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Originally Posted by Acres per Second
The third is a recollection of a fellow race car driver who told me "Cops can't use radar in the rain".
(It's true: Radar returns very poor signals in the rain, and is a good defense in court...
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Sorry, cops can and indeed use traffic radar successfully in the rain, sleet, snow & gloom of night....
The only effect heavy rain, snow and sometimes fog have is attenuating the overall range distance of a given device. However, the attenuation or scattering caused by these effects are usually directly proportional to the actual sight distance that the radar operator can observe the offender anyway.
The radar operator can also simulate this same effect, usually in heavy traffic conditions where he wants to nullify strong and possible interfering signals from great distances, by turning down the radar's gain control manually (the gain control referenced here attenuates received signals, not transmit output power).
I will remind the reader that in court, the testifying officer must be able to articulate that the dispalyed reading on the radar unit employed correlated directly with his actual observations of the target he believed the radar to be tracking. Furthermore, under New Hampshire's prima facie speed laws, the officer must also be able to convince the court that the observed speed was not reasonable or prudent given the prevailing conditions at the time of the stop.
When you receive your next speeding summons in New Hampshire, a close reading of the complaint will state the following:
...at a speed greater than was reasonable and prudent under conditions prevailing, to wit, at a rate of ____ m.p.h., the prima facie lawful speed limit at the time and place of violation being ____ m.p.h. Contrary to RSA 265:60...
Quite frankly, the reason you may see less speed enforcement (along with any other type of enforcement) in heavy weather is two-fold, but both having to do more with human nature rather than equipment malfunction. First, most people (except in fog, which is a whole other story) tend to slow down in or be a little more cautious in hazardous conditions. Second, it usually has to be a grievous violation to stand outdside in heavy weather and issue a citation (although weather seems to have no effect on some I know in the field)...
Finally, the only way that rain could successfully be used in the argument you suppose is if the offender could convince the court that the weather was so heavy that the issuing officer could not have possibly been able to visually correlate target speed within the sight distances testified to in court. And if the officer cannot articulate that he indeed could, then the defendant deserves to prevail.
That said, Cops can and indeed successfully employ "radar in the rain" (at least, that's what a "friend" told me
).
Merry Christmas,
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