Posted on 12/05/2006 5:21:08 AM PST by radar101
December 5, 2006 A Loop 101 photo enforcement case that captured national attention and called into question the accuracy of Scottsdale’s freeway speed cameras won’t ever get its day in court.
Scottsdale and the man accused of traveling a record 147 mph in a 2006 Hyundai Sonata family sedan reached a plea agreement less than a week before the case was to go to trial today.
Lawrence Pargo, 27, of Goodyear, agreed to plead guilty to one count of criminal endangerment, one count of reckless driving and one count of excessive speeding at 102 mph in Scottsdale City Court, according to the terms of a Nov. 29 plea agreement.
The charges, all misdemeanors, will net Pargo 30 days in jail, a $1,239 fine, and one year of probation; it also requires him to complete an aggressive driving program, according to City Prosecutor Caron Close, who said Monday that the court accepted the agreement.
Prosecutors and Pargo agreed to the charges on the basis that he still was responsible for traveling speeds between 105 and 147 mph, according to Close.
“Absolutely, we believe Lawrence Pargo was traveling 147 mph,” Close said. “We didn’t go away from the fact that he was speeding 147 mph. That was the basis for our reckless driving charge.”
Pargo had been clocked traveling faster than 100 mph on the freeway four times the morning of May 21 — 102, 105, 120 and 147 mph. He was arrested on those speed-related charges five days later.
His highest speed triggered contentions from certified Hyundai technicians and performance-car experts who told the Tribune the compact family car of South Korean origin couldn’t go that fast because a federally required speed limiter on the car would’ve capped its top speed at 137 mph. The limiters automatically slow the fuel intake and maintain the near top-rated speed when someone drives a car too fast.
Mike Castillo, certified technician at Larry Miller Hyundai in Peoria, also said that the tires on the car — not rated for 147 mph — would’ve flown apart if the car reached that speed.
Both Castillo and Steve Spence, the managing editor of Car and Driver magazine, had said that the speed sensors positioned along an eightmile stretch of Loop 101 between Scottsdale Road and Shea Boulevard, likely malfunctioned. A six-cylinder Sonata had a top rated speed of 135 to 137 mph, according to www.caranddriver.com.
At the time of his arrest, Pargo, manager of a home for the disabled, told police he was speeding because he didn’t want to be late for work.
Pargo attorney Laura Lehan entered into a plea agreement last week with Scottsdale city prosecutors, who agreed to drop three of four speeding charges.
Lehan entered a not guilty plea on Pargo’s behalf in June and also had requested maintenance records from Redflex Traffic Systems, the city’s photo enforcement vendor, as part of the evidence.
However, Close adamantly said Monday that her team was prepared to prove that the Avis rental car in which Pargo was traveling reached speeds of 147 mph.
“We were completely prepared to go trial and prove that exact fact,” Close said. “We would’ve disagreed with the certified technician. We had people prepared to say that vehicle could’ve gone that fast.”
Jay Heiler, spokesman for Redflex, said Monday a trial would have been “interesting,” but he believed that Pargo was responsible as charged.
Redflex and city officials claim that its speed photo enforcement equipment on Loop 101 is 100 percent accurate.
Heiler said that a speedometer on a Hyundai Sonata goes up to 160 mph and that a Sonata with a 6-cylinder engine could reach 147 mph.
“I think that would’ve been proved beyond a reasonable doubt,” Heiler said.
Phone calls to Pargo and Lehan in the months since Pargo’s arrest went unreturned.
The city’s nine-month freeway photo enforcement program ended October 23, citing 189,881 motorists from all 50 states. Motorists from Phoenix, Scottsdale and Mesa topped the list, respectively, as of June 30, in terms of those most frequently cited. Contact Mike Sakal by email, or phone (480) 970-2324
Well, the car magazine reviewers say that those limiters don't always work - that during testing of some models, they can easily exceed the limit.
What's scary is that they could file THREE speeding charges against him for speeding ONE time.
I wonder what the law actually says -- If I'm robbing a store at 8am, and I'm still robbing the store at 10am, can the police get me for two robberies because it's been more than an hour?
If a police officer follows me speeding for 20 miles, can I get 20 tickets? 40? 80? What has stopped police from giving multiple speeding tickets to just about every speeder, certainly they were speeding for more than an instant, which means there would be two measurable instants where they were speeding.
I think he has aggressive driving down pat.
It's not that complicated. If you rob a convenience store, then another two blocks away, that's two counts of robbery.
What's scary is that there may have been other drivers obeying the speed limits on the same road at the same time as this IDIOT!
Huh?...according to the article he has to take an "aggressive driving course" as part of his sentence. Hells bells, this dude could teach that course, couldn't he?
But what if I take something off of one shelf, and then take something off another shelf?
We have the concept that no matter how many things you take, there's a "boundary" of the "store", and so long as you are in the store, you are robbing ONE store, and get ONE count of robbery.
So what is the "ONE" as it relates to speeding? Is it ONE highway, or ONE mile, or ONE minute, or ONE speed trap? What is the driving equivalent of leaving the one store, and walking into the next store?
That's possible, but I'd be surprised if there were more than a few drivers on that road that were obeying the actual posted speed limit -- there rarely are on highways.
Simply driving fast does not necessarily cause anybody else harm -- the germans manage to do it quite well on the Autoban.
Speeding laws should be enforced, don't get me wrong, but it's a class of laws that don't govern "right and wrong" behavior, but rather circumstantial acts (meaning something is OK in one circumstance, but not in another, in ways that are often unrelated to a recognisable purpose).
I'm afraid you are assuming that the cameras are located so close to one another to make them useless for the purpose they were installed in the first place.
Well, that proves it. They couldn't put that number on the dial unless the car was capable of reaching it.
No, I presume they are spread out up and down the highway, probably more than ten miles apart.
Normally, you might decide to speed, figuring you can drive safely so you aren't hurting anybody, and at worst some cop will catch you and give you a ticket, and then you will probably go the speed limit to avoid a second ticket.
The automated pictures (which I do support, btw) have the effect of "giving you a ticket" without you knowing about it, so that you don't alter your behavior. If the first camera had been a police officer who pulled him over, he wouldn't likely have been caught later speeding again.
My point was that if the police can put a camera every 10 miles and give you a ticket for speeding past each camera, COULD they put a camera every mile and give you 10 times as many tickets? Most people that are speeding are speeding constantly until they see a cop or are caught, so if you probably could catch the same person lots of times.
So what is the law? What is the "violation" of speeding, is it even defined relative to a time period or a distance, or technically are you committing an infinite number of speeding violations whenever you speed?
At night, we would go out and move the hoses very close together and restake them down.
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159 Replies.
I've always wondered if those devices are actually speed sensors or not.
To wit; If they are, wouldn't the fact that different vehicles have different wheelbase measurements skew the data?
Wouldn't the device need to know what model of vehicle just crossed its sensor tubes?
I have always thought these devices were more for gathering traffic volume and flow data. This data is required for use in distributing Federal highway monies to the States.
147 in a Sonata? He should get a medal.
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