Thanks to the invaluable materials provided by the National Motorists Association, I prepared a variety of approaches to my defense, including the officer's obstructed view, and I nearly drove them nuts trying to figure out how to handle my motion for discovery. But in the end, it all came down to a rather esoteric point of law - the legal definition of a "local street or road."

Section 40802 of the California Vehicle Code requires that when RADAR is used to enforce speed limits, a traffic engineering survey must have been conducted in the last 5 to 7 years, except on "local streets or roads," where no such survey is required.

However, the definition of a local street, and thus the definition of where a traffic engineering survey is required, rests on the designation of that road as such on the federal aid road use maps submitted to the Federal Highway Administration.

ONLY if those maps have NOT been submitted to the FHA, then a local road can be defined as "primarily used for access to abutting residential property, and not more than A) 40' in width, B) 1/2 mile of uninterrupted length, and C) one lane in each direction. [CVC 40802(b)(1)]

The City of San Jose has been submitting these maps to the FHA for nearly two decades, meaning that the width/length/lane definition can't be used in San Jose to establish a road as a "local street or road." However, the City has been "screwing up," to quote the Commissioner, this type of RADAR case for years, by using the width/length/lane definition instead of the federal map definition.

True to tradition, the prosecution made their case using the width/length/lane definition. The Commissioner asked them "Are you sure there's nothing else you want to add to that?" The DA's law student minion and the officer whispered for a few moments, but they didn't catch on.

The Commissioner glanced over at me, sort of looked over the top of his glasses, and said "Do you have anything to say to that?"

When I began to call for dismissal based on the definition, the Commisioner stopped me before I got more than five words out. He told the prosecution about this point of law. He then let them swing a little bit -- the prosecution's law-student intern spent what must have been many painful moments looking for the map, then struggling to find the street on the map.

Finally, the Commissioner showed some mercy, and said "I'm not going to let you rehabilitate your case on the stand."

Since they didn't have proper evidence showing that the road was "local," they could not prove that a survey was not required, and since there was no survey, their case crumbled.

The Commissioner then related that he had, five months ago, spoken to a group of forty individuals associated with the traffic court and warned them about this very issue, but evidently, the message didn't sink in and trickle down. He even warned another prosecution intern about this point at my July 25 motion hearing in this case! The Commissioner essentially made my dismissal motion for me while simultaneously scolding the DA's office for failing to heed his warning on this issue, and then granted the motion.

Yet another speeding ticket victory, thanks to my invaluable education from the NMA!