. So how do they tell my insurance company that I have transgressed?

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

Thats one of the reasons I love my '94 Grand Prix Sedan. Cops tend to look at it and keep looking past it.

And my situation is just the opposite. The cops take one look at my eight-year-old Ford Taurus station wagon and they just know a high performance car like that is likely to be in violation of local ordinances. And then, of course, the organized car theft rings are continuously monitoring the location of my car, hoping to find it unprotected and unsecured so they can make off with it -- why, they'd pass up a Mercedes or a BMW in a heartbeat if they thought they could get their hands on my station wagon! I tell you, it's not always a bed of roses being on the bleeding edge of high performance automotive technology!

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

"How does this work? The department of motor vehicles does not know who is providing the driver's insurance. I mean, it could be Allstate or Geico or Joe's Shoe Repair and Insurance Emporium. So how do they tell my insurance company that I have transgressed?" --- tanstaafl.



Well, I dunno. I think the insurance companies get to dip into DMV records. Luckily for denizens of the Unofficial Empeg BBS (who are no doubt losing buttloads of sleep over this!) yours truly is at this moment in Massachusetts/Taxachusetts and is planning on having dinner tomorrow night with the very same lead-footed victim of the Massachusetts State Police whose insurance premiums were (IF I remember correctly) pumped up by his alacritous transgressions....

Jim