It doesn't matter if you're planning on smoking weed all day and then go running through your neighborhood naked, or if you're going to visit the elderly and then sing prayers at a homeless shelter. You've got to know your rights.
That was the lesson TheCrudMan gave when we were learning the rules of speed enforcement in Virginia. Helped along by reader Trebuchet, TheCrudMan instructed us on the rules of the road for the Golden State and why you being acquainted with the law can be fun and useful.
In California the airplane can't be the only evidence that they have, so I pretty much ignore the airplanes and watch for the cops that they send. They have to clock you using pacing/radar/laser, if they pull you over and all they have is the airplane timing you then that's not enough, so says the law.
Trebuchet replied:
Not true. I argued this point and the judges words were "Son, you know those white lines on the side of the road? Those were placed there by CalTRANS with us in mind. They're calibrated exactly. If you pass those lines in an amount of time that indicates you were speeding and an officer in our Cessna sees you, it's as valid as a LiDAR."Comedy traffic school was fun though.
But TheCrudMan stood firm:
He's wrong. Read the CVC. In fact its those lines that make it a speed trap, and therefore inadmissible: www.dmv.ca.gov Read section 1. And here is where it says that means they can't use it: www.dmv.ca.gov This famously, whether true or not, is in there because they used to get a state senator all the time for speeding on hwy 1 using airplanes, so he changed the law.