I worked for a company in Fla, when they hired me the boss was going through the rules and he said, right turn accident, you are automatically terminated per the insurance company, they dont even want to hear what happened, they consider all right turn accidents preventable.

Just a thought....do many of you guys carry a camera ( preferably something like a handycam, or even a digital camera with video ) with you in your trucks ?

I know of a guy who was left wishing he had one....here is his story : it was a brutally cold & nasty winter day, with lots of snow everywhere. He came upon a set of lights, where it was green for him, so, after a cursory scan for cross-traffic, he kept going. Suddenly, out of the blue, he realised that somebody had hit him at the intersection. He got out of the truck, and sure enough, there was this woman in her 20s, her car covered in snow, with just a small section of her windshield showing as she hadn't bothered to clear the rest of the snow from the windshield. She hadn't seen the red light, and had run smack into him.

Needless to say, by the time the cops got there, she had cleared the snow from her car, & squarely blamed him, saying that it was he who had jumped the light !!!

He was left ruing not having had a camera, which would have cleared him instantly.

Almost all cell phones now a days have one built in. My phone has a 2.0mp camera, and does video as well. Most large companies REQUIRE you to have one, and usually keep you stocked with disposables.

some courts do not allow digital cams. as they can be "photo shopped" great to have one for right then but use an "old school" 35mm also. Remember CYA

VERY interesting point and info! I would never have thought of that! I always carry a disposable 35mm with built in flash. Make sure you keep the negatives, as even a REAL photo can be scanned and "shopped."

Not questioning your story (or your friend,) but didn't the cops notice the huge piles of snow abreast of her windshield on either side of her car (after she cleaned it off)??

almost anything that can be done in photo shop can be done in a dark room with 35mm film. a lot police departments use digital camera's. its also very easy to tell if a file has been photo shopped. most courts in fact do allow digital photography as evidence. two cases were the court ruled that digital photography is as admissible as film

State of California vs. Phillip Lee Jackson, 1995

State of Washington vs. Eric Hayden, 1995: A homicide case was taken through a Kelly-Frye hearing in which the defense specifically objected on the grounds that the digital images were manipulated. The court authorized the use of digital imaging and the defendant was found guilty. In 1998 the Appellate Court upheld the case on appeal.

also federal law backs it up.


"Federal Rules of Evidence, Article X (Contents of Writings, Recordings and Photographs), Rule 101(1) defines writings and recordings to include magnetic, mechanical or electronic recordings. Rule 101(3) states that if data are stored in a computer or similar device, any printout or other output readable by sight, shown to reflect the data accurately, is an "original". Rule 101(4) states that a duplicate is a counterpart produced by the same impression as the original…by mechanical or electronic re-recording, … or by other equivalent techniques which accurately reproduces the original. And Rule 103 (Admissibility of Duplicates) states a duplicate is admissible to the same extent as an original unless (1) a genuine question is raised as to the authenticity of the original or (2) in the circumstances it would be unfair to admit the duplicate in lieu of the original. This means a photograph can be stored digitally in a computer, that a digital photograph stored in a computer is considered an original, and any exact copy of the digital photograph is admissible as evidence."

The skill and time required to digitally add snow to someones vehicle would be far beyond the scope of the situation. Even a professional would need a good hour of time to make it look real, the cop would of been there way before that, and I doubt the drive would be sitting in his sleeper modifying his digital photo waiting on the cop.

Digital photos carry a "signature" from the camera, found in the properties of the photo. It describes the type of camera used, the aperture, the f-stop, and can even tell the date and time the photo was taken. Photos edited in Photoshop do not carry this digital signature.

Furthermore, the picture itself can be traced back to the specific digital camera used to take the picture, as each digital camera imprints a unique signature onto the photo itself (via pixel placement). It is very similar to the way a bullet can be traced back to the gun that fired it.

This was exactly my question to him...he reminded me that it was snowing pretty heavily on the day in question. And I did recall that it did indeed snow a lot on that day, since it happened in the city of Edmonton, where I live.