Subject: inaccurate speeding ticket

From: [email-masked] (daniel smead)
Date: 4 May 1995 00:36:16 GMT

I was driving southbound on 75 a couple weeks ago, with my speedometer 
reading around 72mph. suddenly a state trooper came flying over the 
median (Pretty impressive, since it was flooded with a couple inches of 
water at the time. ) She didn't turn on her lights though, so I just set 
the cruise down to around 69, and waited for her to fly past me to pursue 
whatever drug-crazed Nazi serial killer that might have prompted her 
rather unorthodox U-turn. After a few miles, though, she pulled me over, 
and gave me a ticket for 77. As this point, I figured that my speedo was 
reading slow. 

Then I started to think about it.. The tires I'm using are a lower 
profile than stock. Without going into the math, my tires have a smaller 
radius, meaning that for each rpm, the car goes a slightly shorter 
distance than with the stock tires, meaning... the speedo should actually 
be reading faster than the actual vehicle speed. I tried timing myself 
through  a one mile distance at an indicated 60mph. It took slightly more 
than a minute, meaning... Surprise! I wasn't going 60! 

So, basically, I got a ticket for 77 mph when I was going 70-71 mph, a 
speed at which a cop would have to be really bored to even bother with a 
warning. 

So I was all set to go to trial, fight the system, protect truth and 
justice, etc. then I realized a few things:

1 It was my word against the cop
2 The trial was 100 miles away
3 I'd lose more in wages for the day than the ticket was worth ($70)
4 I'd probably be found guilty anyway (See #1) and end up paying court 
    costs to add insult to injury.

So I ended up mailing a $70 donation to the Municipal court in Sydney, 
Ohio. 

My question is, could I have fought this and won?  
-- 
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Dan Smead                          I am obviously using this computer    
[email-masked]              for educational purposes only.
Bowling Green, OH ====================================================