“Aerial Surveillance”

Hi all. I received a speeding ticket recently on the 401. Apparently, I was clocked going 129 by the OPP plane. The ground officer that stopped me did not give me any information about where or when I was clocked at that speed (it was a 2 hour drive). I'm currently writing my requests for disclosure and discovery and was wondering if there are any special items that I should request.

Further details -- quite honestly, I don't believe that I was going that fast as my GPS and speedometer both warm me when I exceed 120. There were several cars that passed me, one of which was exactly the same model as my car (slightly darker colour). I think they may have identified the wrong car, but I doubt that my arguments will hold in court.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Time = would be the time on the offence notice

Where: would be the location on the offence notice.

The plane does whatever it does, radios to a cruiser on the very next ramp maintain commmunication (plane/cruiser) until the target vehicle is stopped.

You can check out this discussion about AirOPP:

http://www.ontariohighwaytrafficact.com/topic432.html?

If I understand you correctly, the officer in the plane maintains visual contact with my car and voice contact with the ground officer from the time of the violation until the stop is made?

If so, then I would have been clocked somewhere close to the place that they stopped me. That raises an interesting question -- since I believe that the hash markings end long before the place that I was stopped. I'll have to drive the route again to confirm this.

In any case, does anyone have advice for disclosure requests? Do I need to ask for specific information from the officer in the plane? on the ground? what about details of the equipment/calibration/officer training?

pch2004 wrote:If I understand you correctly, the officer in the plane maintains visual contact with my car and voice contact with the ground officer from the time of the violation until the stop is made?

If so, then I would have been clocked somewhere close to the place that they stopped me. That raises an interesting question -- since I believe that the hash markings end long before the place that I was stopped. I'll have to drive the route again to confirm this.

In any case, does anyone have advice for disclosure requests? Do I need to ask for specific information from the officer in the plane? on the ground? what about details of the equipment/calibration/officer training?

www.ticketcombat.com. It's a good site with lots of info.

Great site ticketcombat...lots of useful information.

I sent disclosure and discovery requests last week...I will see what they send back and post for discussion.

Just curious where abouts did this happen?

Usually that plane is on the 400 surprised they were going for the 129.

Usually they bring that out on the long weekends to go after the really fast and aggressive drivers.

It was around Port Hope.

I still haven't received disclosure and my court date is mid-June. They only gave 2 months between the notice of trial and the trial date, so with only 2 weeks to go, I'm waiting. Hopefully it won't show up the day before the trial.

Interesting i have heard them use the plane there.

To bad they spent all that money on a plane.

They could have used that to add extra lanes around the GTA with all the added volume in recent years and improve our roads, fix pot holes, etc.

Let us not forget that an airplane uses up more fuel and produces more greenhouse gas emissions in a week than an average Canadian does in a lifetime!

Question.

Does the Plane actually have some sort of Radar and or Lidar to check speed.

I am going to guess that is a NO.

So they use markings on the road or something.

What if he screwed up or counted them wrong or lost track?

Does the officer down below have to get a reading on a lidar/radar unit?

How are the plane operators trained to read speeds that high up in the sky?

Does the plane use gps coordinates or something on the highway?

I am very interested exactly how the plane gets an accurate reading of speed?

I'd think that they would use video to double-check their finding. I might be wrong though.