NaviGadget

how to use GPS to fight a speeding ticket

Jul 3, 2007 gps navigation, misc news

In Australia that is… But there’s no reason it wouldn’t work anywhere else. Here’s what you need to do: 1) you actually need to be innocent. 2) your GPS system better keep track of all your logs, including your position, heading, and speed.

The story: this guy in Australia got pulled over by cops who claim he was doing 121Km/h on a 100Km/h. There were bunch of cars behind him at the time so he was confident their radar was at fault and it actually picked up someone behind him. At the time of the even he was – luckily – using his Garmin GPS navigation system so he disagreed with the officer.

I’ve got a Garmin unit, and you buy the software and plug it into a PC and download all the logs. It will tell you everywhere you’ve been, at what time, what direction you’re heading, and every time there’s a speed change, it will start a new log and tell you how far you travelled at that particular speed for. They’re quite a good thing, if you’re on a trip and anything unforeseen happens, they could prove them either wrong or right. and if the thing says, look you were over the speed limit you’ll have to wear it. It saved me a 200 dollar fine through sheer luck. If I was in my car [without it] I would have had to pay the fine, because you can’t dispute it.

I’m not sure if you can use your sat nav systems logs at a court – but we know this case never made it to the court:

…is grateful the officer involved listened to his case, examined the evidence presented to him and made the decision not to proceed with the conviction.

“No, it never went to court. I produced [the GPS evidence] to the person concerned, he was quite satisfied there may have been an error and subsequently removed the ticket… I spoke to the person’s supervisor on the phone and he was very very good on the phone, he was perfect, I couldn’t fault him.”

If you don’t want to deal with this at all we suggest you look into a GPS enabled radar detector.