Driver uses his Android phone to beat ticket

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Driver uses his Android phone to beat ticket

A college student has used an app on his Android phone to beat a ticket in traffic court. Sahas Katta was pulled over by local police and given a speeding ticket for going 15 miles over the speed limit. Trouble is, Sahas, wasn’t speeding. But could he prove it? Then he remembered an app he had on this Motorola Droid that could provide the evidence.

Fortunately at the time, Sahas was running a great app from the Android Marketplace called GOOGLE TRACKS. This app uses the GPS and accelerometer in the Droid to measure distance traveled, average speed, average moving speed, and max speed. When he accessed the history tab, the Droid was able to show that Sahas was indeed traveling one mile under the speed limit, and not 15 over. He knew he had the officer dead to rights and decided to fight the ticket. In court, he produced his evidence and got the officer to admit that he hadn’t refreshed his radar gun training, nor when was the last time he had the radar gun properly calibrated. That was all the judge needed to pronounce Sahas “not guilty.”

I gotta get this app!

[via SkatterTech]
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  • Brave Anonymous

    It’s My Tracks not Google Tracks.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=705034 Jeff Simpson

    App is MyTracks

    I wouldn’t count on this working all that well in general. GPS tracks can be faked and there’s really no mechanism in place to prove that it was recorded from the GPS and not an edited data file.

  • Adam

    Not to mention it sounds like the app didn’t get him out of the tkt the cop not being up on his training and not calibrating the radar got him out of the tkt…

    • EricD

      I’m with Adam here; sounds like if you would have just went in and asked for calibration data for the radar you would have beaten this with or without the Android. I guess having the app show you were going under the speed limit flagged Sahas to this conclusion but the ‘App’ didn’t beat a ticket.

      • Me

        Umm both you guys are idiots. The app showed he was one mile an hour under the speed limit which contested the 15 mile an hour overage the cop was reporting.

      • You

        And without a recently calibrated radar gun, the cop can’t prove that the driver was speeding enough to satisfy the traffic judge, hence the driver went free. Sorry, the app had nothing to do with it.

      • ZF

        Hmm good point. Its not like mytracks is just logging to a gps file that could be forged or anything…

      • ZF

        Hmm good point. Its not like mytracks is just logging to a gps file that could be forged or anything…

      • ZF

        Hmm good point. Its not like mytracks is just logging to a gps file that could be forged or anything…

  • Anonymous

    Problem, Officer? Pic related: http://i.imgur.com/Pbc6d.png

  • http://www.google.com/profiles/edsprouse DudeTweetThis

    Well I thought about getting this app, then I remembered I am a speeder. So this would not help me, but it might hurt me. PASS!

  • SteakKnife

    How much did you get paid to make up this story?

  • Anonymous

    Would’ve been easier if the judge just called up Google:

    [Judge]: Query traffic violation on Mr. Sahas Katta, SSN XXX-XX-7532, February 13, 2011.

    [Google]: 19 year old EE major, likes the 49ers and japanese manga, girlfriend with a weakness for Amazonian tulips? 1998 Ford Taurus with outstanding safety belt recall, eastbound on US-85 at 4:13:08 pm? — Naw, he wasn’t speeding.

  • http://www.giridhar.co.in Giridhar

    I guess its the ‘My Tracks” application by “My Tracks team at Google”