Traffic Offense

Maine’s speed measurement law

Maine’s speed measurement statute creates a rebuttable presumption in a civil speeding case that the driver was travelling at the speed indicated on the device.  This means that although the State has the burden to prove that the driver was indeed speeding, once the police officer testifies that she checked the calibration of the speed measuring device and that she accurately targeted the driver’s car, the statute shifts the burden to the driver to disprove that the driver was travelling at the rate indicated on the device.  In practice, most judges in Maine view this as a very difficult task for the driver. Judges will not normally find in the driver’s favor based on the driver testifying that he was not speeding; that he had his cruise control set at the speed limit; or that his car cannot physically travel at the speed claimed by the officer.

In a criminal speeding case (where the driver is alleged to have travelled 30 m.p.h. or more above the speed limit), the statute does not create a rebuttable presumption, but it would instead create a permissible inference.  That is to say, the jury or judge deciding the criminal case could infer from the fact that the radar device shows that the driver was speeding that the driver was indeed speeding. In a criminal speeding case, the burden does not shift to the driver to disprove that the device accurately reflected the driver’s actual rate of speed.

In Maine the police officer who issues a speeding ticket is not required to show her radar to the driver upon request.  There is, of course, nothing to prevent an officer from agreeing to a driver’s request to see the speed displayed on the radar.  

At Sherman and Worden, we use the police officer as our best witness to help our client rebut the presumption that the radar speed was the client’s actual speed.  In each speeding case we explore whether the police officer made targeting or other errors when using the speed measuring device. Errors such as ambient interference, batching, cosine effect, multi-beam cancellation, pulsating signal amplitude effect, radio frequency interference, reflection and refraction, shadowing, and spill over can each provide the judge with a scientifically based reason to doubt the number displayed on the speed measuring device and to find that the government has failed to prove its speeding case against the driver.