Speeding tickets and North Carolina

[iJohnHenry]

Sorry, but now you are just

.

Save it for the prosecutor/judge. 🙂

 

[smithrh]

Hopefully my post will be useful to people other than the OP, who seems to be ignoring it.

 

[snberk103]

You said the magic word, "evidence". The state trooper told my wife that "it looked like you were going 63". "Looked like" is not evidence. Otherwise, you could be given citations for "it looked like" you were trying to buy dope or "it looked like" you were looking for a prostitute...

If I had said "well, Captain, it looked like" a certain sub or a certain surface ship, I would have been kicked off the boat.

Now, I never see state troopers at the NHRA giving the speed that a funny car was going on the mile. There's no way in hell that someone can judge 63 in a 55 or 62 in a 55 or 178.543 vs 178.887 in these cases.

Sorry, but "looked like" is considered evidence. All eye witness accounts are based on "looked like", though this is often overturned since untrained eye witnesses can be notoriously wrong. But "looked like" uttered by an expert can be considered evidence. Fingerprint and DNA matching are rarely, if ever, a 100% fool-proof match. It's an expert who has said..." "Looks like" they're match to me, based on my years of training." that has provided the evidence in court.

And... just of the sake of quibbling, if you could not positively ID something coming straight in at you at 50knots, and not detected until it was 2 miles out, I think your skipper would have appreciated a " "Looks like" something unfriendly" rather than waiting for the positive evidence.

Can I guess that you are an engineer of some sort?

I am not unsympathetic.... really...

 

[einmusiker]

I checked. Nothing in the US Constitution says anything about radar guns. 🙂

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presumption_of_innocence

 

[snberk103]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presumption_of_innocence

Did I really need to tag that comment with a [/humour]? Sigh....

Besides - that protection doesn't mean you can't be accused of a crime. A ticket is merely an accusation... you can plead guilty and pay, or you can disagree and dispute the accusation in court. The ability to dispute the ticket in court is what is protected, not that you can't get a ticket in the 1st place.

Does anyone really thing I checked the US constitution to see if it mentioned radar guns? Really? 🙄

 

[sk1wbw]

Sorry, but "looked like" is considered evidence. All eye witness accounts are based on "looked like", though this is often overturned since untrained eye witnesses can be notoriously wrong. But "looked like" uttered by an expert can be considered evidence. Fingerprint and DNA matching are rarely, if ever, a 100% fool-proof match. It's an expert who has said..." "Looks like" they're match to me, based on my years of training." that has provided the evidence in court.

And... just of the sake of quibbling, if you could not positively ID something coming straight in at you at 50knots, and not detected until it was 2 miles out, I think your skipper would have appreciated a " "Looks like" something unfriendly" rather than waiting for the positive evidence.

Can I guess that you are an engineer of some sort?

I am not unsympathetic.... really...

I was an "analyst" of sorts in the Navy. I analyzed things that I couldn't see because I was on a sub. I had to rely on my gear and two or three other measurement devices to properly identify things. Sorry, but it's a tad on the black side, but "sounds like" or "looks like" has no place in my thinking process.

Even identifying surface ships and aircraft relied on radar systems and IFF. That way you could accurately determine the speed, bearing, and altitude of objects and with IFF you could tell if they were civilian or military, for example.

 

[snberk103]

I was an "analyst" of sorts in the Navy. I analyzed things that I couldn't see because I was on a sub. I had to rely on my gear and two or three other measurement devices to properly identify things. Sorry, but it's a tad on the black side, but "sounds like" or "looks like" has no place in my thinking process.

Even identifying surface ships and aircraft relied on radar systems and IFF. That way you could accurately determine the speed, bearing, and altitude of objects and with IFF you could tell if they were civilian or military, for example.

Ironically, my late father worked for a bit attached to SAC during the cold war. His job was to create training scenarios (as part of war games) that would make your job, um, very very interesting. It's been few years since I've seen it, so I may have the name wrong, but he had ? Guppy ? card... anyway ... a memento given to civilians who spent time on a navy sub.

 

[sk1wbw]

Ironically, my late father worked for a bit attached to SAC during the cold war. His job was to create training scenarios (as part of war games) that would make your job, um, very very interesting. It's been few years since I've seen it, so I may have the name wrong, but he had ? Guppy ? card... anyway ... a memento given to civilians who spent time on a navy sub.

I was actually part of commands that did the same thing, creating war time scenarios. Mainly for squadrons with the AAA and surface to air missile sites. It was a lot of fun.

I was doing that for an exercise called Agile Provider 95, which was so large it made CNN and some other news outlets.