Technology Used By New Jersey Traffic Cops

If you have received a speeding ticket, chances are, the police officer used some device to measure your driving speed. It is very important to familiarize yourself with the strengths and weaknesses of the device used by the officer, as it may factor into your New Jersey traffic attorney’s strategy for your defense. The three most common devices are radar, laser, and Visual Average Speed Computer And Recorder (VASCAR).

Radar speed guns work by measuring the influence of the Doppler Effect on radio waves. These waves are produced by the gun, bounce off of the first reflective object they contact, and then return to the gun. The change is frequency is used to calculate the speed at which the object was moving.

Laser speed guns work very differently. These guns determine the distance the officer is from a car by shining a beam of infrared light at the vehicle and measures the time it takes for the beam to travel back to the device. The device does this multiple times at an extremely rapid pace (often 100 times in 3/10ths of a second) and uses the changes in distance to calculate the vehicle’s speed.

The most low-tech solution is called VASCAR. To use it, the officer simply times how long it takes for a car to pass a known distance (usually between 2 landmarks) then uses the VASCAR computer to compute the speed.

However, knowing how you got your ticket won’t help you much without an experienced New Jersey traffic attorney to actually construct your defense. For a free consultation with dedicated New Jersey traffic attorney Dan Matrafajlo, simply fill out the form on this page or call (908) 248-4404.