Strange Encounter With Law Enforcement

The other day, I'm driving in North Austin, with a car full of expensive guitars. That means that I'm actually doing the speed limit, as I don't want them getting knocked around in transit.

About 100 yards down the road, I see a motorcycle cop lidaring from the side of the road. So I check my speed to make sure everything's okay; I'm around 67mph in a 65 zone, grandma'ing it in the slow lane.

I've got cars in front and in back of me, as people are getting on and off the expressway. The lanes to my left are open and people are racing by at a pretty good pace. The cars ahead of me slow a bit, when they see the cop, and I do too to maintain my following distance. That puts me at around 64mph.

Suddenly, the Valentine1 I have hard-wired to the roof of the car goes off, signaling a lidar hit. I would estimate that I'm about 50 yards from the cop at this point, and I can see that he's aiming in my direction.

My Laser Interceptors (which have saved me too many times to count) remain silent. I'm baffled, as I have them set one more notch higher in sensitivity than stock configuration, and they've never not gone off when I've been lidared.

Oh well, I keep on driving, and the cop swoops in behind me. He pulls me over and issues me a ticket for going 82mph in a 65. Yes, you read that right.

I ask to see the lidar gun, he complies. It's an Ultralyte 20-20, and sure enough, it says 82.3 on the readout. After a brief but polite discussion about the perceived disparity in speed between my speedometer and his gun, he writes me a ticket for 81. And no, there's nothing wrong with my speedometer.

So to recap, I'm driving around 65 in a 65, my Valentine1 goes off, my Laser Interceptors don't, and somehow the cop gets 82 and change out of the encounter.

What happened? Anybody have any ideas, before I fight the sh1t out of this ticket in court? I've never had an experience like this and have no idea what could have happened. It's possible he tagged a car to the left of me in one of the open lanes, but it's my word against his in court.

Sounds like "sweep error" to me especially if your V1 only alerted at the last 50 yards. If your LI is functioning properly, the start-up sound is heard and the sensors are installed properly, you were likely the victim of an error on the part of the LIDAR operator especially if you say you were doing 65-ish.

Cliff

yup, like Cliff said. sounds like a sweep error.. especially since you say your v1 went off which is mounted to the roof. a sweep across the roofline can give you that increase in speed, either that or he clocked the guy behind you shooting just over your roofline and hitting the v1 partially. honestly the only way to defend that might be camera footage.. you should call a lawyer or the court and see if austin pd uses cameras in their laser guns. a friend of mine who was a LEO in austin for a very short period of time told me they can play back what they saw through the laser gun when they clocked you. although i dont see how that is possible.