Okay, so I had to go to court with one of my guys who got a speeding ticket (Navy thing, likely local rule). I looked on the judge's desk and saw every calibration report for each and every one of the radar guns used by any of the various agencies in the county. I also took a look at the procedures for calibrating any of the radar guns here in Kitsap County, and it goes like this:
They have to put the gun through a self test feature to ensure all lights light up. This ensures that there are no internal failures to the gun. The next step is to actually calibrate the unit with a tuning fork. For those who really do not know, a tuning fork oscillates, or vibrates, at a certain frequency. If the fork oscillates at a certain frequency, then the tines would vibrate back and forth at a certain speed, enabling the officer to calibrate a radar gun to this speed.

So what does this have to do with challenging speeding tickets? There is no paperwork proving the calibration of this tuning fork. I work in calibration for the Navy, and I have come to learn quite a bit about it. Calibration standards are instruments that are calibrated using instruments with even higher tolerances, and are required to calibrate anything legally. If they are not using these standards to calibrate these tuning forks with, then the calibration is not valid, thus your speeding ticket's validity can be questioned.

Thoughts?

 

Plead not guilty. If the cop doesn't show up at the next court date, automatic win.

Was the guy speeding?

 

Actually, you'd be wrong there. This very case started out with the judge stating that the state accepted the officer's written testimony as if he were present in the courtroom. I thought it was odd, but she went on to state it was some state law that had passed. Yet another Washington law that I completely disagree with, where you do not have the right to cross examine your accuser.

My whole point here is that challenging the ticket on the basis that they did not perform a calibration legally is the way to beat it. You can't perform a calibration with uncalibrated instruments.