Getting a speeding ticket is never fun. It’s even worse when you get a speeding ticket while your car is parked. For one UK motorist, that’s exactly what happened, not once, but twice. On two separate occasions, he has been sent a speeding ticket when he knew his car was stationary. Speed cameras are effective for capturing images of drivers, but recent identification mishaps prove that the technology isn’t infallible.

It seems Jeff Buck has to park his car on the street outside his home in Nottingham. With no driveway or garage available, parking it on the shoulder along Watnall Road is the best he can do.

The problem stems from the fact that somebody else happened to speed past the camera perched above his parked car. Police officers who processed the photos and issued the fines somehow missed the fact that his vehicle was stationary.

Police have now issued an apology to Buck after he successfully fought the tickets. It probably wasn’t too hard to prove that his parked car wasn’t the one triggering the speed cameras. We’re guessing police will now be looking a little more closely at the other vehicles in the pictures to see who actually broke the 30 mile per hour speed limit along that road.

Although relieved to have the fines dismissed, Buck is understandably still a bit perturbed:

“I assumed the first time it happened that the police would put something in place to prevent it from happening again. I’m concerned now that every time someone triggers the camera I’ll get these notices. I am amused by it, but also angry that I have to go to the trouble of contacting the police.”

A spokeswoman for the Nottinghamshire Police said that staff members would be getting a little extra training in verifying the speed camera images properly.

You’re returning from a perfect weekend getaway, and a trooper nabs you while you’re still out of state.

Do you admit guilt, drop the payment envelope in the mail, and have it be history…or do you throw it in the trash and hope it just goes away?

Neither, exactly. And just to clear up some misconceptions, this is definitely not a case of, “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.”

If you understood the massive stakes involved, you’d do your research, maybe hire an attorney, and even if you have a clean record do your best to have the ticket reduced or, better yet, thrown out.

The days of speeding tickets simply going away, even if they’re out-of-state, are long gone. And it’s important you do something about it because a speeding ticket can come back to haunt you for years, in ways that you probably hadn’t thought possible.

Unseen affects, budget-hemorrhaging results

Most drivers know that having speeding tickets on their record will raise their auto insurance rates, but few are aware that, depending on where they live, it can affect them in a myriad of other ways, seemingly unrelated to driving. Like when you apply to get a new life insurance policy, to insure a boat, or even to apply for a business loan.

This could mean thousands of dollars. And that’s even before considering that an unsettled ticket could find its way to your credit score to wreak further havoc.

Technically, if you’re a repeat speeder, you’re risky business, and that risk might apply to other aspects of your life—or so say the actuaries, those who arrive at the methodology that takes all those seemingly insignificant factors in your profile, weighs them with factors like your driving record, and determines whether or not you’re high risk. Simply put, whether to charge you a few hundred dollars or a couple thousand on your next insurance premium is a matter of calculated risk.

The business of risk

If you’re one to argue that speeding doesn’t necessarily place you at a higher risk, you’re not going to find much sympathy from insurance companies. As they’re in the business of risk, they raise rates because with habitual speeding comes a much greater chance of injury, property damage, or death. Excessive speed is attributed in the worst, most costly accidents. In about one third of all fatal crashes, 26 percent of injury accidents, and 15 percent of property-damage-only accidents, speed is a factor. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), more than 1,000 Americans die every month due to speed-related crashes. Read the rest of this entry »

More than a year after Arizona became the first state in the country to deploy dozens of speed cameras on highways statewide, threats to the groundbreaking program abound.

“I see all the cameras in Arizona completely coming down ” in 2010, said Shawn Dow, chairman of Arizona Citizens Against Photo Radar, which is trying to get a measure banning the cameras on the November ballot. “The citizens of Arizona took away the cash cow of Arizona by refusing to pay.”

The Arizona Department of Public Safety introduced the cameras in September 2008 and slowly added more until all 76 were up and running by January.

Supporters say the cameras slow down drivers and reduce accidents, but opponents argue that they are intrusive and are more about making money than safety.

More than 300 communities in 25 states use cameras similar to Arizona’s, including New York, Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C. But the backlash seems to be particularly intense in Arizona. Some people have shown their distaste with the cameras by covering them with boxes, sticky notes and Silly String. In locally infamous cases, one man took a pickax to a camera and another purposefully set off the cameras dozens of times while wearing a monkey mask. Read the rest of this entry »

Ohio Court of Appeals rules that a police officer cannot issue a speeding ticket because A CAR SOUNDS FAST.

The Ohio Court of Appeals on Monday ruled that a motorist cannot be convicted of speeding based solely on how fast his car may have sounded. On October 18, 2007, Patrolman Ken Roth ticketed Daniel Freitag in the village of West Salem as Freitag was driving with his wife Jane on US Route 42. Roth claimed his radar unit clocked Freitag at 42 MPH in a 35 zone. Roth also claimed he could hear Freitag’s 2006 Lincoln Navigator speeding.

“As it approached I could hear the vehicle on the roadway which based on my training and experience it is consistent with a vehicle that was in excess of the posted speed limit,” Roth testified.

A trial court judge on November 16, 2007 accepted this testimony and found Freitag guilty. Freitag challenged this decision before the Ohio Court of Appeals on the grounds that the radar evidence was not admissible. The trial court claimed it had taken judicial notice of the “Genesis Radar” that Roth used, but the state failed to specify which particular radar model was used. Freitag won on the point that the radar evidence was improperly admitted, but he lost as the court sent the case back to the trial judge to rule whether the officer’s estimate of Freitag’s speed based on the Navigator’s sound was credible. The trial court once again supported the officer and ruled that Freitag was guilty.

Freitag, however, did not give up. He appealed a second time, insisting that the officer’s testimony that he could estimate a vehicle’s speed by its sound or by watching a car’s headlights through the patrol car’s rear-view mirror was absurd. This time, the appeals court agreed.

Read the rest of this entry »