Apparently the "his word against mine" de facto law regarding traffic violations wasn't quite good enough: the Ohio Supreme Court just made it de jure recently by allowing police officers to issue speeding tickets based on visual estimate only.
The real irony here is that in this case the officer estimated the driver was going 73 mph, while the radar said 83 mph. However, since the officer wasn't trained on how to operate a radar the reading was tossed out in court and instead they used his estimate to obtain a conviction, which itself only proved that officers can be as off in their guess as 10 miles per hour. Whether or not this particular officer was trained (he's not a rookie, he's been on the force since 1995) it certainly casts a shadow of doubt on the court's claim that police officers could not possibly be wrong.
Note: edited the link to bring you to the top of the page.
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