GPS gets me off speeding ticket (in a way)

I was returning from a hike in a local conservation area and my GPS was on the seat next to me and still turned on.

Blue lights, "darn, he wants me!"

The police officer said he clocked me going 35 in a 20 mph zone. I glanced at my GPS and it said my maximum speed had been 28.2 and timidly told him.

He had never seen a handheld GPS and started asking questions. I handed it to him and had him walk around the car, then showed him his path on the screen.

After I told him mine was $95 at Wal-Mart (Garmin Geko 101), he said "take it easy on the gas from now on," walked back to his car, and drove off in the direction of Wal-Mart.

wow, they're good enough to trace a path within that small an area? i keep wanting to get an antenna for laptop use, but they all run close to 200!

Cool, what a great story. See not all cops are pricks....those are the ones that inspire me to become one.

Anyway, please...tell us more about the Garmin Geko GPS. I've never considered buying one because of their prices, especially with features like precise tracking AND speed, but the Garmin sounds like a nice unit with an affordable price tag. What else can it do?

The Geko is basically a smaller version of the Etrex with a smaller screen and two AAA batteries instead of AA's.

The most comprehensive site about GPS stuff is

http://gpsinformation.net/

(formerly http://joe.mehaffey.com )

You will find all the info you could want there, and then some.

Georget98:

I'm glad the GPS saved you from getting a ticket. The other stories I've heard about ended up in bad news. Remember the rental car company that outfitted their cars with GPS's? Everytime the driver went over a predetermined limit he or she would get a ticket. There was a person who ended up with three tickets upon returning the rental car.

I still wonder how a car rental company can have the authority to issue speeding tickets.

Oh yeah, forgot to add. The guy sued the car rental company and the guy won.

Hmm. I suppose I should actually delete the remembered Max Speed of 131 mph on my StreetPilot III. Something tells me that THAT info won't get me out of any trouble.

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LEDagent said:
Cool, what a great story. See not all cops are pricks....those are the ones that inspire me to become one.


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So...is a cop that falsely accuses somebody of driving 15mph over the posted limit a prick if he issues a citation and you don't have a GPS unit to prove otherwise? I say he ate the citation when he realized that it would most likely be contested and there was physical evidence showing a much lower speed than the citation.

I'll add to that my father was a LEO and I am friends of some other LEOs. But like in all fields, there are good people and not so good people employed, and this just sounds like a guy that discovered that he can issue trumped-up citations for higher fines and people are mostly powerless to contest it. In my state, it would be a big issue because speeding more than 10mph over the limit carries a much higher fine with one extra demerit point issued.

[ QUOTE ]
Darell said:
Hmm. I suppose I should actually delete the remembered Max Speed of 131 mph on my StreetPilot III. Something tells me that THAT info won't get me out of any trouble.

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Wow was the EV struck by lightning ? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

On a side note:
My Elantra at 135mph shakes like a martini can...

Interestingly enough, down I-5, from about Stockton down to the tip of LA, I rarely see CHiPs out patrolling at all... My uncle used to do 160 all the time in his M3 at night on I-5 from Tracy on down to LA, and not once did he see a cop during those times.

Then he goes on Highway 99, at 75 in a 65 zone, and gets a ticket at 3am in the morning...
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Go figure...

i love M3s...both the surefire and the bmw /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

One of these days, I'll get myself a new M5... Those guys are so sweet when I got the chance to drive one... Then I'll gladly buy a GPS tracker just to keep my top speed on its dial...
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better get one soon before the new 5 series comes out! unless you like the latest 7 series...the new 5 series is a smaller version of that /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon15.gif

Thinking of spy in the cab technology...

Isn`t it GM that has a system that keeps a record of throttle position and speed that is frozen in event of air bag deployment, giving the history for 30 seconds before deployment. Guess it would just be software bolt on to existing engine management software.

Adam

One day a couple weeks ago I went out to buy a pedometer and came home with a GPS.

The Geko 101 is a pretty basic unit. When he walked around the car, it took about half the trip before the GPS decided it was moving and started tracking, but I zoomed in to the 80 foot scale and we could see sort of a J shape. Enough to impress anyways.

When you turn the unit on and it finds the satellites, it displays its estimated accuracy and updates it as long as turned on. Usually its between 30 and 50 feet but I've seen 19 feet and 250 under bad signal conditions. The Geko 201 is more accurate but I just want to see how far I walked and find my way out of the woods and that's plenty accurate for that.

Although only 50 feet off is great in the scale of travelling around, the elevation reading is pretty useless with that sort of accuracy. It makes you wonder when I sit an ocean beach, presumably sea level or darn close, and my elevation is 65 feet. I guess that's a well known problem because I've seen more expensive units that have aneroid altimeters built in.

The 101 only runs on AAA batteries, has no provision for external power and no port for connecting to a computer. You can see your track, pan along it, set waypoints, tell it to navigate to a point or have it track back along the path you took.

At work, a town government, our GIS (Geographic Information Systems) department has a Trimble differential unit that is in a backpack with a big "hey, look, a martian" type antenna sticking up. That thing is accurate usually with a couple feet. Accurate enough to see which side of a crosswalk a fire hydrant is located on. Fun but $10,000.

At work we have a Trimble GPS unit that goes down to +/- 2 cm.

I have a Garmin GPS V in my car, the other day I went to the Max Speed field and saw 262Mph as a max speed?!?!?!

Obviously a glitch... I'd better not show that to a cop!

Needless to say I reset it!!!

Chris

I have been away from the GPS technology for a few years now but was very involved when it first started. I had one of the first Trimble portable units that was over 3K and gave lat and lon in LED digital display. SA was a big deal in terms of accuracy then and I recall it being shut off during the Gulf War since there were so many civilian units being used by the troops that were not SA compatible. Then differential GPS came out to compensate against SA and other errors.

My question:

Is SA now off and has the technology reached the point where a max speed registered can be taken as fact?

- Don

SA has been off for quite some time now. My unit is rarely off by more than 12' - typcially far better than that. The speed reporting is about as perfect as you can get, and updates multiple times/second. I haven't yet found it to be more than 1/4 of a percent off.