Saturday, September 16, 2006

Montreal (Canada) police are investigating a sergeant's (an 11 year veteran) role in a company that helps drivers contest speeding citations resulting from radar. Some question whether it is a conflict of interest for any police officer to have anything to do with any company that contest any traffic tickets.

The police sergeant claims he has followed all rules and regulations. The officer also states "Mistakes can be made every time a radar gun or a laser is used. There are grounds for a challenge in 10 per cent of cases."

I seriously question the 10 percent error rate. In general the error rates, based on my experiences, are either much higher or much lower depending on police department (or even officer). The way it really works is a properly maintained radar that is setup and operated by a highly trained officer almost always gets an accurate measurement. A radar improperly setup (all too common) will seldom (or more often never) get an accurate measurement.

CopRadar