By Tim Schewe
It’s a beautiful spring day outside and I don’t feel like writing a serious article for you this morning. I’m going to wander off in another direction and tell you a story about a bright, sunny day beside a B.C. highway where a group of us had set up a laser speed monitoring operation that was keeping us busy. A gentleman with a shiny new combination radar and laser detector on his dash has just been waved over for a ticket.
He demands to know what sort of device had been used to measure his speed because his top of the line $500 device has failed to warn him about us. Not one single blink of a red light nor peep out of the speaker!
Your vehicle’s speed was measured with a Kustom LTI2020 Marksman laser he is told. The device is mounted on that tripod right over there.
The speeding ticket was written and served while the driver fumed about spending a lot of cash on a state of the art detector that completely failed to protect him as the advertising said that it would.
Can you point that thing at my car for me he asked.
Certainly sir was the response and the laser was pointed directly at the driver’s detector. It was a repeat performance, no lights, no sound.
Our colleague waited patiently, sighting through the scope of the laser while the driver tried everything to coax a response from his device. He turned it on and off, pulled the plug and plugged it back in a number of times and even bashed on it with his hand out of frustration.
You guessed it, his traffic enforcement warning device utterly failed to warn him.
“I’m taking this piece of junk back to the business that sold it to me. They had better give me my money back!” With that, we all watched him depart wondering how successful he would be.
Famous last words?
Our colleague turned to the rest of us and completely deadpan said, “He didn’t ask me to push the button….”
Tim Schewe is a retired constable with many years of traffic law enforcement. To comment or learn more, please visit DriveSmartBC.ca
