Maybe it’s true you can’t fight city hall or beat a speeding ticket in court.

But Ron Noonan is going to give it a try come March 7.

The 65-year old Sparta man, now retired, made his living as a certified photogrammetrist (the science of measuring by use of photographs), and he says the place where he got ticketed last December for driving 72 mph is just not fair and may not be legal.

That place is S. Jefferson Ave. and Highway 111 on the southern edge of Cookeville.

Three signs there within a distance of less than a tenth of a mile demand that drivers slow from 70 mph, to 65 mph, to 55, Noonan says.

“It’s a distance about equal to seven tractor trailer truck lengths,” says Noonan, who grew up in Pennsylvania and moved here in the 1970′s.

“I call it an entrapment, based on the placement of the signs. After a sign saying ‘Reduced Speed Ahead, immediately it’s 65 mph, then immediately 55 mph, then, boom, you get the radar. You don’t have time to slow down.”

Noonan says he was driving his 1993 Jeep Cherokee on cruise speed of 70 when Trooper Jonathan Reed ticketed him for 72 mph in the 55 mph zone. And he says there’s no way any driver can slow down enough to obey the signs as they are placed.

He’s pretty sure he will lose and have to pay that $150 ticket, but he vowed the day he got it to research the whole setup and fight the ticket in court anyway.

The first thing he did was to subpoena all the tickets that trooper has written in the same place for the past six months.

Okay, so I finally had my first SpeedTrapAhead roadside event!

I was on my way home from work Friday evening, when I saw a cop pull up in the parking lot of the old Lake Travis Elementary. Sure enough, he turned around and poised himself to radar back toward the northbound traffic.

About 1,000 feet up the road, there was a perfect spot for me to set up. So, there I stood, holding my 2′ x 2′ hand held sign, waving my other hand and pointing at the sign.

You should have seen all the brake lights lighting up after drivers saw my sign. I am pretty confident that my alert kept several drivers from getting a speeding ticket.

You might think that speeders SHOULD get a ticket. While I would agree in many cases, that’s not what SpeedTrapAhead is all about. The average Joe doesn’t really deserve an expensive ticket, and the resulting increase in insurance premiums. We’ve all been a little heavy on the foot from time to time.

Those that ARE deserving of a ticket are probably zooming past me so quickly that they don’t even SEE my sign. They’ll get a ticket anyway — deservedly.

My sign holding causes people to slow down and think about how fast they are really driving. Most of the response I got from drivers and passengers was positive. A few folks even stopped and commented on what I was doing. I got lots of ‘honks’ and ‘thumbs-ups’. The picture in this post was taken by a supportive passerby. “Just Awesome! Thank You!”, was the response in her email. Another guy who lived in “The Hills” stopped and chatted for a bit. “You guys are AWESOME”, were the first words out of his mouth. He was concerned about unwarranted or outrageously expensive tickets as a way for cities to fatten their income and supplement their budget. Most jurisdictions have laws that set restrictions on how much of the department’s budget can be derived from traffic citations; but, those laws are rarely checked or enforced.

I’ll be out again soon! Any time, any place I see a cop blasting out radar, I’ll be not too far away, blasting out my message.

Doubled fines and freeway speed cameras could help balance the Colorado state budget.

Colorado lawmakers are looking to the highway patrol to assist efforts to balance the state budget. Earlier this month a state legislative panel unanimously approved a proposal to more than double the cost of speeding tickets and other minor traffic infractions. Colorado Legislative Council staff estimated the change could generate more than $14.7 million in extra revenue from the 208,000 motorists who receive traffic tickets annually, with the state only paying a one-time cost of $33,600 to reprogram court computers with the higher fine amounts.

State House Transportation Committee Chairman Buffie McFadyen (D-Pueblo West) introduced the fine legislation as well as a second measure that would make “work zone” speed traps mandatory. Under the proposal, photo radar would generate automated citations from speeding drivers and a “move over” provision would be used to cite the motorists who are not speeding.

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I don’t know WHAT this cop’s problem was. He was WAY to aggressive and impatient. The driver was tasered because he didn’t react with lightning speed? The cop even smacked the driver with the door as he was getting out of the car!

THIS is a reason you don’t want to get pulled over by police.

Yea, THIS is the town where I live!

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Think these are binoculars? Look again – it’s actually a speed gun.

Drivers beware! While this device is the smallest speed trap in the world, it certainly packs a mighty punch. Thanks to clever technology, it can pinpoint speeders on busy motorways, or even in bad weather. Called the SpeedLaserB, it fits snugly in the palm and is designed to be no harder to use than a pair of binoculars.

Developed in the US, the compact piece of kit can register speeds of up to 200mph and takes three-tenths of a second to calculate how fast a car is travelling. It uses laser technology to pinpoint specific vehicles on a busy road.

The speed is then flashed up on an LCD head-up display. Obstruction mode allows the lasers to function in heavy rain, fog and snow, or even through the windows of a patrol car.