[s-cars] NYTimes.com Article: Mr. Fix-It Takes a Speed-Trap Tour

[Joseph Pizzimenti]

And the funniest part of that whole story is that he's
my lawyer.  Guess he's going to raise his rates now.
Crap.  :-)

Joey Oversteer
--- wmahoney at disk.com wrote:
> This article from NYTimes.com
> has been sent to you by wmahoney at disk.com.
>
>
> I dont know if this will get thru, but heres a link
> to an interesting ny times article wrt speed traps.
> Bill m
>
> wmahoney at disk.com
>
>
> Mr. Fix-It Takes a Speed-Trap Tour
>
> March 28, 2003
> By DANA WHITE
>
>
>
>
>
>
> CASEY W. RASKOB III lifts his hand from the steering
> wheel
> of his flannel gray Mercury Mystique and points to a
> ramp
> onto Route 9 about five miles south of the Indian
> Point
> nuclear plant in Westchester County. "Here's a big
> trap
> right here, a really sneaky one," he says. "The
> trees are
> hiding him, but he has a line of sight of cars
> coming down
> the hill."
>
> A few miles farther, Mr. Raskob says: "Look behind
> you. See
> where that red truck is? That's where the cops sit.
> They've
> got a bead on you the whole way." And farther still:
> "This
> right here is a very popular spot. This driveway by
> the
> convent. Very popular."
>
> We are two hours into a driving tour of speed traps
> in the
> New York City area, and Mr. Raskob, 41, a lawyer in
> Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., who specializes in traffic
> law and
> is rather a fanatic on the topic of speed laws (you
> may
> have seen his star turn in the documentary "Speed
> Traps!"
> on the Learning Channel), is still going strong.
>
> While he likes and respects people with badges,
> nothing
> revs his engine like the injustices of speed
> enforcement.
>
> "There's technically speeding, and there's legally
> speeding," he says. "If you're doing 75 on an open
> interstate highway in good conditions in a good car,
> you're
> doing what the system is designed for. But if you
> should be
> unlucky enough to run across a police officer,
> suddenly you
> are speeding."
>
> Anyone who loves and buys fast and powerful cars
> knows the
> frustration - when the road is straight and broad
> and the
> car hums with energy, why stop it from doing what it
> was
> engineered for? But few people take the speed
> obsession as
> far as Mr. Raskob does.
>
> He calls himself a "speed weenie." He has attended
> the Skip
> Barber Racing School and his idea of fun is reading
> laser-gun manuals. He can expound, in great
> technical
> detail, on the difference between a laser jammer and
> a
> radar detector (he contends that both provide a
> false sense
> of security).
>
> In casual conversation, he throws around lots of
> traffic
> enforcement jargon - an appliance user, for example,
> is his
> term for a police officer who sees his radar merely
> as a
> tool for writing tickets, not as the super-cool
> technological toy that it is. And he says he knows
> just
> about every speed trap between New York City and
> Albany.
>
> His definition of a speed trap is broader than the
> old "cop
> lurking behind a billboard" stereotype. If the state
> sets
> the speed limit for a road lower than what 85
> percent of
> drivers customarily drive there (a common highway
> engineering standard), he calls it a trap.
>
> Of course, there are people in law enforcement who
> object
> to the very term "speed trap." Sgt. Robert Hogan,
> traffic
> supervisor for the New York State Police Troop K,
> which
> patrols Westchester, Putnam, Dutchess and Columbia
> Counties, is one of them. "There is no such thing as
> a
> speed trap," he told me a few weeks after my ride
> with Mr.
> Raskob. "We don't entrap people into speeding; they
> do that
> all by themselves."
>
> It's a hard point to deny. But Mr. Raskob, who makes
> his
> living defending people who have been caught driving
> too
> fast, is hardly alone in regarding the sudden,
> surprise
> appearance of radar or laser guns as somewhat
> unsportsmanlike, especially if the police have been
> monitoring speed from a spot they know is not
> clearly
> visible from the road.
>
> Mr. Raskob is a longtime member of the National
> Motorists
> Association, which takes a generally libertarian
> stand on
> many traffic-law issues. This group, based in
> Waunakee,
> Wis., runs the Speed Trap Exchange
> (www.speedtrap.org), a
> Web site where drivers in all 50 states can post
> what they
> view as notorious speed traps and vent to their
> hearts'
> content. (Mr. Raskob's name leads a list on the site
> of New
> York State traffic lawyers.)
>
> As Mr. Raskob sees it, speed traps are an irritating
> reminder of the motorist's lowly spot on the law
> enforcement food chain. "When we're talking about
> speeding
> tickets, you are not the lion." Mr. Raskob said.
> "You want
> to buy the Corvette and think you're the lion, but
> you're
> not. You are the hunted. They are the lions."
>
> But today we are the hunters, two civilians stalking
> troopers with ticket books.
>
> Our speed-trap safari begins at my house in
> Ossining, N.Y.,
> where Mr. Raskob arrives in something of a lather.
> Driving
> south from a court appearance, he has passed a
> big-time
> Troop K sting on the southbound Taconic State
> Parkway, and
> he wants to get back there while it's still in full
> swing.
> We jump into his car, an unassuming 1999 sedan with
> a child
> seat in the back and a radio between the front seats
> that
> picks up the police band. (Mr. Raskob, a ham radio
> enthusiast, also uses it to talk to other radio
> operators
> while he's on the road.)
>
> As Mr. Raskob heads for the Taconic on Route 133, he
> fiddles with the radio's knobs, browsing for police
> chatter. He likes gadgets. The first time he saw an
> officer
> using a laser gun to check speeds, in the early
> 90's, he
> walked up and asked to see it in action. "The cop
> wouldn't
> give me a demo," he says. "It was really annoying."
>
> Almost immediately, he starts ticking off his
> theories on
> how speeding tickets are doled out. The more your
> car
>
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