Speeders no longer getting 'cushion' of 5 mph

If you get a ticket, have your speedo checked and fight it. Some are out by quite a bit to the pessimistic side i.e showing 60, doing 64.

If you weren't speeding, that is...

That would only get you a reduced fine.

It's the driver's responsibility to make sure the car is working properly.

Proving your speedo is inaccurate only proves you did not "intend" to speed if it showed under the clocked speed. But you also prove you were in fact exceeding the speed limit. I know, the judge told me so.

Far better is proving your car is working to specs and you saying you had the cruise control on. Then the judge has to determine you are perjuring yourself or the officer made a mistake. That works far better...

Intent is everything in law. If you have a newer vehicle that the speedo is out on, then, that is not your fault. It was shipped that way.

I think the judge ruled in the states favor for the $$$. Sorry to hear it.

BTW, I have fought this stuff successfully.

Or possibly because I was 17 years old and traffic court judges really don't care... they're either on their way up or on their way out.

Yea, 17 YO can do that... LOL! And, they don't care unless you can introduce reasonable doubt.

Just another scam for more money from people who don't have it.

You never had the 5 mph cushion to begin with, at least when I compare the GPS speed with the car speedometer.

At highway speeds my car speedometer is always 5 mph faster than the GPS speed. If I go 60, I'm actually going 55 according to my GPS.

I've seen this between different GPS equipment and cars.

The difference between GPS and actual speed is less than 1 mph (64% of the sample in the test below), so GPS speed seem relatively reliable/accurate.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15519597

Since the odometer is tied to the speedometer, the car manufacturers also get a nice financial break in warranty work. My 36,000 warranty actually runs out after 33,000 actual miles.

You also get a nice imaginary boost in your fuel mileage, by up to 10%.

How nice!

Actually, "intent" is only important for criminal offences. It is NOT required for what are known as strict liability offences. This includes traffic violations.

All the state (or in our case, the crown) has to prove is that a law exists, and that the accused broke that law. The accused does not have to actually be aware of the law - that's where the saying "ignorance of the law is no excuse" comes from.

The vast majority of MCP Officers will give you 14mph and ticket you at 15mph over the limit. It is kind of the standard. That is not to say you won't run into the random officer that will ticket you at 3 or 4mph over, just that the majority will give you 14. It should also be noted that the economy and revenue considerations have absolutely zero to do with individual MCP officer's ticket policies. Officers have been given no instructions from management about writing more or less tickets, or tolerances due to the economy.

While I can not speak with any authority about any other department other than MCP in Maryland, I doubt very much that any other MD department is writing more tickets or reducing tolerances. The process is just not set up that way in this State. The whole story is based on "anecdotal evidence" anyway which means the whole story is speculation based on a few motorists who got tickets at various speeds for any number of reasons.

If anything MCP officers will be writing fewer tickets due to the lower overall morale based on the County Executive wanting to skip contracted step pay increases next year and the Council refusing to pay contracted raises last year.

The NMA is more or less a fringe group and I take what they state with a grain of salt.

I go by what a Virginia State Trooper said one time: Eight's great, nine and your mine!

Even though MD State Law on speed cameras is +12, there is no assurance a trooper will agree. So, 8's great, 9 and your mine.

While the speedometer & odometer are tied together, that doesn't necessarily mean they are showing the same values. One really needs to check the odometer with know length values and the speedometer with an accurate GPS (or radar gun).
The cars I've had over the years bear this out; one will have an accurate odometer while having a speedometer off by a few percent, while another might be the other way. The MB 300D I have currently has an accurate speedometer, while the odometer reads 4% low (i.e., I'm going farther than the odo says). The Town Car I have has a really whacked out speedometer in that it reads low below 55 MPH and reads high above 55 (the odometer reads 4% low).
In most cases the speedometer will read a bit high (with stock size tires). This is a liability issue; the auto manufacturers could get in hot water with lawyers if their cars are going faster than they say.
I think the Nuvi speed reads a little high, but I've yet to compare it to a more traditional (perhaps more speed accurate) GPS like my Magellan 330.

Anything to obtain our hard earned cash.
Virgo

Unfortunately there is no way to predict what your 'buffer' is going to be. In my city we allow 14mph over on the main roads, at 15 mph over we ticket. The interstate is different and the other towns are different. So......take your chances, but, it may be costly

I set my cruise to between 3 and 5 over. That way I can usually estimate my arrival times by dividing the distance by the speed limit. It allows me to move along at a steady pace and not worry about running into enforcement zones. And yes, I slow down in work zones to maintain the same 3 to 5 difference. That works out to about a 1/2 hour difference in 350 miles between 68 and 75.

I do the same thing though it varies in that range depending on how closely I'm paying attention to the speedometer. I always felt that it could be argued in court if you were going over speed-limit. In fact it happened to my fiancee's mother a few years ago (before I met my fiancee) and the judge scolded the cop for giving my future mother-in-law a ticket for going 5 MPH over the speed limit.

In AZ there is no official "buffer". The decision for a LEO to write a ticket is soley up to the officer's discretion. With that said, an officer can issue a speeding ticket for going 1mph over the posted speed limit depending on conditions, or, at the officer's discretion. With a lot of people driving within the "11mph buffer" for speed cameras, the generated revenues continue to drop. It would not surprise me to see them lower the "buffer" to 5mph or less to increase the number of tickets and generate additional revenue for the cities and states.