Beating A Ticket With Google Maps And Some Free Stolen WiFi

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the thank-you-technology dept

The one traffic ticket I received, many years ago, involved running a stop sign which I didn’t run (I’m one of those annoying folks who believes in complete stops at stop signs, not even rolling stops — and this stop sign had a cop hiding down the street for the previous three months, so I was especially careful there). I went to court to fight it, but it was my word against the cops. In fact, in the description the cop gave to the court, he described how I drove past the sign warning that there was a stop sign ahead — which was impossible, because that sign is actually before the street I had turned from (the street on which I lived). However, the judge took the officer’s word — which is what you’d expect him to do. However, it looks like traffic violators everywhere are getting more tools to fight such misstatements. Boing Boing points to a case in Manhattan where someone used an available WiFi signal to call up Google Maps and show that the road he was on was a two-way road, rather than a one-way road, as the ticketing officer had claimed. Of course, that means the judge had to be convinced that Google Maps accurately showed which roads are one way — but it at least seemed credible. Still, as Mark at Boing Boing notes, the guy in question could, conceivably, now be accused of stealing WiFi.