German Police Stop Man With Mobile Office In Car

PolygamousRanchKid writes "Forget texting while driving. German police say they nabbed a driver who had wired his Ford station wagon with an entire mobile office. Saarland state police said Friday the 35-year-old man was pulled over for doing 130 kph (80 mph) in a 100 kph zone while passing a truck Monday. Built on a wooden frame on his passenger seat they found a laptop on a docking station tilted for easy driver access, a printer, router, wireless internet stick, WLAN antenna, and an inverter to power it all." I've driven some long trips with a similar passenger-seat setup (minus the printer), but of course for use only while stopped. Since the police in this case had no evidence that the rig was being used while driving, the driver was ticketed only for speeding and for having unsecured items. Really, it seems like something that Skymall should offer in neater form; now I regret not picking up a surplus police cruiser computer when they were in stock at the local Goodwill.

Re:Marketing strategy

[icebike]

The funny thing is this "Mobile Office" resembles a lot of US Police squad cars, especially those in larger cities.

Built in computers with direct access to multiple databases, GPS tracking of the car as well as nearby police cars.
automated license plate readers, more radios than you can count, video cameras, and printers for your citation.

The sad part is the cops drive while reading from and typing on these computers.

Re:Not surprising and not news.

[Stephan Schulz]

In Germany, when you are driving a car, you are supposed to be . . . well, driving. And not texting, adjusting your make-up, fixing paper jams or spilling your hot coffee on yourself so that you can sue McDonald's.

Having driven both in Germany and in the US for quite extended distances, there often is a significant difference. Germany has a much higher population density, and that translates to a much higher traffic density. Moreover, the fact that there are different speed limits for different classes of vehicles (80km/h for trucks and most trailers, 100km/h for many buses and some trailers, unlimited or 120km/h for normal cars) leads to frequent lane changes and other manoeuvring. On the US50, I can just put a brick on the accelerometer, tie the wheel, and go to sleep (or email) for half an hour. Driving on the German Autobahn is often (though not always) more like driving in, say, inner-city Boston. If you are not reasonably alert, there is a high chance of an accident.

Re:km/h please!

[MrBeau]

kph is an abbreviation of the unit "kilometer per hour" and the one recommended by most news publishers, e.g. Reuters. km/h is the unit symbol of the unit kph. The symbol would probably have been more appropriate though and I definitely agree that everyone should get rid of non-SI units.

Re:Marketing strategy

[FairAndHateful]

The FBI collected information for a period from January 1960 to September 1962 and found that in American cities deploying both types of vehicles, 65% of the officers killed while on duty killed were in two-officer vehicles while only 35% were in one-officer vehicles. This statistic seems to indicate that the presence of a second officer does not guarantee personal safety. From Here [fcpp.org]

Without knowing the percentages of one and two officer cars and the specifics of their deployment, this statistic indicates nothing. There's simply not enough information. Assuming 1/2 of the cars have a single officer, and 1/2 of the cars have 2 officers, and they are evenly deployed, one could conclude that each officer in a 2 officer car is .833% safer than the officer in a one officer car. That's not the only problem here. Why are we citing a study from 1960 to 1962? Hasn't the nature of crime and the style of officer deployment changed at least a little in the last 50 years?

Re:Serious comment

[Lumpy]

Why? The COPS have that exact same setup and they screw around with the laptop while driving. And I can guarentee that cops are not "expert" drivers that can do that safely.

How about we demand the police stop doing the exact same thing.

Re:Marketing strategy

[Lumpy]

That just tells me that being around cops is dangerous.... So avoid police that are in numbers.

Re:Marketing strategy

[DarwinSurvivor]

Seeing as the 2-officer cars have twice as many officers, I would assume that there would be a higher percentage of deaths in a 2-officer setup. Usually 1 car gets dispatched to a location, if something goes horribly wrong and there's only 1 officer, then only 1 officer can be killed. If there are 2 officers, then you can potentially have 2 officers killed. Another way to look at it is in percentages (which you seem to like). If you have 60 officers and 40 cars, then you have half your cars with 1 officer and half with 2. Now if you were to randomly kill 20 officers, chances are about 2/3 (close to 65%) of them would have been in 2-officer situations while 1/3 (close to 35%) would have been in 1-officer situations.

Re:Marketing strategy

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I really the only one that considered the possibility that there's fewer deaths cause single officers are more likely to act more carefully?

Re:Serious comment

[digitallife]

I have 3 times actually seen a cop driving in a car talking on their cell phone, despite a law here banning using a cell while driving. I even managed to get a video of it one of the times. I think the reason respect for cops has decreased so much over the last couple decades is that people are realizing they are hypocritical, power drunk assholes, and not just a few 'bad apples, but the majority of them.

Re:Serious comment

[Calydor]

It is simply an image of how the line of thought for police officers has become, "Oh hey, I am the law!"

Power drunk for talking on a cell phone while driving, no. Doesn't change the fact that it shows a blatant disregard for the very same rules he'd pull someone else over for violating.