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A $44,500 ticket is pretty outrageous, but it’s really bad when you consider that the citation claims the violation lasted for over 1,800 years. That’s right, it claims the person parked in their spot over 1,650 years before cars were invented.
How did that happen? The ticket was supposed to be dated back to 2008, but the officer missed one of those critical zeros, dating the ticket 208. Whoops! Since then everything has been fixed and the guilty party was happy to pay his 100 Euro fine.
Link Via The Consumerist Image Via Superchou [Flickr]
Will Foreman used the power of math to beat speeding tickets before three different judges. The tickets were automatically issued by traffic cameras. Foreman used the photographs themselves to raise a reasonable doubt as to the accuracy of the speed sensors.
The camera company, Optotraffic, uses a sensor that detects any vehicle exceeding the speed limit by 12 or more mph, then takes two photos of it for identification purposes. The photos are mailed to violators, along with a $40 ticket.
For each ticket, Mr. Foreman digitally superimposed the two photos – taken 0.363 seconds apart from a stationary point, according to an Optotraffic time stamp – creating a single photo with two images of the vehicle.
Using the vehicle’s length as a frame of reference, Mr. Foreman then measured its distance traveled in the elapsed time, allowing him to calculate the vehicle’s speed. In every case, he said, the vehicle was not traveling fast enough to get a ticket.
So far the judges have agreed.
A representative for the company that installed the cameras (and which receives a portion the fines they generate) said that the vehicles’ speeds are measure before the pictures are taken. Foreman said he doubted the cars slowed that much afterward, since the pictures do not show brakes lights on. Link -via Fark
(Image credit: Rod Lamkey Jr./The Washington Times)
Lucas Jatobá spent three years living in Barcelona and had the time of his life. Now the Brazilian is moving to Sydney, Australia, and he wanted to do something nice to say goodbye to Barcelona. A Spanish travel website helped him with 250 theater tickets, which he attached to balloons and released over the city. The song is “Change the World” by Canadian singer Jessica Allossery. -Thanks, Lucas!
An Israeli woman paid $32,000 for the entire Business Class of an El Al flight to allow her dog (and an accompanying vet) to fly with her. She told reporters any price was worth it to keep her pet free from the stress of cargo travel:
“All that mattered to me was to have my baby with me during the flight so that I can take care of him.”
El Al told the Haaretz newspaper in Israel it had never had such a request before. “But after the lady explained her special relationship with her dog and expressed her willingness to pay extra in order to fly with him, we agreed.”
Link – via boingboing
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by 
ISO Quality Planning, a company specializing in helping insurance companies identify risk, has compiled a list of the most heavily ticketed vehicles on the road, and lead feet everywhere can check it out.
The group analyzed traffic data on 1.7 million drivers and established the probability of a driver of a given line of vehicles being ticketed. The Hummer and Scion tC dominated the list, receiving 463% and 460% over the average, respectively. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the Jaguar XJ sedan and the Chevrolet Suburban attracted a mere 11% and 16% of expected tickets. Given that both the Hummer and the Jaguar are high-cost vehicles, it flips the idea that a huge price tag automatically means more police attention.
Link - via lifehacker
From the Upcoming Queue, submitted by 
Employees at the Takashimaya department store in Osaka have created four reproductions of world-famous paintings using 320,000 old train tickets obtained from the nearby Nankai Namba station.
