I used to be just a matter of evidence given by the officer, Mike. The old Tuesday, 5th March at 9.55am I saw Bloggs driving a motor vehicle etc. With speeding it is all calibrated on the radar machine showing speed, time, date.
I don't think too many police would be interested in arguing about whether it was one minute before midnight. The demerit points are an administrative function of the Government Department where the traffic breach is the police action. The police don't work out how many demerit points, they just issue the infringement notices. In fact they don't even do that anymore. It is recorded on the computer in the police car and then generated elsewhere and posted out.
.......the time signal from the GPS. Very accurate those.
Back in the day I used GPS derived UTC time, the atomic clocks in the GPS satellites were accurate to about 20 Nanoseconds. A ground receiver would use Ephemeris correction data to derive time at its location. Essentially, an accuracy of about 90 Nanoseconds before or after UTC Is standard in a device using GPS derived time. Refresh rate of time determination has little effect on a time stamp as it is all statistically derived anyway. I guess Im saying that the time stamped on a speeding ticket would be hard to argue against.
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Iza
Semi-permanent state of being Recreationally Outraged as a defence against boredom during lockdown.
The magistrate may accept the copper's wris****ch but I'm not sure an appeal would.
My many years designing measurement equipment have informed that traceability to national standards is a requirement in most areas and it's not about whether it's a few milliseconds either side of midnight it's about whether you actually have an accurate time standard or not. After all, if you cannot say with certainty whether it's 3.00pm or 3.0001pm them you don't actually know what the time is.
I believe the breathalyser is "deemed" in law to be accurate for exactly this reason - in order that its accuracy cannot be challenged, although it would be lucky to be accurate to better that 20% and that, my friends, commented to me by the man who designed it.
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"I beseech you in the bowels of Christ think it possible you may be mistaken"
Oliver Cromwell, 3rd August 1650 - in a letter to the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland
