From gottabemobile.com:
When a man in Yolo County, California was cited with a ticket for going 40 MPH in a 25 MPH zone, he went to court to fight the ticket armed with his Android smartphone with its GPS capabilities.
For evidence and to rebute his citation, the man, who was using the Google Tracks app at the time he was pulled over for his speed violation, says that the app, which used GPS, recorded his speed to only be 26 MPH.
How lucky is that? I have apps that can perform similar functions on my Blackberry but have far better things to do with my time than track my car journeys.
The man won his case against the police officer who had cited him. However, the verdict was not because of the reliability of GPS technology, but rather the judge’s position is because the officer did not present enough evidence in court–he had not calibrated his radar gun recently.
And I bet the cop is now kicking himself for it.
So it seems that the GPS tracking was relevant but ultimately not important as I would bet the uncalibrated radar would be the trump card even without the GPS. But interesting that this sort of technology could well be used more extensively in the future.
3 comments
CraigRat
February 24, 2011 at 9:39 pm (UTC 13) Link to this comment
Given that a tracklog can be manipulated on most devices while still in the device via simple editors, I’d be surprised if using a GPS tracklog would save you if the prosecution had a good lawyer who knows about tech.
Lucky these are few and far between!
A calibrated speed device should win over your uncalibrated/unverified GPS unit every time, but this is where they stuffed it right up!!
Andy
February 25, 2011 at 8:58 am (UTC 13) Link to this comment
Interesting…we all know the gpsrs have a certain location accuracy. I wonder what the accuracy is on speed. Different for each device I imagine but is it 1%, 10%…,
kjwx
February 26, 2011 at 11:41 pm (UTC 13) Link to this comment
Co-incidentally, my muggle spouse got a speeding ticket on a 100kph rural road recently. The police officer clocked him as going 112kph, which he admits matched his speedo reading but his vehicle’s Navman was registering just 96kph.