The Laws of Physics Trump Traffic Laws 378
New submitter HeLLFiRe1151 sends this quote from Physics Central:
"Here's a practical application for your physics education: using math to successfully beat a traffic ticket in court. Dmitri Krioukov, a physicist based at the University of California San Diego, did just that to avoid paying a fee for (purportedly) running a stop sign. Krioukov not only proved his innocence, but he also posted a paper detailing his argument online (PDF) on the arXiv server."
I love that conclusion (Score:5, Funny)
As a result of this unfortunate coincidence, the O's perception of reality did not properly re ect reality.
It's too bad that statement cannot be quickly supported in many other cases.
honestly Officer, (Score:5, Funny)
Relative to my car, I was travelling at virtually 0 mph!
Re:Partially Blocked View (Score:5, Funny)
I swear Judge some where in the multiverse I stopped.
Gravity and breasts (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No, you don't know if I was "running a stop sig (Score:5, Funny)
I always get stuck trying to figure out why the triangle has so many sides. It does gives me something to do while I wait for it to turn green.
Re:Gravity and breasts (Score:4, Funny)
I've tried that, but I guess my man-boobs aren't generous enough.
Re:Don't mess with physicists! (Score:5, Funny)
Remind me to do that the next time we are in court.
"lightknight, you've been accused of speeding. How do you plead?"
"Your honour, let's talk firmware. I will show you, as a Computer Scientist, in hexadecimal, where the error in the code of that radar device exists."
"Case dismissed. Now, can you help us with our printer? It keeps printing blank pages."
Re:I was going to try something similar... (Score:3, Funny)
You should have appealed to the newspaper. A headline of "xxx Court claims to be Above the Laws of Physics" would have been entertaining.
His first sentence in the intro (Score:2, Funny)
"It is widely known that an observer measuring the speed of an object passing by, measures not its actual linear velocity by the angular one."
I would have found him guilty based on that sentence alone and fined him for gratuitous use of a comma and a blatant misspelling.
Re:I was going to try something similar... (Score:5, Funny)
Quantum Physics trumps everything (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Quantum Physics trumps everything (Score:4, Funny)
So clearly, the officer is at fault. If he hadn't gone and observed the stop sign, it wouldn't have been there for you to run.
Re:honestly Officer, (Score:5, Funny)
So, wait, are you saying that you didn't even know where you were?
That's reckless driving right there.
Re:go catch real crooks cops (Score:5, Funny)
WTF. That's not true. STOP means stop in the UK. GIVE WAY means yeild.
True, but actual STOP signs are very rare - I can't think of one that I pass regularly (other than on barriers and roadworks where they mean "stop and stay stopped until someone takes the stop sign away"). In the US, equal-priority "4-way stop" junctions are ubiquitous where, in the UK, we'd probably have a roundabout, traffic lights or give one road priority and use "Give Way" signs on the others.
We'd never have "right on red", we drive on the wrong side of the street over here.
I think that maybe, just maybe, the GP actually knew this and thought the audience would be able to translate it into "left-on-red" for UK use. AFAIK in the US it is based on the 37th amendment to the constitution which states that every American citizen shall have the right to scare the bejezus out of Limey tourists on crosswalks (who were looking the wrong way anyway).