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I was coming home traveling west bound on route 58, when a policeman pulled me over. He told me I was going 78 mph with a limit of 60, until I showed him my GPS, which showed my top speed of entire trip was only 67 MPH. He then joked and then wrote me a ticket for improper equipment instead of a speeding ticket. I told him that the car I was driving was a brand new rental car and he said "let them pay it". He told me no to go to court because it won't help.
Has anyone had problems with the police on 58/13 from VA to NC?
If they need money that bad they should put up a toll booth.
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Something worth noting - almost all GPS' will show the
average speed for your trip - not the
constant speed. Just because your GPS showed 67 MPH after the fact, that doesn't mean you were not speeding at the time he hit you with the radar, since that was likely only your
average speed. And even if your speed was, in fact, 67 when he clocked you, he could still make the argument that you were over the limit - albeit by only 2 MPH (picky, but it's still speeding).
Moreover, remember that radar has to be calibrated and checked annually in order to be admissible in court, so it's going to carry a lot more weight than a GPS in a rental car.
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Just yesterday morning, while my cruise control was set to 68 mph, a police officer pulled me and my wife over in Emporia. He claimed I was doing 80 mph. No chance!
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Now, if you actually go so far as to SET your cruise contral to a speed
above the posted limit (yes, it's a slim margin, but it's still over the legal limit), that's an
intentional, illegal act on your part and I don't think any court in the land is going to have much sympathy for you. A word of advise: you might not want to say in court that you were essentially TRYING to go faster than the limit and still got caught, regardless of what the officers tells you at the scene. He/she probably only said you were going 80 to see what you'd admit to - not because it was the actual speed you were clocked at.
Virginia is not a speeding-friendly state. If you think about it, we ALL speed, all the time, even if only by one or two MPH. It's virtually unavoidable, especially when the traffic flow, itself, is going faster than the posted limit (but just because the next guy is speeding, it doesn't make it OK for us). Again, it'd be very picky to start ticketing people for those one/two-MPH violations, but you can see how that would likewise be a target-rich environment for a state as fiscally strapped as VA, where the state gov't all but "mandates" VSP to generate revenue via citations. It's frustrating, but still within the limit of the law, even if only barely. Only way to change it is to change the law, or more importantly, change the culture in state gov't that sees VSP as a source of revenue.
Not trying to take sides, but merely to explain...
As far as contacting the U.S. Attorney's Office - I'm not sure what you think that will do, but the U.S. Attorney has no jurisdiction over the VSP with regard to traffic violations. About the only way the Dept. of Justice could get involved in a state/local law enforcement agency's "business" would be if there were stark evidence of corruption - think use-of-force issues along the lines of Rodney King, bribery of public officials, and other serious violations. VSP writing a lot of speeding tickets and folks being likewise angry/frustrated at receiving them is really not "corruption" in that sense. That's not even going to come close to meriting U.S. Attorney/DOJ involvement. Probably won't even meet the threshold for investigation by VSP's internal affairs or the state's own IG office (or equivalent).
Tickets stink, no doubt about it. I've had a couple, too, and regardless of my personal frustration level at the time of the incident, I later realized I had been wrong. And whatever transpired between the officer and myself after I was stopped, there was never any doubt that the entire interaction was still
caused by me - by driving faster than the posted speed limit. Live and learn. The only sure way to avoid a ticket or being stopped is to slow down and obey all traffic laws. Not saying people don't sometimes get pulled over for "doing nothing", but that happens far less than you think: as an officer, if you don't have an articulable reason to make a vehicle stop, it will be your butt in a sling in court.
As for the individual who suggested that "pigs will be pigs" - thank you for painting us all with the same brush. As a cop tasked with putting my life on the line for ungrateful people every day, I really appreciate the thoughtlessness.
On the flip side of the coin, thanks for standing up for us, Richmond Commuter
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