Serious Cop Pwnage

[Difdi]

There's this long and very steep hill near where my parents live, where there's usually 2-3 cop cars camped out along it, just lying in wait. All the locals know about it, but the fact most of the hill is 25mph limit, with a school zone limit of 20mph near the bottom means it's very hard on a car's brakes.

Drivers literally have to stand on their brakes on sections of the hill to avoid breaking the speed limit. This puts so much wear on a car's brakes, that the local police department actually instructs officers to disregard the speed limit when driving their patrol cars. There were even a few incidents of people pacing police cars down the hill on the theory that the police wouldn't violate the law (no lights or sirens, mind you) then being pulled over at the bottom, because the police knew anyone following them was breaking the speed limit.

It caused quite the local scandal when a local newspaper broke that story. All the town judges now automatically dismiss every speeding ticket on that hill, if the driver contests it.

[Pezzle]

Cops in my borough have nothing better to do than pull people over. Why? Well, because the borough is so small and most people know each other...there's very little crime. They do not give you 5 miles over the speed limit--if it's 35mph, and you're doing 40, guess what? If they clock you, they'll pull you over.

Yeah, doesn't mean you can't fight the ticket due to the margin of error in some of our crappier car's meters. Cop clocked me doin 41 in a 35 the other day (apparently cops have nothing better to do at 4 AM than pull over paper deliver thralls..), and my needle was floating right on the 35. -kicks car- All they ever seem to do is talk though.. like "you're out here, I'm out here, there's nothing going on so what's a free paper and a conversation between friends"

[protege]

Cops in my borough have nothing better to do than pull people over. Why? Well, because the borough is so small and most people know each other...there's very little crime. They do not give you 5 miles over the speed limit--if it's 35mph, and you're doing 40, guess what? If they clock you, they'll pull you over.

[Lace Neil Singer]

Yesh, that cop must have been anal, or your cousin was stupid enough to mouth off when he got pulled.

A mate of mine got a ticket for going 35 in a 30mph zone... in all probability cuz when he was pulled over, he asked the cop, "Shouldn't you be out catching burglars?"

I once had a pillock in a Jaguar barge past me on my motorbike so close he nearly knocked me into the hedge. I shouted a few choice words after him as I braked and recovered from him trying to kill me. When I felt well enough to carry on, I did so, turned a corner... to see Jaguar man in a speed trap. Burn!

[Samaliel]

Here in the UK speed limit violations allow a 10% margin of error.

Here, across th Channel, it depends on the type of radar used. If it's an hand-held device, the error margin is 10km/h under 100km/h, then 10%. It it's a fixed device (and here's the trick : a device embedded in a parked car is considered fixed), the error margin is 5km/h under 100km/h, then 5%.

So depending on the device that flashes you, you can get away with going as fast as 143km/h on a 130km/h highway or end up getting a speeding ticket for a mere 136km/h.

[JustADude]

My cousin got a ticket for going 51 in a 50.

Yesh, that cop must have been anal, or your cousin was stupid enough to mouth off when he got pulled.

[mattm04]

Pezzle, one of my coworkers at the gas station was pulled over and ticketed for going 42 in a 40. Needless to say, she never ended up having to pay that ticket.

For the record, she was coming down a hill, where the cop was staking out.

How bored must hat cop have been? Two over On my dads car is only marked every five. It can be had to tell if you are only 1 or two over.

[Miyon]

My cousin got a ticket for going 51 in a 50.

[mariamousie1]

AWESOME!!!

[cinema guy]

The traditional "5 mph over rule" was designed to reduce the problem like Pezzle has. Some speedometers are not as accurate as they could be,

It is also apparently because tyres are not constant diameters - things like external temperature, tyre pressure and wear all affect tyre size and so as rotational speed is converted to linear speed, road speed is affected.

Here in the UK speed limit violations allow a 10% margin of error.

All this was according to a speed course I had to take when a camera caught me doing 34mph in a 30mph zone.

[ThePhoneGoddess]

Very interesting, Yiz...except this was in Portland Oregon.

Makes perfect sense, though. Lots more people are walking all over due to gas prices, and summer is prime time for cops to set up traps.

[yizuman]

I then realize what had happened---it was a setup. The cops were pulling people over who weren't stopping for pedestrians, and pink jacket lady was, most likely, a cop herself.

She was....

http://www.officer.com/web/online/Top-News-Stories/Chicago-Officers-Camp-Out-In-Crosswalk-Sting/1$41768

Yiz

[Arm]

Oh, yeah, if they really wanted to they could ticket me every time I drive down that road. But it's not likely, as there are plenty of folks who drive faster than I do that they could go after first. Or rather, there are now

Part of the reason that the speedometer in your car is inaccurate is because it's actually attached to your transmission. It doesn't measure how fast your car is going; instead it measures how fast your car is *trying* to spin the wheels. And it's calibrated based on how large your wheels are. (if your wheels are so many feet around, and they turn so many times a minute, then you're going rotations times the size, and so on) But all that varies, based on how much air is in your tires that day, how much energy you're losing as the wheels slip- nothing's perfect in the equation.

Heck, I just had my speedometer cluster replaced, because the gears inside it had worn down to the point where they were no longer reading *anything* above about 40.
...but, yeah.

I've only gotten three speeding tickets, and I paid them all because I got caught and I knew it. Inaccurate or not, my speedometer is generally accurate enough for me to know better Which I think is really probably the point of the device anyhow

[Broomjockey]

The traditional "5 mph over rule" was designed to reduce the problem like Pezzle has. Some speedometers are not as accurate as they could be, and so most cops give 5mph worth of leniency,

It was also because the formula used to calculate speed is an infinitely repeating fraction equation, which consistantly needs to be rounded at each step, and so if all the rounding in the equation goes against you, it can be off by like that much.

[martin]

The police in a nearby city had a similar sting but the people crossing the street were wearing costumes. I think one was a giant hot dog costume and the other a giant taco costume. That way when the police pulled someone over they could ask the driver "Didn't you notice the giant hot dog!" when the driver would say they didn't see anyone.

It would have been fine if the people in the costumes would have just walked across the street in the crosswalk. However the idiots would slowly meander across, then dance a bit, and run back and forth, and finally cross the street. Drivers would get pissed and drive through the cross walk and then get pulled over and ticketed.

Watching the newscast of it, it seemed that they were trying to piss off drivers so the drivers would break the law.