I knew this was possible, but now I know they use it and how quickly it works. I got a ticket today by "vehicle to vehicle" radar.

I was riding up Palos Verdes Drive East in Palos Verdes through what is called "The Switchbacks", about a 1 1/2 mile stretch of several tight uphill (and very fun) left and right handers, followed by an uphill straight leading into a few sweepers. I know it's patrolled heavily, but I saw no cops on my first run. My wife was with me on her SV, and we then went to a nearby Starbucks with a view of Catalina Island.

On the way back home an hour later, we did another run. I signaled my wife that I was going to do it one more time, and she rode down to the bottom to wait for me.

As I'm accelerating out of the last right hander heading uphill after the switchbacks, there's an LA County Deputy in a cruiser coming the other way with something hanging out his driver's window. I went "Oh S***!", and he blipped his siren and threw on his lights. I saw him making a 3 point "Y turn" to come and get me. I knew it was radar, so 1/4 mile ahead I pulled off to the left, on a parallel residential street, to wait for him.

Bottom line is he got me for 67 in a 35. The way he was talking at first, I thought maybe he's going to cut me loose with a warning. But after checking my DL and asking me to dig out my proof of insurance, he got back in his cruiser for several minutes, and I knew I was getting the ticket.

Oh well, it's kind of like paying dues. The last ticket I got was almost 10 years ago, and the last one on my bike was 15 years ago. And I've come out of corners fairly hot several times in the last few months to see a cruiser coming towards me, but I've rolled off the throttle, and they didn't pursue.

He told me to stick my head inside his cruiser, then he said "See that display on top of the dash. The 30 on the right was my speed, the 67 on the left is your speed. It's called vehicle to vehicle radar".

 

More cool tools that agents of the state use to steal your money. That's all this is, pure and simple, and has nothing to do with public safety or any of that other happy horseshit.

 

I just hope I can do traffic school to avoid theft from my insurance company.

I got a ticket in the early '80s up in Santa Barbara County for 80 in a 55 on the 101 Freeway in the middle of nowhere. When I called to request traffic school, I was told that I didn't qualify since I was going more than 20 mph over the limit. In other words I was beyond rehabilitation...I guess.

 

Not quite the same thing, but the Phoenix area had a bunch of speed cameras posted up on the highways for a couple of years, and just took them all this summer.

I didn't follow the politics too closely, but the way I understood it the cameras were causing more problems than they were fixing. Cars would all be traveling at 75 in a 65, then a series of brake lights at the cameras and backed up traffic issues ensued. The only problem that they were fixing was lack of funds for the state (and you didn't have to play too many games to get around paying the ticket either)

The kicker was they were discovering that b/c of fewer routine traffic stops, they were catching fewer actual criminals. As in, many times people are stopped for something minor like speeding and they find in the background check a warrant for an arrest or something like that. The cameras did away with this police-to-person interaction and just flashed everyone who were driving 21st century cars in speed zones that were assigned for cars made in the 80's.

Anyway, kind of a side tangent, but, yeah... gotta pay the dues sometimes, as long as the officer isn't condescending about it. Who hasn't sped on a motorcycle?

 

I remember seeing a report on the TV news several years ago when they had just installed those cameras in Phoenix. They showed a guy on a motorcycle doing 135.

And yeah, all my tickets over the last 40 years are for speeding (4 on motorcycles, one on each bike I've owned). But I don't cause accidents. My only "at fault" accident was when I rear ended a car that had stopped unexpectedly at the same time I was checking my right side mirror to change lanes. I wasn't speeding, and I hadn't been following too close. I was commuting home from work on PCH in Laguna Beach, and some idiot several cars ahead had stopped in the middle of the lane to make a left turn, instead of going into the left turn lane. Of course they just drove on.

 

There were a bunch of stories with those things.

Some of the cameras weren't permanent, but were just vans placed on the sides of the roads, with a big camera setup mounted to them. One time, a group of kids drove up to a guy setting the camera up and started talking to him while he was doing it. While they were distracting him, another friend managed to get the licence plate off of the camera van without him noticing. They then put the plate on their vehicle and proceeded to speed past the camera like 11 times or something like that. The camera van gave itself 11 speeding tickets... enforcement got confused and had to piece the whole thing together backwards I guess. I can't confirm the story right now, but the fella I heard it from is a reliable one.

Anyway, I hear ya on the not causing accidents... and honestly motorcycles are sort of self regulating if you're being dumb anyway so that should in theory make tickets less severe than more...

 

Haha, judging from the way people use them around here, those are merge lanes! Heaven forbid someone use them the way they're designed...

 

I remember seeing that on TV here too. The vans were manned by civilians, not police, and one of the van guys turned out to have a major criminal record, or something like that.

Like you said, sometimes they catch bad guys when they do an actual pullover. That's what causes most police chases. And they always get those dimwits when they run out of gas...or they're running on the rims 50 miles after the spike strip.

 

Its follow the money.

There is no revenue for the state, county, muni when the police are actually serving and protecting. Monitoring known dangerous intersections instead of setting up a speed trap isn't profitable, for example.

And the courts, the lawyers and the insurance companies know this. Speeding ticket? Pay the fees to the attorney, and the court, have adjudication withheld, keep the points off the driving record and consider the loss as being held to a minimum when considering the future insurance rates.

PITA factor, I know, but its the culture we live in.

Crack addiction is like a vague craving for something salty when compared to how a politician feels about a revenue stream.

 

This road overlooks the ocean, climbing steeply uphill with the view getting more and more spectacular.

I didn't think of it until later, but I might have gotten out of it if I'd said:

"I thought I heard the Tsunami Warning Siren, so I was trying to get to higher ground as quickly as possible."

But he's probably heard that one before.

 

Not sure if Cali works like NY, but here you fill out the ticket "not guilty" and check "supporting Deposition NOT required". They mail you back a court date. Go a bit early and see the officer. Almost always he will lower the speed or plead it to a failure to obey a sign or some such.
You still pay the fine and NYS surcharge, but it goes much better for insurance. The cop is happy because he wrote his ticket, got his overtime going to court and didn't have to write out a deposition.
67 in a 35 would be a hefty ticket here - Good luck

 

Here in California we can go to "Traffic School", if it's just an infraction, to keep it off the record and avoid the insurance rip-off. It comes out about the same $-wise. I've been to traffic school many times in the last 40 years.

You have to be good for the following 18 months though, or the next one will get you a point. And if you plead not guilty and lose, you can't take traffic school.