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#21
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I HAVE NOT tried this, nor has anyone else to my knowledge.
Portrait photographers sometimes use "slave" strobes. These are flashes that fire when the flash attached to the camera fires by just detecting the primary flash. At night, the strobes from the stoplight cameras are certainly bright--bright enough to trip a properly set slave strobe, I believe. So mount one or more really close to the license plate. I don't think this will work in daylight, as all the light from the strobes will be overwhelmed by sunlight. Even if you had a seriously powerful flash on your car, it would be hard to get it to detect the flash (if there even is one) from the camera. So... maybe the 30-.06 idea is better. Or perhaps, now that there are ridiculously cheap R/C aircraft, just buy one for Kamikaze use. Try mounting a dart tip on the front of it to ensure penetration. Just remember that I'm only joking, and the Secretary will disavow knowledge of your activities. DD "DG" > wrote in message oups.com... > Can someone tell me if there is anything that defeats the red light > cameras or speed cameras. I am getting fed up with these stupid camera > tickets that are absolutely unfair. I got one the other day for > driving 4mph above the speed limit. What do they call this safety or > ripping off? I need help. > |
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#22
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y_p_w wrote:
> Scott en Aztl=E1n wrote: > > > On 24 Jan 2005 10:08:24 -0800, "DG" > wrote: > > > > > >>Can someone tell me if there is anything that defeats the red light > >>cameras or speed cameras. > > > > Here's what works in Maryland as long as you do not have a loan on your car. (This won't work if you have a loan because most lenders won't let you title a car in the name of a trust.) First, create a Revocable Living Trust with the Nolo Willmaker Plus software (www.nolo.com). For the name of the trust, use something obscure, like "The Gamma Revocable Living Trust". Don't use your own name as part of the trust name. (It is perfectly legal to name your living trust anything that you want; you don't have to name it using your name.) Make yourself the trustee. Make your wife or best friend the beneficiary (that's the person who gets the car if you die.) The Nolo software explains all this in simple terms. List your cars as being owned by the living trust. Then go to the MVA and have your cars retitled and reregistered under the name of the living trust. Take the title for your car with you. Be sure to take the trust document with you, as the MVA clerk will need to copy a few pages of the trust. The cost to put a car in the trust is $27 per car. There is no transfer tax, since you are transferring the cars to a trust for which you are the trustee. Creating the living trust and putting just your cars in it is not really that difficult. Total time including waiting at the MVA office for this part of the project is about 3 hours. Now you are protected, but you need to use the protection when your car gets a red light ticket. When you get a red light ticket, the defendent will be listed as the name of the trust, for example, "The Gamma Revocable Living Trust". (By the way, the ticket won't be associated with your driver's license number because you'll get a "Z" ID code for your license number which won't correlate with your driver's license number, but that's not even that important.) When you go to court to defend the ticket, the judge will ask you to plead. Don't plead, but instead, simply make the following pretrial motion: "Your honor, I wish to make a pretrial motion. The red light citation is the charging document, and the party listed as the defendent is the Gamma Revocable Living Trust. There is no such person as the Gamma Revocable Living Trust, so I make a motion that the case be dismissed as only a person can be charged." If the judge asks who was driving, just say that you don't know, and you are just appearing because you are the trustee of the trust that owns the car. The judge will then dismiss the case. This works perfectly every time in Maryland. I suspect that it will work virtually everywhere. If enough people do this, they might enhance the system so that the MVA puts the name of the trustee in the registration system so that the trustee can be charged, but that's probably a very, very long way off. =20 Enjoy! |
#23
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One more thing. This technique has a bonus. If you die in a car crash
because you went through a red light, (or, for that matter, if you die due to anything at all), then anything that you listed in the trust (and properly retitled, for those items that are titled, such as cars, bank accounts, and real estate) does not go through probate, which saves your heirs a bunch of money and trouble. I know this sounds like I'm trying to sell the Nolo software, but I'm not, and I don't have anything to do with the Nolo folks. If you want, you can borrow the Nolo trust book from many libraries and write the trust documents yourself based on the samples in the Nolo trust book, but the software really makes creating a trust much easier and faster. You absolutely must have the trust document with you when you go to the MVA in order to prove that the trust exists. Also, you'll need to get the trust notorized after you create it, but that's a simple matter that most banks will do for free for account holders. Also, I've never gotten a camera-based speeding ticket, but I'm pretty sure that camera-based speed tickets will also be addressed to the name of the trust, and you can beat them in court the same way that you can beat red light camera tickets. I suspect this might work for parking tickets, too, but I haven't had any parking tickets since putting my cars in a trust, so I haven't been able to test it. I guess I could get a parking ticket intentionally, but I'll let someone do the testing and post their results. |
#24
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One more item again. Don't show the judge the trust. Don't even take
it to court. A trust is a confidential document. Theoretically, the judge could create a court order to make you show the trust, but there's no way that a judge is going to have someone go home and get the trust document. The fact that your car is titled in the name of the trust is enough proof that it is owned by the trust. However, there might be some judge somewhere with too much time on her hands that would take a look at the trust document if you happened to have it with you in court and then let the prosecutor or cop change the charged party to the name of the trustee. I've never heard of this happening, though. On a few occasions, I've seen judges become momentarily stunned when they get a case where the defendent is a trust, but as long as you continue to insist that the charged party is a trust and there is no such person as "The Gamma Revocable Living Trust" (or whatever), the charges will be promptly dismissed. |
#25
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"Drive Dog" > wrote in message ... > I HAVE NOT tried this, nor has anyone else to my knowledge. > > Portrait photographers sometimes use "slave" strobes. That's really a good idea if the film speed used in the cameras was slower. But they are expecting to take a picture of a car speeding along at 50Mph or whatever with absolutely no blurring of the numbers of the license plate, so they are probably using 1000ASA or even faster, along with a massively cranked up strobe flash lamp. By the time the slave strobe fires the shutter is going to be closed. If you ever do get one of these tickets you will note that they aren't color film and they are extremely grainy. Even more evidence of a massively fast film speed, as photos get more grainy the faster the film speed, and you can maufacture black and white film even faster than color. Ted |
#26
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The authorities in the UK have got around a couple of the snags here.
The cameras don't use film, they're digital, so never run out of film and the captured info is transmitted back to a central server and the fine posted out. No human intervention needed. Markings on the road show up in the photo and therefore prove the speed of the vehicle and whether the camera is working properly or not. The cameras face the front of the vehicle, not the rear, so they can see who is driving at the time of the offence. The camera doesn't use a regular flash it uses infra red. It's a total ball ache. no fun. Use GPS to locate the things (roadangel) and go slower as appropriate, and stop at red lights. m |
#27
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pottsy wrote:
> > The authorities in the UK have got around a couple of the snags here. > > The cameras don't use film, they're digital, so never run out of film and > the captured info is transmitted back to a central server and the fine > posted out. No human intervention needed. Markings on the road show up in > the photo and therefore prove the speed of the vehicle and whether the > camera is working properly or not. > > The cameras face the front of the vehicle, not the rear, so they can see who > is driving at the time of the offence. The camera doesn't use a regular > flash it uses infra red. > > It's a total ball ache. no fun. > > Use GPS to locate the things (roadangel) and go slower as appropriate, and > stop at red lights. > > m I think that the main contention that many people have with red light camera systems isn't the camera, it's the fact that universally the light timing is set up on the intersection to maximize the chance of catching someone running a red light. Turning the yellow time down to the absolute legal minimum duration does not serve any safety purpose whatsoever. In fact, it actually increases the chance of an accident happening at an intersection, yet cities that install these camera systems shorten the light so much as to make almost every yellow into a cause for a panic stop. This is dangerous, as well as being ethically and morally wrong, and only goes to prove that the cities using these systems are only interested in revenue enhancement. JazzMan -- ************************************************** ******** Please reply to jsavage"at"airmail.net. Curse those darned bulk e-mailers! ************************************************** ******** "Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand. It is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy." - Wendell Berry ************************************************** ******** |
#28
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In article >,
pottsy > wrote: >The authorities in the UK have got around a couple of the snags here. > >The cameras don't use film, they're digital, so never run out of film and >the captured info is transmitted back to a central server and the fine >posted out. No human intervention needed. Markings on the road show up in >the photo and therefore prove the speed of the vehicle and whether the >camera is working properly or not. > >The cameras face the front of the vehicle, not the rear, so they can see who >is driving at the time of the offence. The camera doesn't use a regular >flash it uses infra red. > >It's a total ball ache. no fun. Sure it is. You've just suggested a number of methods of defeating it. 1) Markings on the road can be obscured. 2) Plates and windshields can be made to reflect and absorb infrared. The infrared is actually a big help here because you can choose a material which is clear in the visible range and therefore doesn't arouse cops' ire. 3) The slave-flash technique can be used (you just need an IR photosensor instead of a normal one). Since it's taking multiple pictures, you could put in a delay which ruins the second picture even if the flash is too fast for the first. 4) A clear IR filter can be stuck directly on the camera. This will confuse the hell out of the authorities. |
#29
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It's man vs machine gentleman.
I have one question though, if the license plate is sufficient evidence to mail the owner a ticket, then why take a picture of our face? oh wait let me guess...so possible terrorists can be weeded out... seriously, why take a picture of the driver? |
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