When Your Car Becomes the Cop: The Future of Speeding Tickets in Arizona

The joy of the open road, especially in Arizona, can sometimes truly be limited to when the road is, in fact, open. I don’t mean to bash ADOT and their seemingly never-ending construction nightmares, but rather the personal hell that is other drivers -especially in this state. Truly, there are wonderful sights in Arizona, but are there any that bring you as much joy every time you see them as a prime stretch of open highway? Your eyes widen, your foot hits the floor, and you’re making the absolute best use of the open highway… that is, until the red and blue lights light up behind you and you find yourself on the receiving end of a speeding ticket.

But what if the police didn’t have to stop you? No, I don’t mean to spark any joy here, but rather the opposite: what if your own car ratted you out? I know snitches get stitches, but your own car? The snitch?! Well, if you’ve been reading the news or checking out the Palestini Law Instagram page, you’re probably aware of a new Ford option coming soon that threatens to change the traffic stop game and alert the authorities when you’re out really “hitting that open road.”

Yes, it’s true that Ford has filed for a patent for an in-car system that would allow the car itself to become the vessel for measuring and reporting the speed of vehicles. And yes, it’s true that these reports will lead to traffic stops. However, it isn’t built to report on the vehicle it’s built into, but rather on other vehicles. The initial headlines that came out with the news were all clickbait - all Ford did was design a radar gun and camera system that can be built into the frontend of the next wave of Ford-based police vehicles, allowing officers to simply switch to a monitoring channel on their in-vehicle display that would capture pictures and videos of anyone speeding near the police vehicle. In essence, the police cruiser becomes a traveling photo-radar booth.

This wouldn’t be the first time this has happened to you, either, especially not in Phoenix. In fact, it was reported that during their beta phase, Waymo vehicles were doing the exact same thing, allegedly as part of the autonomous driving program training, but what all actually became of that data may never be known. As far as anyone knows, Waymo footage was never used during training to issue any citations, but the idea that it could have done so was enough for Ford to really develop the technology.

Here are Palestini Law, we’re all about three things: the joy of the open road, freedom, and justice. So if you find yourself on the end of a high-tech, or even a low-tech, speeding ticket, call us today, where you’ll never deal with an automated system. And, for the record, where we’ll never drive a Ford.