Courts are increasingly requiring evidence of speeding. The long standing precedent of accepting the officer’s word is being challenged. One California municipal judge threw out some 500 speeding tickets due to the officer’s lack of proper training and understanding of how radar and laser guns can make mistakes. The five o’clock news puts police chases in your face and uses footage from the patrol car’s dash cam. Wildly popular police reality shows shows suspects attempting to leave the scene with date, time, and the officers name stamped on each frame of video. Now police can interface radar with dash cams for evidence of speeding. Your speed is now stamped to each frame of video. Radar is of little use in dense metropolitan traffic. Radar can’t single out individual vehicles. It’s beam is too wide. However, laser’s pinpoint surgical infrared beam can and does pick you out of a group of vehicles. Now, new laser guns are being introduced with digital cameras attached. With each trigger pull of the laser gun your speed, and distance are added to the exact time and date of the alleged infraction.

     To the right the black car has been imaged by a laser cam going 26 mph in a 15 mph school zone. The gun’s circular targeting dot is squarely on the license plate. You can’t lawyer out of this. The introduction of laser cameras helps the police and it helps you. Before laser cams it was the officer’s word that was the evidence. Sometimes his observations and estimations of your speed were wrong. With the visual evidence of a picture there is no doubt about the evidence. The most important advantage of laser cam pictorial evidence is freeing up the officer from court appearances. They are on the street where they belong, not in a day-long costly court proceeding. Where used, the plead “guilty” rate of offenders approaches 100% much to the disappointment of billboard defense attorneys. Laser cams take advantage of a new printer technology called PicBridge. With PicBridge no computer is necessary to print the picture for court evidence. In South America law enforcement officials print the picture at the traffic stop and present it to the offender.

     Many private businesses, including bus companies, taxi fleet owners, trucking companies and delivery fleets now use laser cams to present evidence to their speeding drivers of their transgressions. They and their insurance companies don’t allow speeding drivers. Both Kustom Signals and Stalker Radar have introduced laser cams with easy to use digital cameras attached. Laser Technologies and Laser Atlanta also offer picture takers. As laser guns and digital cameras get smaller and lighter, expect a laser cam to be taking a picture of you. Make sure you smile.