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Originally Posted by Woodsy
If you assign hard numbers to the speed limit, with the provision that any offense is tagged to your driving record, then the officer who is writing the ticket has to be radar certified. This training and certification has costs associated with it. We heard testimony in the Senate Transportation Committee hearing from a current NH Law Enforcement Officer. He testified that to be certified to write a radar ticket in NH, you have to have 8 hours of classroom training and another 32 hours of actual radar use. The actual radar use is the killer, because the marine radar gun has to be stationary when in use. Thats 32 hours of an MP officer standing still operating a radar gun just to be able to write a ticket! Then there are the inevitable court costs when the alleged offender contests the speeding ticket. Thats alot of time and alot of money for a very very minimal gain. Where is this money supposed to come from? The version of HB-162 as it was passed by the House, contains no provision for funding whatsoever.
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I keep hearing about the necessary training and added cost of buying radar guns to enforce the speed limit, so I thought I'd do a little research.
The newest Marine Patrol boats were specified to come equipped with Raymarine SL70 Pathfinder Radar displays and Raymarine Radome antennas. Near as I can tell, they do. This hardware gives the operator the ability to track speed, range, and bearing on 10 selected targets, simultaneously, up to 24 (maybe even 48) nautical miles away. The technology that allows this is called MARPA and it is vastly more accurate and effective than a handheld speed radar gun. I doubt much extra training will be required to run the radar set and there is no need at all for speed detection guns. Even at 90 MPH across the broads, they could track a target for many minutes, get a video of the target boat, and make a video of the radar screen. I would not want to fight this technology in court.