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By Greg Bartlett

Almost every driver has received a speeding ticket at one time or another and many people will claim that their ticket was undeserved. Unfortunately, there is not much that you can do to fight a speeding ticket. It is just your word against the police officer’s radar gun. But new GPS technology might just be the solution. By installing a vehicle tracking system in your car you can monitor the speed that you travel after the fact or in real time.

GPS & Radar

Radar guns are not always accurate, but they are always considered accurate by the law enforcement. Since they have to calculate the speed of a vehicle quickly, they can easily make a mistake. As many as one fourth of all speeding tickets could have been given because of a radar gun error. There are a few reasons that radar guns do not work well, beginning with radio frequency interference and mechanical interference as well as mistakes by the police officer. If three black cars zoom by the officer’s car, he might have a difficult time figuring out which one he clocked as speeding, causing him to give the ticket to the wrong person.

Although city governments do not want to admit that they are using faulty radar guns, because it will make it easier for people to fight their speeding tickets, a vehicle tracking system may be enough to prevent you from receiving a ticket. Even if the vehicle tracking system tracks you as exceeding the speed limit, this could still reduce your fine amount if the law enforcement officer clocked you as going faster.

There is one obvious caution about trusting your vehicle tracking system to save you from a speeding ticket. You must be following the speed limit. This fact can trip up those people who regularly go 3-5 miles over the speed limit. If the vehicle tracking system records that you were exceeding the speed limit, you cannot feasibly use that information to get yourself out of a speeding violation.

Although a vehicle tracking system has not yet overturned a speeding violation in court, there is currently a legal battle over this topic going on in California. In the next few weeks it will be up to the California government to determine which technology is more accurate and reliable. This court case could forever change the way people look at speeding tickets.