Originally Posted by
base2
Lol!
I wonder what Colorado statute requires bicycles be equipped with a speedometer & then defines the accuracy of the installed speedometer.
On a Federal level, (only because I have a CDL) commercial vehicles are required to have a speedometer installed and it's accuracy is required to be within 6 miles per hour at 60. So if you were wondering why no one ever gets a ticket for only going 5 over, now you know. 5 over could still yield a legal under indication as defined by law.
Denver is going to have a tough go with the retro-fit legislation and the redefining of bike path/park paths as "roadways," for the "legal rights & responsibilities" clause of the driving code to apply. But whatever...
Good luck with that.
Police Radar units can be and often are 30% off from accurate. Do this in broadcasting with AM and FM commercial transmitters, the risk of considerable Federal Communications Commission fines is very high. AM transmitters which are more than 10 Kilohertz off are not meeting standards. In my profession, if it is not calibrated and maintained, it is not accurate. Therefore it can't be relied on. Test and measurement equipment must be periodically be calibrated by certified laboratories traceable to NIST. Or it is not accurate, and not relevant for maintaining the equipment. My turntables which play my records are accurate to .1 of 1% always, or it's repaired or replaced (and my criteria are stricter). If a Police Officer runs radar, he should be required to pass an FCC General Radiotelephone license exam, with a Radar endorsement, and know how to use his radar within those rules. Or it is a joke (and sadly judges don't get why, electronic equipment is less accurate, less dependable when it's electronic components age and drift out of tolerances). Consider these situations. Time to hold law enforcement to these criteria on speed enforcement. And they need to know as much about their radar unit, and repairing it and keeping it accurate, as I do the equipment I repair and maintain. This is my perspective as a broadcast engineer (and cyclist for many years and still active in Velo and in broadcast engineering). Technology must be calibrated and accurate, and verified against laboratory references, or it's an inaccurate joke.