Voice of the Customer

TMCnet - The World's Largest Communications and Technology Community
New Coverage :  Asterisk  |  Call Center Outsourcing  |  Call Recording  |  SIP Trunking  |  Hosted Exchange  |  PBX
Webinars
Channels by Topic
Share
 
| More
RSS-XML alerts
Print this page
E-mail this page to a friend
Voice of the Customer Featured Article Archive

TMCNet: New Brighton man trying to use GPS to fight speeding ticket [Beaver County Times, Pa.]

[November 08, 2009]

New Brighton man trying to use GPS to fight speeding ticket [Beaver County Times, Pa.]

(Beaver County Times (PA) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Nov. 8--A New Brighton man's appeal of a speeding ticket probably is the first of its kind in Pennsylvania, according to state court officials.

That's because David Riesmeyer is saying that his global positioning device proves that a Rochester police officer's measurement of his speed was off by several miles per hour.

But Riesmeyer could face an uphill battle. Pennsylvania officials have been watching a similar court case in California that ended Wednesday in favor of police.

A Sonoma County, Calif., court commissioner ruled that Shawn Malone had to pay a $190 speeding ticket, ending a two-year court battle over whether his GPS could be used to throw out the ticket, according to The Press Democrat in Santa Rosa, Calif.

Local ticket According to court records in District Judge Ed Howe's office, Rochester police officer Jeff Lizzi stopped Riesmeyer, 46, of 541 13th Ave., around 6:50 a.m. June 15 on Route 65 in East Rochester.

Lizzi, according to court records, was using a stopwatch and lines painted on the road to measure Riesmeyer's speed, which he wrote was 64.5 miles an hour in a 50-mph zone.

Riesmeyer appealed the ticket and used his GPS data as part of his defense. Howe found him guilty during a trial on Sept. 16.

Howe said the only devices certified to measure speed in Pennsylvania are radar, Vascar, Accutrack, NRAD and speedometers. Some of those devices use electronics; others are simply stopwatches and lines painted on roads.

With fines and court costs, the ticket cost Riesmeyer $137.50.

The appeal On Oct. 16, Riesmeyer filed an appeal in the Beaver County Clerk of Courts office, using the same documentation that he presented to Howe in his original defense.

Riesmeyer claims that the GPS in his company vehicle, belonging to Climatech in Robinson Township, showed that at 6:49 a.m., he was traveling 57 mph on Route 65, where motorists traveling on the Beaver-Rochester Bridge merge onto the southbound lanes of Route 65.

Four minutes later, the GPS shows that Riesmeyer is parked at Route 65 and Stewart Avenue in East Rochester, nearly a mile from where Lizzi calculated Riesmeyer's speed.

Riesmeyer, a heating and cooling technician, said that his commercial GPS takes a snapshot of his speed and location every three seconds, so he's confident that the data showing the 57 mph is the exact speed he was traveling when Lizzi measured his speed.

Riesmeyer is also questioning whether the use of the stopwatch and painted lines is accurate.

He said that before his hearing before Howe began, Lizzi offered what amounted to a plea agreement, saying he could plead guilty to driving 5 mph over the speed limit, with no points on his driver's license.

"If he was so confident in what he calculated, why would he do that?" Riesmeyer said.

Law enforcement Beaver County District Attorney Anthony Berosh said his office was aware of the case.

He said Riesmeyer would have to prove in court, using experts, the accuracy of the GPS device.

State police Sgt. Douglas Bartoe said Thursday that his troopers use a radar gun that is calibrated frequently to ensure its accuracy.

He said that in his more than 10 years of accident reconstruction work, investigators have used GPS devices to estimate speeds that someone was going in a general area, not down to a specific area, such as a 200-foot stretch of roadway.

"Calibration (and other information from the GPS) is going to be in question," Bartoe said, "whether the information from the satellite is exact." Berosh said police can't use GPS data against someone in court, and he didn't know of any other local case in which a motorist tried to use GPS data in a ticket appeal.

According to The Press Democrat, the California teen's parents downloaded GPS data that they said proved he wasn't driving 62 mph in a 45-mph zone.

A court commissioner ruled that prosecutors and defense attorneys didn't question the accuracy of the GPS device, and that each side interpreted the data differently. Malone's attorney said Malone's mother will pay the fine, according to The Press Democrat.

Riesmeyer's appeal ­has not been scheduled yet.

He said he's also talked to state Sen. Elder Vogel Jr., R-47, New Sewickley Township, and state Rep. Jim Marshall, R-14, Big Beaver, about potentially changing the laws governing what devices may be used to measure motorists' speed.

If Riesmeyer's appeal is successful, the ticket could be thrown out. According to the state vehicle code, if the speed limit is less than 55 mph, a person has to be traveling more than 10 miles over the speed limit to be convicted if an officer is using a speed measuring device other than radar.

"I think what's being done in Rochester is a matter of generating money and not one of safety enforcement," Riesmeyer said.

To see more of Beaver County Times, Pa., or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.timesonline.com.

Copyright (c) 2009, Beaver County Times, Pa.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

[ Back To Voice of the Customer Community's Homepage ]
› Return to Voice of the Customer Home

FOLLOW US

FREE Voice of the Customer eNewsletter

Subscribe Now

Featured White Papers

  • Seven Best Practices for Speech Analytics: Speech analytics is valuable for identifying issues in the contact center. However, limiting its use to the contact center only considers a portion of all customer interactions and subsequently only reveals a small part of the voice of the customer. This paper discusses how organizations can optimize their Speech Analytics implementation strategy to realize the promise of this exciting technology.
  • Understanding the Voice of the Customer: Today's contact centers involve a sea of information that must be captured, processed, and distributed on a daily basis. Effective use of this information enables companies to remain competitive in an increasingly aggressive and customer centric marketplace. An overwhelming percentage of the information that circulates in a contact center's audio recordings, documents, web pages, and emails is unstructured in that it resides outside of a normal structured database and cannot be managed efficiently. These unstructured items contain valuable information, yet this information historically has been difficult to organize, categorize, and access.
View All ›

Case Studies

  • Aflac: Aflac, the leading provider of guaranteed-renewable insurance turned to Autonomy to help them automate the process of monitoring their contact center agent for quality and compliance. The company now has a system that can offer continued improvement in agent quality and productivity while enhancing the customer experience. ...
  • Avaya: Avaya, a global leader in business communications, inherited 880 websites as well as numerous intranets and extranets when it was spun off from Lucent Technologies. The sheer volume and diversity of the sites and the over 500 content creators resulted in inefficient content distribution rife with divergent branding, messaging, and product information. ...
View All ›

Video Showcase

    Interview with Autonomy: Rich Tehrani interviews Simon Hayhurst, SVP of Autonomy

Featured Events

  • Multichannel Analytics with Autonomy Explore: In today's world of constant connectivity there are a variety of direct and indirect channels of communication between an enterprise (or a brand) and its customers. 80% of these valuable interactions are generated in a human-friendly, unstructured format across multiple touchpoints and channels. With this ever growing mountain of information how do you extract the emerging trends and topics of interest to the enterprise? ...
  • SES Chicago 2011: Marketers and SEO professionals attend SES Chicago each year to network and learn about topics such as PPC management, keyword research, SEO, social media, local, mobile, link building, duplicate content, multiple site issues, video optimization, site optimization, usability and more. The conference offers 70+ sessions, intensive training workshops, and an expo floor packed with companies that can help you grow your business. While you're at it, network with peers and leading industry vendors. Programmed by the SES advisory board, you can be assured - SES content really is king! ...
View All ›
 
Share
 
| More
RSS-XML alerts
Print this page
E-mail this page to a friend