Hey guys,

Just wondering if I can get some help on what to do for this ticket. I have a court date on August 17th. I simply cannot afford this. I haven't had an offence in years, and pay attention to my speeds now. One night when I was too focused on the road and not the speedometer, I get pulled over. What do you guys think is the best option?

Along with the notes, I was also provided 3 pages of the user manual for the radar gun.

It is a LIDAR not RADAR, but that is neither here nor there. Can you post the pages from manual?

_________________
I am not a lawyer and I am not a paralegal and I do not give legal advice.
All statements made are my opinion only.

ShrekTek

The officer was approximately 300 meters away based on my calculations using beam width of .9m and lidar gun specs.

What was volume of traffic? Obviously it was dark but was it raining ( I can't make out the RDS conditions)?

Basically the officer is stating he is sure he wasn't off by 0.9m at a distance of 300m aiming at a car's registration plates going, he claims, 121 km/hr, with headlights on probably blinding him to a degree. As well, he didn't sweep the lidar gun while trying to target you way off in the distance in the dark. Okay.

His requalification is 3 years old at time of ticket (I am having trouble seeing the date.) Obviously training isn't taken seriously. I remember I read in Alberta it needs to be done once a year, and even though in Ontario the standards arent explicitly defined that shouldn't mean they are significantly less. I seriously doubt he read the manual Feb 2016 on his own. Find out how many pages it is and ask him if he read the whole manual with the follow-up being approximately how many pages is it?

No, 0.9m is the width of the laser beam at a distance of 300m. Width of LIDAR beam is approximately one metre wide at 300 metres, compared to the registration plate width of 30 cm, ensuring that little of the signal is scattered to following vehicles. Aiming at front middle of vehicle will suffice.

Notes (I believe) indicate he is an operator/trainer , re-qualification only required every 5 years for a trainer.

The officer wrote in his notes the beam width was 0.9m. It changes over distance. So the officer had to be approximately 300 meters away when he obtained the reading. If the beam width is 0.9m that means officer can miss the plate by that much and still theoretically get laser beams back from hitting it and therefore readings. However, it also means the operator could be measuring readings from any object 1.8 meters away from his car (I. E another lane of traffic or almost anything really that he is unaware of 300 meters away in dark).

Beam width is nOT the officer's friend. I have never operated a radar/lidar gun and think speed measuring devices should only be used to measure pitch speeds and baseball exit velocities. With that said, I would imagine this particularly unit calculates the distance of the target by bounce back time and then gives the approximate beam width based on the distance calculation which the officer wrote down in the notes under that section.

LIDAR calculates the speed of vehicle based on Time Of Flight. It sends out a pulse and then waits for it to come back. It uses Infrared laser, and the beam travels at the speed of light, so it can then calculate the distance based on how long it took to get there and back. It will then take several distance readings over a time period (about 0.3 seconds) and then it calculates speed based on the change in distance.

The beam width or beam divergence is measured in milliradians or mrads and is around 3 mrads for most Lidar units which at 300meters distance would be about 0.9 meters in diameter.

_________________
I am not a lawyer and I am not a paralegal and I do not give legal advice.
All statements made are my opinion only.

ShrekTek

The purpose of having a standardized template for the officer's notes which has beam width specified is so the officer will document what the beam width is at the distance of the lidar reading. The officer is not putting the beam width of the lidar gun at 300 meters there. The reading was taken at approximately 300 meters away so that is why the beam width corresponds to what it would be at 300 meters. My guess is that the lidar gun indicates the beam width with the reading. The reason why it has to be indicated probably is that is important to know potentially how wide the beam is because it could be measuring objects beside the intended target at the width of the beam.

LIDAR does NOT show you the beam width. It only shows you distance to target and the target speed. You need to calculate the beam width based on the specs given by manufacture (which again is usually 3 mrads).

Looking at the disclosure, I can not read what it says the distance is...
H/L 121 @ 2??
Can anybody else dechiper this?

Anyways it does not look like the distance is 300m in which case the officers beam width calculation is incorrect, so there is possibility to attack his understanding of unit based on that.

_________________
I am not a lawyer and I am not a paralegal and I do not give legal advice.
All statements made are my opinion only.

ShrekTek

I meant to write including objects in reading @ 2X width of beam.

Really not sure how calculation was made or if it was taken but he really can't say what he could've hit in a 0.9 m radius circle 300 meters away in the dark. Yeah if it contradicts distance reading you go to town on his training.

Can anyone really target a moving object 300 meters away in the dark without a stand or night vision equipment and say for sure they hit their intended target?

My experience using Lidar is that even in the daylight, at 1000ft/300m the target vehicle is no bigger than the little dot in the sight and it is hard to keep the dot on the vehicle at that distance. So yes at night it would almost impossible at that distance.

At those distances you have a very likely possibility of sweep errors which means the readings are bouncing off different parts of the vehicle because you can not hold it to one specific spot on the vehicle which means the speed calculation will not be correct.

_________________
I am not a lawyer and I am not a paralegal and I do not give legal advice.
All statements made are my opinion only.

ShrekTek

At 300m a motor vehicle shows up very well in the sight...at that distance the operator would be using the 8X magnification sight...Depending on the lighting situation of where the alleged offence took place, the officer may well have been able to see clearly enough to get a good shot...was there good ambient light from street lights or was it down a dark, unlit highway?...the lidar does not give any indication as to lidar beam width, just speed and distance...in fact, the distance is not even needed to be proven in court to get a conviction for speeding, a lot of officers do not put the distance down in their notes...the cross hairs in the sight are lit so it is easy to get a good shot at night...

Not all Lidars have a magnified sight. In fact most don't.

_________________
I am not a lawyer and I am not a paralegal and I do not give legal advice.
All statements made are my opinion only.

ShrekTek

Well, if you look at the disclosure notes you will see that the lidar used was the Laser Atlanta Speed Laser which does, in fact, have it...

I have used one Lidar with a magnified sight (2x) but I can not remember which one it was.

I found copy of Laser Atlanta manual (2003 version) and it makes no mention of magnified sight in that manual. Anyways, if you have used it then I assume you are correct about the sight.

However would be a good question to ask the officer "Is the sight magnified?"

_________________
I am not a lawyer and I am not a paralegal and I do not give legal advice.
All statements made are my opinion only.

ShrekTek

The officer can use the regular sight or flip the other one over if they want the 8X magnification...operator preference