Cosine Effect, Math Wiazrds - (Speeding Ticket)

[Richard Beels]

Your problem was in your first sentence...  "ohio"  :-(

I will die a happy man if I never set foot (or wheel) in that state
again.  In the last 14 years, I must have driven the turnpike from Toledo
to Youngstown a few hundred times.  I take not a small amount of pride in
the fact that I've never gotten a ticked in ohio.  One small victory for
me... :-)

At 22:01 12/05/2001,  Eric_R_Kissell at email.whirlpool.com was inspired to say:

>I tried a somewhat analytical approach once in a courtroom in Ohio. I had
>been ticketed for 93 mph in a 55 zone by a State Trooper on a county road.
>I was sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that the maximum speed I could have
>been driving was maybe 70 mph and I doubted that it was over 65 mph. Why
>was I so sure I was not travelling 93 mph? Well, I was driving a VW Rabbit
>with whatever puny engine it had been blessed with - a 1.6 liter gasoline I
>believe. Furthermore, there were 4 passengers in the car with a combined
>weight of around 760 lb and about 200 lb of luggage in the trunk. We
>encountered the radar in a moving patrol car travelling the opposite
>direction as we crested a long grade that the old Rabbit found challenging
>with a single passenger, let alone the heavy load we had that afternoon.
>
>So, I appeared in court armed with the circumstances of my story, a
>photocopy of a Car and Driver road test on a VW Rabbit similar to mine that
>showed the best C&D could do was a top speed of 91 mph on a flat closed
>track with a professional driver, and new knowledge about dynamics fresh
>from my recently completed second year of mechanical engineering school.
>
>To make a long story short the honorable judge suggested that I had a bad
>attitude and added mandatory attendance of a defensive driving course to my
>already sizable monetary fine. I never did figure out why, if they believed
>that I was somehow actually travelling 93 mph in a 55 zone, it did not
>immediately qualify as criminal recklessnes with the associated license
>suspension and other ramifications. I did not ask.


Cheers!