UC San Diego physicist, Dmitri Krioukov got ticketed recently for running a stop sign – which isn’t unusual. What is unusual is the fact that, rather than pay the $400 fine and move on, Krioukov wrote a mathematical paper proving that the cop who ticketed him had a “perception of reality that did not properly reflect reality.”

And you thought you’d never get to use fancy math in the real world. The paper was called Proof of Innocence – with the following abstract:

A way to fight your traffic tickets. The paper was awarded a special prize of $400 that the author did not have to pay to the state of California.

Krioukov showed that, due to the position of the officer in question and Krioukov’s car, the car would appear to be speeding up past the stop sign, rather than stopping and re-accelerating.

The paper stressed that the cop’s perception was fully justified, as “a car approaching the intersection with constant linear velocity will rapidly increase in angular velocity from the police officer’s perspective,” which rolls off the tongue way better than “the officer was wrong.”

[Source: Engadget]