“Trying To Ask For Additional Disclosure What Should I Do?”

Yes you should be able to talk to prosecutor before trial. You can always ask the prosecutor if the officer is there or is coming. If officer is not there then you should ask for ticket to be withdrawn.

ottfarmboy wrote:So i will get to speak to the prosecutor before the trial on court date ? or i ask for a drop on the trial ? is there a way to find out if the police officer is attending, if hes absent i the case should be closed ? how do i find out if the officer is coming. thank you

At a bare minimum, the prosecutor will likely ask you how you intend to plead. At that point, you could say something like "Not Guilty, but I'm prepared to plead guilty to a reduced speed of 115." He or she may accept it, may say he or she needs to speak to the police officer, may make a counteroffer or may reject your offer. Many prosecutors are happy to strike deals because they finish the list more quickly. Reducing a speed by 24 km/h is far from easy, but it's worth a shot.

There is no way of knowing in advance whether the officer will be there. These days, they almost never fail to show up. There needs to be a much more pressing matter for an officer not to be there. You should plan on the officer being there.

Zatota wrote:At a bare minimum, the prosecutor will likely ask you how you intend to plead. At that point, you could say something like "Not Guilty, but I'm prepared to plead guilty to a reduced speed of 115." He or she may accept it, may say he or she needs to speak to the police officer, may make a counteroffer or may reject your offer. Many prosecutors are happy to strike deals because they finish the list more quickly. Reducing a speed by 24 km/h is far from easy, but it's worth a shot..

it is not uncommon for Prosecutors in the Northern Ontario courts to almost always run resolutions by the Officer involved before deciding whether or not to accept them. In central and Southern Ontario that is much less common.

OTD Legal wrote:it is not uncommon for Prosecutors in the Northern Ontario courts to almost always run resolutions by the Officer involved before deciding whether or not to accept them. In central and Southern Ontario that is much less common.

I had been charged with driving 100 in an 80 zone (I thought it was 90, but it happens). When I spoke with the prosecutor, I offered to plead guilty to 95. He said he'd check with the officer. He came back a few minutes later and said the officer was only willing to reduce it to 99 (wow...big break!!!). I then asked the prosecutor to ask her again and to tell her that if she said no again, I was prepared to cross-examine her all day and tie her up all day. I said my day was already shot as I'd driving up from the GTA. He told me I couldn't do that. I reminded him I could so long as my questions were relevant and non-repetitive. I also reminded him that because the officer didn't speak French, everything would take longer because of the interpreter. I told him to ensure he explained to the officer that she would be spending the day with me in court. He came back and said the officer would still only go to 99. So I told him to get ready for a long day and to suggest the officer get ready for a long day. Finally, about ten minutes before the trial, the prosecutor said he'd spoken to the officer again and she'd, at last, agreed to 95. She was clearly not happy.

Afterwards, I saw the officer outside. I don't know if she followed me or just happened to be back at her car as I was leaving. She told me it's illegal to threaten a police officer. I said, "I didn't threaten anyone. I made a promise." And I walked away.

You got lucky with the officer. Any of the coppers I know would have said bring it on.....we get paid to be in court, I couldn't give a hoot how long you keep me on the stand and the JPs I know would have shut you down pretty quickly.

My guess is the prosecutor didn't want to stay any longer than necessary and didn't want the first list to run into the second. Perhaps he persuaded her to agree. Either way, I was happy to be out of there.

Advantages of lidar over radar

Radar has wide signal beam divergence, so that an individual vehicle cannot be targeted, requiring significant operator skill, training and certification in order to visually estimate speed so as to locate an offender in a traffic stream, and offenders may use the defence that some other vehicle was offending. Radar will register the speed of any object in its field, for example a tree swaying or an airplane passing overhead.

Lidar has a narrow beam, and easily targets an individual vehicle, thereby eliminating the need for visual estimation, and records an image of the license plate at the same instant as recording the speed violation. Speed estimation takes less than half a second which together with the narrow, targeted beam results in offending vehicles having little warning even when using an evasion device. Lidar can measure the distance between vehicles to detect 'too close' (tailgating) infringements. The speed of a vehicle in the shadow of another vehicle cannot be measured

<source:wiki>

lolwut wrote:

ottfarmboy wrote:Before i got the disclosure, i wanted to fight the ticket by arguing that 1) the speed recorded with the LIDAR was not my speed as there was other cars around me at the time,

Just a quick note, this defence won't likely fly as LIDAR has a very narrow beam. This is in contrast to RADAR where the beam is very wide and it can be difficult to tell which vehicle is returning the speed reading (if there are multiple vehicles in the area)

1- Radar can target an individual vehicle.

2-Radar will not register the speed of "any" object in its field. It most certainly won't pick up a tree swaying.

3-Lidar does not record an image of the licence plate unless that manufacture makes a camera attachment for that particular lidar (not used in Ontario to my knowledge) and it certainly doesn't measure the distance between vehicles. (It will measure the distance to a single vehicle though.

Apparently if it's on wiki it must be true!

Once the ticket is written and served, it is NOT the officers call on how to proceed. It is fully up to the prosecutor. The prosecutor does not need the officers permission to reduce it or withdraw it.

Radar can not target an individual vehicle. The beam is wide and most units now will tell you the speed of the fastest vehicle in the beam and also the speed of the strongest signal in the beam. However it can NOT tell the officer which vehicle is which. The officer must visually guess which vehicle is triggering which speed reading. Obviously if there is only one vehicle on the road, the assumption is that is the vehicle that is triggering the speed reading.

Radar works on doppler shift, so it can measure the speed of anything moving that bounces back a signal. But most radars have a minimum speed they can measure, so the object has to be moving faster than this minimum speed (usually something like 15) AND it has to bounce back a big enough signal to measured. So theoretically it is possible to measure a moving tree (swaying back and forth) but most likely it would not register as the speed would not be high enough and the bounce back signal would be too weak (signal would be dispersed/absorbed by rough surface of tree). Things like planes could definitely be measured, however there is distance limitation to how far away they can be, so this would most likely only happen if there was an airport very close by and planes were taking off and landing.

Lidar, to my knowledge, does not take a picture of the license/target although that could be theoretically possible and maybe there are some models that do that. Lidar measures the distance from the lidar unit to the target only. It can NOT measure the distance between two vehicles. Wiki is wrong.

jsherk wrote:Once the ticket is written and served, it is NOT the officers call on how to proceed. It is fully up to the prosecutor. The prosecutor does not need the officers permission to reduce it or withdraw it.

There's various sources for LIDAR,

not being able to post links (I got told of for that last time)

as below

"The "Distance Between Cars" feature, or DBC, is an optional feature that can be integrated into the firmware capabilities of LTI's Marksman and Ultralyte laser guns. This special operating mode is used to help enforce laws against tailgating by measuring the time and distance between two moving vehicles.

Although DBC technology has been available since 1995, up until recently it has been mostly restricted to foreign markets. However, recently this feature has gained interest in the US, and it is reportedly being used or tested in a number of US jurisdictions, including some areas of Oregon, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Tennessee.

One NHTSA research report describes the basic process required for taking a DBC measurement: "

Decatur wrote:1- Radar can target an individual vehicle.

2-Radar will not register the speed of "any" object in its field. It most certainly won't pick up a tree swaying.

3-Lidar does not record an image of the licence plate unless that manufacture makes a camera attachment for that particular lidar (not used in Ontario to my knowledge) and it certainly doesn't measure the distance between vehicles. (It will measure the distance to a single vehicle though.

Apparently if it's on wiki it must be true!

There's several sites regarding Lidar not just wiki

jsherk wrote:

Lidar, to my knowledge, does not take a picture of the license/target although that could be theoretically possible and maybe there are some models that do that. Lidar measures the distance from the lidar unit to the target only. It can NOT measure the distance between two vehicles. Wiki is wrong.

Well I stand corrected... DBC is an available feature on some LIDAR. Learn something new everyday!