I was pulled over today.

[zamler]

Originally Posted by Acey

Could be any of:

- synchronization with adjacent intersections
- a buffer has been built in at certain intersections where people are consistently disregarding pedestrian timers
- at certain times of day and in certain scenarios, the controller will give additional green time to certain movements to optimize flow

Could be all correct, still renders the timer useless. Make the count down random just as useful.

[Acey]

Originally Posted by zamler

Could be all correct, still renders the timer useless. Make the count down random just as useful.

Well the benefit still remains that as a pedestrian, if you are clear of the intersection once the timer reaches 0 you will be safe. As a driver, the timer is not for you.

In general, the vehicle detectors have "gapped out" and are waiting for the pedestrian clock to hit 0 so the phase can immediately end, but in any other scenario green for vehicles may extend beyond the timer.

[Sliver]

Originally Posted by opendoor

Sure, but an officer being a jerk and a judge basically ignoring your side doesn't change the law.

Here's a thought experiment for you. If you produced dashcam footage that conclusively proved that it would have been unsafe to stop (i.e. the light turned yellow half a second before you entered the intersection) and had a reasonable judge, do you think you still would have been fined? Based on the way you're talking, I'd assume you think you would still have been fined because you're saying the law is quite clear and states that you're breaking the law 100% of the time if you enter on a yellow. I think the opposite, because the law clearly allows exceptions to that rule in those cases.

A dashcam may very well have helped. Yes, that's an easy thought experiment. They didn't exist 20 years ago, mind you.

If you don't have a dashcam and a cop tickets you then you have nothing. I get that you can't see that somehow and I get that you can't acknowledge the exact wording is yellow = stop and it's 100% up to the subjective interpretation of a cop to make that call even though he's in a different vehicle with different angles and we're talking maybe a second or less of possible reaction time considering the light hasn't even turned red, but honestly, I don't need to convince you. I've lived it. Did you enter the intersection while the light was yellow? Yes. Well, that's illegal, go pay your fine.

[Shazam]

Originally Posted by Acey

Well the benefit still remains that as a pedestrian, if you are clear of the intersection once the timer reaches 0 you will be safe. As a driver, the timer is not for you.

I thought it was a challenge.

[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by Sliver

Yeah we fking are. I quoted opendoor's law. It says what I've been saying.

It's illegal to enter an intersection if the light is yellow.

Crystal clear.

Calm your tits, I was speaking broadly and forward-looking, hence the part of the sentence that reads "if we can all agree moving forward".

People on /r/Calgary do it all the time and it's annoying on there, too.

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

I wonder if you could argue the laws of physics take precedence over human laws(since that can't be broken)? You'd then have to show the calculation for your vehicle, stopping distance(at under the speed limit), reaction time etc and could lay out that(in some cases, anyway) the law as written is impossible to follow while obeying the laws of physics. Therefore, the law can't be valid.

I could see that backfiring and turning into a “your vehicle doesn’t seem to be particularly roadworthy” argument. Better would be to calculate it based on police vehicle physics.

[zamler]

Originally Posted by Acey

Well the benefit still remains that as a pedestrian, if you are clear of the intersection once the timer reaches 0 you will be safe. As a driver, the timer is not for you.

It should be, or a timer on the main traffic signal. I find it very useful.

[DownInFlames]

Originally Posted by zamler

It should be, or a timer on the main traffic signal. I find it very useful.

I find the countdowns useful too but there are so many people who still slam on their brakes when it gets to zero and the light turns yellow. Pay attention, strugglers.

[GioforPM]

Originally Posted by zamler

Or maybe the judge was just some guy in a judge costume and not a judge at all.

Well quite often traffic court is heard by a commissioner (JP equivalent) and nt someone technically entitled to be called "Judge". Though there was a huge name change recently and I am not sure what happened in traffic court.

Masters are now "Application Judges" and called "Your Honor" (unlike before).

Former Provincial Court Judges are now "Justices" of the "Alberta Court of Justice" (but still called Your Honour), which confuses them with Court of King's Bench Justices (now just called Justice X, and not My Lord/Lady).

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by Sliver

A dashcam may very well have helped. Yes, that's an easy thought experiment. They didn't exist 20 years ago, mind you.

If you don't have a dashcam and a cop tickets you then you have nothing. I get that you can't see that somehow and I get that you can't acknowledge the exact wording is yellow = stop and it's 100% up to the subjective interpretation of a cop to make that call even though he's in a different vehicle with different angles and we're talking maybe a second or less of possible reaction time considering the light hasn't even turned red, but honestly, I don't need to convince you. I've lived it. Did you enter the intersection while the light was yellow? Yes. Well, that's illegal, go pay your fine.

The bolded applies to basically anything though. If a psychotic cop gives you a ticket for driving on the wrong side of the road when you were driving on the right side, you'd probably lose in court if your testimony is your only proof to the contrary. That doesn't make it illegal to drive on the right side of the road.

A lot of rules in the Traffic Safety Act are laid out where an action is prohibited, except in certain circumstances. So for instance, honking your horn is illegal except in certain situations. It's possible that somewhere, some unlucky guy legitimately honked at another driver and got a ticket for it, but that doesn't mean it's therefore illegal to honk your horn.

[Acey]

Originally Posted by zamler

It should be, or a timer on the main traffic signal. I find it very useful.

It can be useful. Biggest problem with it for Calgary:

Alternatively, intersections with actuated signals utilize vehicle detection and additional timing parameters (minimum green, passage time, maximum green, etc.) so that the green time is allocated in response to calls for service. Typically, the final determination for an actuated signal is made 1 to 4 s (Tarnoff & Parsonson, 1981) before the indication changes (e.g., green to yellow, or red to green), providing a limited interval for the countdown. Therefore, application of the TSCT has the greatest potential for green, yellow, and red indications at fixed-time signals and for the predictable yellow change intervals at actuated signals.

tl;dr: Basically there's 2 types of traffic lights: actuated/semi-actuated (aka "flex" I'll call them) and then "fixed" that are always the same length of green time on each phase. Most of ours in Calgary are flex or semi-flex, so the traffic signal's ability to change timings on the fly and end phases early if there's no cars would make it hard for the timer to make sense.

For example, a side street phase might have a maximum green time of 25 sec but ordinarily there's only 1 or 2 cars waiting so it gaps out after 5 sec of green.

That's why yellow lights exist.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...69847816301292

[pylon]

I would without question follow this up with his superiors....

If you ask any law enforcement official if you should answer any questions on a phone call where the person on the other line is claiming to be a police officer, the standard advice is. "Ask for the officers name/ID #, call the official number/detachment number and ask for that officer." They will transfer you so you know it's a real call.

This officer claiming your wife should be more polite and disclose information to random strangers calling her number looking for you, contradicts that hugely, and acted in an extremely unprofessional manner.

[opendoor]

As to the OP, I'd definitely by annoyed. I'm not even sure what the officer was thinking. The two most likely scenarios of him phoning the registered owner are:

1) He's calling the person driving the car, and it's illegal to answer the phone while driving (unless it's set up to be hands free).

2) He's calling someone and waking them up at 5:30am to hassle them about something they have nothing to do with.

Neither is going to accomplish anything.

[Hot_Flatus]

Originally Posted by TrentCrimmIndependent

Why are they calling your home?

I'm not sure I can side with either party as right or wrong, but the calling of your wife as part of their protocol seems strange. Spouses or children driving a registrant's vehicle is a very common occurrence.

Just pull the vehicle over if there's a perceived issue.

If they're expecting a kind or thoughtful response at 5:30 AM then that's silly, and her "tone" or whatever shouldn't play into whether they pull you over or not.

They're not necessarily in the wrong if they think you're going too fast for the conditions, but adding in the layer about calling your home and your wife's demeanor is unnecessary dressing on top. What exactly are we policing here? Road behavior should be the primary issue of concern, unless there's a reported theft.

But also if you were going 100 on the mark then there's certainly bigger fish to fry as you can watch that road for 10 minutes before some bozo exceeding the limit in poor conditions will come ripping through.

Overall a little eyebrow raising to me, but not seeing a side that's right or wrong.

If it was RCMP I could see the need for a phone call to the number on file as they are alone and often extremely isolated from any backup. The officer was likely merely trying to gauge whether the situation was potentially hostile with a stolen vehicle, or just a guy driving way too fast for the conditions before he engaged by himself.

At any rate, it doesn't really sound like there's much to be overly ticked off at as the guy could have been a real arse and written a big ticket if he wanted to for not driving for the conditions. It's not worth anyone's time to run this up the flag pole when all it amounts to is a minor annoyance.

[Titan2]

Originally Posted by Sliver

Yeah we fking are. I quoted opendoor's law. It says what I've been saying.

It's illegal to enter an intersection if the light is yellow.

Crystal clear.

If you can't safely stop it doesn't matter one iota because the cop can just say it was safe. You have no defense at that point. Nothing. Your word against his (you lose already) and on top of that, you entered an intersection on a yellow, which is illegal.

There's no 10', 20', 30, or one second, two seconds or anything objective you can lean on to make a case it wasn't safe. That safe/unsafe wording is to empower the state to ticket you; not to save you if they want to ticket you lol. That wording allows us to operate and live with the obvious physical impossibility of stopping 1mm before an intersection while doing 80, but if a cop feels like ticketing you he can and you cannot defend yourself. It's indefensible.

You are arguing about evidence. The law as written has two parts: 1. Do not enter on yellow, 2. unless unsafe. The defence to the first part is built into the law in the second part. The cop says it was safe to stop. That is the full evidence against you and they made out the case. The problem is that it puts the onus on the driver to prove that it was unsafe to stop. Was it Fuzz that proposed what needed to be proven to make out the successful defence above? It is accurate. Unfortunately, you don't have the evidence; location at the time it turned yellow, weight of vehicle, slipperiness of the road, actual speed, etc. If you had this evidence, you could have made out an objective defence and been successful. As it is, you didn't have it and you lost. That is how it is supposed to work.

[zamler]

Originally Posted by GioforPM

Former Provincial Court Judges are now "Justices" of the "Alberta Court of Justice" (but still called Your Honour), which confuses them with Court of King's Bench Justices (now just called Justice X, and not My Lord/Lady).

Interesting, I was going to ask about this. I always found "my Lord" thing odd but of course very British.

edit - this thread is getting technical. I like it.

[Hot_Flatus]

Originally Posted by Sliver

A dashcam may very well have helped. Yes, that's an easy thought experiment. They didn't exist 20 years ago, mind you.

If you don't have a dashcam and a cop tickets you then you have nothing. I get that you can't see that somehow and I get that you can't acknowledge the exact wording is yellow = stop and it's 100% up to the subjective interpretation of a cop to make that call even though he's in a different vehicle with different angles and we're talking maybe a second or less of possible reaction time considering the light hasn't even turned red, but honestly, I don't need to convince you. I've lived it. Did you enter the intersection while the light was yellow? Yes. Well, that's illegal, go pay your fine.

If you're approaching an icy intersection like many of us have this week and the choice is to enter through a yellow or slam on the brakes and risk a crash behind you, there is certainly a grey area that is open to interpretation. A good driver needs to make these decisions based on the conditions and what is going on around them.

It doesn't give a person a carte blanche to go around and abuse yellow lights, but just like the OP driving too fast for the conditions, it all needs to be assessed by the driver at that given time. Any decent cop or judge is going to take things like this into account.

[zamler]

Originally Posted by Hot_Flatus

Any decent cop or judge is going to take things like this into account.

There is nothing to take into account if you don't present evidence. Your word is not that.

[GioforPM]

Originally Posted by zamler

Interesting, I was going to ask about this. I always found "my Lord" thing odd but of course very British.

edit - this thread is getting technical. I like it.

I was always taught Sir and Ma'am were safe (I clerked at the Supreme Court and those were fine even with those judges), but I gather they are not any more (too gender specific).

[zamler]

Originally Posted by GioforPM

I was always taught Sir and Ma'am were safe (I clerked at the Supreme Court and those were fine even with those judges), but I gather they are not any more (too gender specific).

I would just say, "my liege".