In Ohio speeding tickets can be based upon an officers visual estimate of speed
 

In Ohio an officer can stop you any time they want and just say you looked like you were speeding.


Police officer's visual estimate of speed is enough for a conviction, Ohio Supreme Court rules









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"New Rome", just on a statewide scale.

One more reason I'll never drive in Ohio. The door is wide, wide open for all sorts of abuse here.

Same law applies here and it has for many years.

But they would rarely use it. Mostly Radar cameras and hand held laser.

$50 fine plus court costs. I can only begin to imagine what the court costs will be on this one.

Please someone go over there and smack that judge on the back of his head...
This is absurd and would irritate the living daylights out of me if some cop would fine me like that.
Ok, pig, you estimate my speed, I'll estimate the amount of the fine and the time in which I'll pay... and your IQ while I'm at it.... (zero, never and not much...)

Guys, someone allowed this law to be voted into effect. Talk to your legislators and get it taken off of the books if you can.

On our cross-country road trip a month ago, we drove through Ohio on our final leg of the trip. From the Ohio-Indiana border to just east of Columbus, the interstate was crawling with police. My V1 was constantly squealing, and the cops were pulling over people left and right. I've never seen so many police and so many cars/trucks being pulled over in so short a time in my entire life. Ohio appears to be a police state run totally amok.

The state must be like many others and running low on funds. This is not catching people for breaking the law, its revenue enhancement using the police and highway patrol.

I think I might do a little math and test the officer's ability to judge speed in court. Held shoulder high, how fast is this nickel going when it hits the floor? I believe that a visual estimate can be fairlt accurate, but there's no evidence. Police: You were going what I estimate to be 75mph in a 55mph zone. Driver: My speedometer said 55mph. It basically comes to Police: Judge I think you should fine this guy $XXX. Driver: Please don't. I'm not saying visual estimates aren't accurate, but when there's no evidence, there's no opportunity to prove innocence.

I thought all police could determine speed visually, and it was considered an acceptable speed measurement? They take training for it, learn how to take known distance measurements where they are (two trees for example), and time transit. I am surprised that this wasn't generally the case.

no, they couldn't tell you how fast the nickel was falling.

guy did just that..
brought in some tech guys and a funny Lawyer..
it did not end well for the Leo...
when all was said and dropped for 'how fast do you think this is"
the Leo felt that penis in his crack..

Rika

hell, we have worse laws than that. there is one where you can be ticketed for street racing even if you are driving alone.

yep, i can't explain that one either.

Without any special police training... :rolleyes:

Do you think you can judge if someone's speeding just by observing them?

I don't understand why you guys are so upset about this.

I'd like to think that if the police "observe" someone breaking the law they should be able to do something about it.
That includes speeding. They don't always have time to use their laser/radar guns.

I believe the Police are the good guys. They're on our side.

When it comes to enforcing traffic laws, nothing could be further from the truth.

First of all, traffic enforcement is not about public safety, but about generating revenue. "Driving school" as a punishment is evidence of this. It is also the one time that most of the public comes into contact with the police, and they are routinely treated no better than career criminals. I have personally have had an officer call me a potential killer for being 1 mph over the limit. Somehow, crossing that number magically turned me from a mild-mannered citizen to a vicious sociapath. Nevermind that 1 mph is well withing the margin of error for both my speedometer AND any radar or laser gun. Nevermind that just an extra second of paying attention to a distracted driver around me would easily allow me to pick up that 1 mph on a mild downhill stretch.

Second, due process has been removed from traffic infractions in practice. Many states deny people accused of traffic offenses trial by jury. States with traffic cameras (be they red light of speeding) have denied the accused the right to face their accuser. Further, most tickets issued by such cameras presume guilt. You must turn in another guilty party to be deemed innocent. Imagine if murder trials worked that way. Come to think of it, you are presumed guilty whether or not a traffic camera is involved. Go to a traffic court. The only evidence required for conviction is an officer saying he saw you speeding. He may have used a radar or laser gun, but the gun itself and a log of the speeds it measured at what times is not required. This would be analogous to a DNA expert simply testifying that the accused is guilty, with no supporting documentation or explanation of the process. Appeals are all but unheard of in traffic court. They purposefully keep the cost of fines below the cost of an appeal so it is not worth it financially to challenge a guilty ruling. This ensures that violations of due process are never challenged, AND the money keeps rolling in.

LOL, that's what i'm talking about.

This "law" and "legal finding" is a complete and utter joke.

Actually, in Ohio CERTAIN OFFICERS can stop you for speeding based on CAREFUL SPECIALIZED TRAINING.

"Officer estimates enough for speeding convictions
By Associated Press
POSTED: 09:59 a.m. EDT, Jun 02, 2010
COLUMBUS: Ohio's highest court has ruled that a person may be convicted of speeding purely if it looked to a police officer that the motorist was going too fast.
The Ohio Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that an officer's visual estimation of speed is enough to support a conviction if the officer is trained, certified by a training academy, and experienced in watching for speeders. The court's 5-1 decision says independent verification of a driver's speed is not necessary."

Ohio.com - Officer estimates enough for speeding convictions

Damned those details...

And they still can't due to parallax shift.

Damned details.

Ah parallax shift, that thing that prevents us from being able to walk, grab anything in front of us, or not walk into doors and walls all the time. Life would be so much easier without that parallax shift.

There are countless precedents of VASCAR speeding tickets (cop observes car drive over line A, starts timer until car drives over line B, resulting in a speed) being overturned because of parallax shift.

"The only sources of error in VASCAR are the Officer's reaction time in pressing the start/stop timing button and his judgment on precisely when a vehicle was passing a landmark. In the case if the bridge shadows, the second error possibility is almost zero, but for an Officer in a moving Police car, determining the precise second when you, a quarter-mile ahead, pass some landmark, could be off by a number of feet. If an Officer would use a baseline of 60 seconds or so, a one second error would only represent 1.5% error. But that's an awfully long baseline. Essentially, VASCAR determines your AVERAGE speed for the measured distance. (RADAR determines your instantaneous speed). In a mile long stretch of highway, most drivers would see the Police car and severely slow down. Since he is only determining the AVERAGE speed for that distance, that average would be substantially less than your beginning speed. Therefore, most Officers tended to use the shortest possible baselines for VASCAR, to get a speed average before you might see him and slow down. If he used a 10-second baseline (around a block and a half), a half-second error in clicking the beginning time and a half-second error in clicking the ending time could total a one second error, which represents a 10% error in speed determination (either up or down). (That type of poor Officer understanding of VASCAR is a main reason it got replaced by radar. Some Officers would try to use even shorter, five-second baselines to get a speeding value even faster before being seen. Such Officers really gave VASCAR a bad name because they would sometimes get VASCAR results that were 20% off. A vehicle actually traveling a legal 65mph would be arrested for going 78mph, because of the incorrect use of too short a baseline. A lot of people got improperly arrested because of that. Eventually, some important people got improperly arrested in that way, and RADAR came along anyway, so VASCAR almost disappeared from Police use.)"

http://mb-soft.com/public/radar.html

I think you posted the wrong stuff, since it has nothing to do with parallax, it was all response time errors. Of course, it also has nothing to do with Ohio officers getting specialized training to determine if someone is speeding. It really has nothing to do with how the human brain deals with parallax all day every day in every single thing we do, and is quite capable of compensating for it.

Finally, I'd bet a dollar that no Ohio officer is going to use this to bust you for going 68 in a 65 zone. They'll use it to bust someone going 80 in a 65 zone, which they could not do before this unless they were setup and had the radar going.

It does have to do with parallex.

But hey, don't do any research or anything.

Although it wasn't Ohio, I got busted for doing 65 in a 60. In Washington.

Poor response time when a car drives over a white line on the road is not parallax. Parallax is when you try to measure the timing by comparing the car to a more distant pair of objects (say, trees). You over represent the distance traveled when you do that. An officer wouldn't sit and use two distant trees as data points, because he would know that the parallax shift would make it wrong. Instead, he'd use a single data point, and learn how long it takes a car to pass that single point while traveling at the legal speed. It's then easy to determine if a car is slower or faster.

Cars driving over while lines have ZERO parallax. None. Zilch. Cars driving past a single point of reference have zero parallax. None. Zilch. Officers specifically trained in visual speed detection do not use techniques that have parallax.

Beyond all that is the fact that this now allows those officers to stop someone who is clearly speeding, even if they don't have the radar deployed. Is that a bad thing? To you sure, but we all know how you feel.

Again, don't do any research Mike, because you clearly understand the issue im talking about.

Parallax shift == alcohol?

Here in Washington, we have no right to:

1) A trial by jury.
2) Appeal.
3) Representation.

The citing officer need not:

1) Show you his SMD reading.
2) Have you sign the ticket.
3) Show up in court.

The evidence standard is that of "preponderance", which has a precise legal meaning. It means a mere "51%" of the available "evidence" points one way or another. It is a civil standard, applied when citizens bring a dispute to court. It was never meant to be a standard used when the state accuses a citizen.

On top of all of this, the judge fills the role of prosecutor as well. The "real" prosecutor need not show up in court.

I'm surprised that Washington has not done away with those expensive SMD's by now. Hell, if all an officer has to do is look out his window and think "he looks like he must be doing 73 mph", and that is good enough for a "court", why spend the money?

Our courts are supposed to, were originally envisioned to stand as a shield between the citizen and overzealous enforcement by the state. The original idea was that the state would have to prove its charges against a citizen not to itself, but to our fellow citizens. This rather novel approach was instituted with the lingering bad taste of the British court systems still in our mouths, wherein the state charges, tries, judges, and passes sentance. We are supposed to be above that here. Not anymore, not in traffic court, at least. With such low standards and easy convictions, the insatiable greed of the state is rearing its ugly head like never before. We need to re-introduce due process to traffic court, that's all there is to it. It's gone too far.

Philly/Pa is a hell of a lot more just in it's traffic court laws, you don't get a jury trial, but you get everything else.

But it's still all just about the money.

I've spent the last 19 years (22 years if you count my time in the Army Military Police) trying my best to keep neighborhoods safe.

I've broken my left wrist, my right elbow, my right knee, the small finger on my left hand, had my face cut open and had my arm sliced by a prostitute (with AIDS and Hep) with a box knife. All separate incidents (no police car crashes). I've fully recovered from every injury and am very thankful. (I still test negative for AIDS/Hep)

I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but somehow I've managed to solve a small number of homicides and obtain convictions in those homicides. I have personally been responsible for sending several career criminals to state prison for the rest of their lives.

I wouldn't change a thing.

I hope that your career path has been similarly fulfilling.

sincerely,
Pig.

Any LEO worth his/her salt should be able to estimate speed within 2-3 mph after proper radar training/experience.......Courts for many years have allowed this as evidence. Often they have radar/Aircraft/pace/etc to back this up.............What's new here?

How many tickets to fellow cops did you write during your career?

How many times have you committed an infraction you have cited someone else for?

How many times did you write a citizen extra tickets because you didn't like their attitude?

Or because you were in a bad mood?

You do realize what Mike does for a living don't you? He like has a degree in this type of stuff... You know PHYSICS....

But... Hey.... Why let a real world education come before some schit you read on the internet right?

yeah, we've all heard this a million times now. if you spent half the energy working to change the laws as you have writing about this gross injustice, we wouldn't have to hear about it anymore.

Regarding threads like this one, all we ever hear on this board is how our liberties are gone, stolen from us, our freedom diminished and we are living in a police state.

Curiously, I don't see anyone actively trying to change the system.


In the vast majority of circumstances, if you are an upstanding, law-abiding citizen, the Police are on your side. Scapegoating Police because you don't like the laws they enforce is poor form and generally weak.

You only get the government you are too lazy to change or stand up to. We have unprecedented levels of access to government and to the public at large. Sure, it's mighty fun to rattle the 2nd Amendment sabre, it's comical by now here on OT, but the 1st is a lot more effective in demonstrating your point of view and changing the system. Trouble is, exercising your 1st Amendment rights is hard work and requires an attention span greater than five minutes into the future.

Or maybe you can hope someone else will lead the charge and fix the system for you.

You are right. We should all just go sit on the steps of City Hall and sing Kumbaya until everything works out for the best.

That's the opposite of what I was saying, but you go ahead and keep playing the role of victim and let us know how it works for you. Oh, you poor little lamb, unable to do anything, completely powerless as your liberties and freedoms are stripped away from you.

Bah!

Get the **** off the couch and do something about it. or you could continue snarky, illogical and ill-conceived posting on the Internets. I'm guessing you will be a poster boy for the developing Idiocracy.

Parallex shift is a legal defense against VASCAR and works in a court of law, i have read several articles about it.

Ok young fella?

As far as "doing something about it," complaining about it on the internet is in fact a grassroots effort to banish this activity by spreading the message and galvanizing a movement.

snipe, can you also work out the math?

Work out what math Jim?

Was there some specific problem you want answered?

About snow tires...perhaps? :D

:p