Business owner casts reasonable doubt on accuracy of speed cameras

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Will Foreman of Oxon Hill chats with Debra Saunders (left) of Temple Hills, Md., outside the Prince George’s County Courthouse in Hyattsville on Wednesday after they both successfully beat their speeding tickets before a judge. Mr. Foreman beat his fifth speeding ticket while Ms. Saunders had her ticket thrown out. (Rod Lamkey Jr./The Washington Times)

Story Topics

• Law_Crime
• Will Foreman
• Optotraffic
• William Adams

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Will Foreman has beaten the speed cameras.

Five times and counting before three different judges, the Prince George’s County business owner has used a computer and a calculation to cast reasonable doubt on the reliability of the soulless traffic enforcers.

After a judge threw out two of his tickets Wednesday, Mr. Foreman said he is confident he has exposed systemic inaccuracies in the systems that generate millions of dollars a year for town, city and county governments.

He wasn’t the only one to employ the defense Wednesday. Two other men were found not guilty of speeding offenses before a Hyattsville District judge during the same court session using the same technique.

“You’ve produced an elegant defense and I’m sufficiently doubtful,” Judge Mark T. O'Brien said to William Adams, after hearing evidence that his Subaru was traveling below the 35-mph limit - and not 50 mph as the ticket indicated.

This is a copy of a composite photo made by Will Foreman from a speed camera on northbound Route 210 at Livingston Road in Forest Heights made on July 22, 2010, showing a truck owned by Mr. Foreman traveling on the road.

The method?

Mr. Foreman, the owner of Eastover Auto Supply in Oxon Hill, examined dozens of citation photos of his company’s trucks that were issued along a camera-monitored stretch of Indian Head Highway his employees frequently travel.

The camera company, Optotraffic, uses a sensor that detects any vehicle exceeding the speed limit by 12 or more mph, then takes two photos of it for identification purposes. The photos are mailed to violators, along with a $40 ticket.

For each ticket, Mr. Foreman digitally superimposed the two photos - taken 0.363 seconds apart from a stationary point, according to an Optotraffic time stamp - creating a single photo with two images of the vehicle.

Using the vehicle’s length as a frame of reference, Mr. Foreman then measured its distance traveled in the elapsed time, allowing him to calculate the vehicle’s speed. In every case, he said, the vehicle was not traveling fast enough to get a ticket.

So far the judges have agreed.

“I’ve never seen this before,” Judge O'Brien said, as he examined a superimposed photo presented by Mr. Adams, who also employed the technique. “How much time did you spend on this?”

Mr. Foreman said he is awaiting trial on about 40 more tickets, all of which he called “bogus.”

Speed cameras “can be good, but not if they’re abused,” he said after the hearing.

The Maryland General Assembly approved speed cameras in 2009 for school and highway-work zones, two years after a pilot program in Montgomery County. Prince George’s officials have long resisted speed cameras, but many municipalities began implementing them in fall 2009.

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