Big Brother and his ticket book

[Joetech]

This took place in Northern California I-5

So I just finished repairing a customers company vehicle and took it for an extended test drive. After driving around for a while I merged onto I-5 north and was planing on getting off at the next exit a few miles up. The traffic was very light that morning, I accelerated to 75 mph (speed limit 70) and set the cruise control. As i was driving i saw a patrol car travailing southbound I-5 coming at me. I kept my speed the same thinking a few mph over wasn't of concern. Sure enough I looked in the mirror and saw the car pull over, cross the median and come up behind me Very fast with the red and blues on. He came up to the window and said "the reason i stopped you was for your speeding" at that point i asked "how fast?" he stated "85 mph". I was very angry, i could see he was going to give me a ticket so i said nothing took my ticket and went back to work.

22356 (B)VC speeding

speed approx 85, max speed 70.

So my question is,
while I was looking at the ticket i noticed a box that was blank, it said "Radar/Lidar Unit/Patrol Vehicle No., Does this mean anything?
I've been trying to figure out how he thought that I was going 85!

Also, I would like to file trial by declaration but I see that I have to pay the fine when I do that, my problem is my court date is 12-22-08 and I can't afford to pay it until the 26th so I am going to have to get an extension. So could I still file TBD after my extension?

Any input would be a big help, Thanks

 

[Maestro64]

he is guesstimating...

If there were no other cars around you he had no relative reference to compare your speed to another cars speed. Just looking a car coming straight on is very hard to determine speed with a great level of accuracy. However seeing it relative to other cars you can get pretty close if you assume most car are doing about the speed limit. They can tell with in 5 MPH of another car. So if he did not use radar and in CA moving radar is allowed so he could have been using it but made no mention of it on the ticket then you can probably fight and win if you know what to do.

However in CA visual estimate is all that is required to sustain a conviction so you have to be able to challenge if ability to make a accurate visual estimate. It can be done since most times they do not do it correctly.