Comment by Brian_K_White
1 month ago
The attitude that ignores the reality that there is no such thing as a perfect measuring instrument...
If you make the law that simplistic, then any good lawyer can void any ticket because no one can actually prove the charge. That will surely be better.
But if the limit is N and the claim is that you did N+10, then it doesn't matter how accurate the measurement is, you definitely did something over N. They don't have to prove something unprovable, they only have to prove that their measurments have always been consistently within a range of error that is nowhere near 10.
Removing some utility for abuse (which could also be targeted/prejudicial/discrimination abuse) is a net positive.
The real world is not as neat as ideals. The real world IS fuzzy, and can not be wished or ignored away.
> But if the limit is N and the claim is that you did N+10, then it doesn't matter how accurate the measurement is, you definitely did something over N.
That isn't correct on a couple of levels. Firstly, the accuracy could be +-11 so the accuracy still matters for working out if something happened. Secondly if the accuracy is +-0.01 then if it clocks you at N+1 then we still know you've broken the law, no argument needed.
Fundamentally you're just arguing that the law is offset by 10. That doesn't really addressed the major issue, which is why offsetting the law by 10 has helped. We may as well offset the law by 0 - then the law could be interpreted by looking up the value in the rulebook instead of having to calculate a different value.
> The real world is not as neat as ideals. The real world IS fuzzy, and can not be wished or ignored away.
Sure, but we may observe that routinely offsetting the value in the law by a constant doesn't change that. In fact it only adds ambiguity because the constant probably isn't written down or consistently determined.