When physicist Dmitri Krioukov was issued with a traffic ticket for running a stop sign that he disagreed with, he chose to argue his point with the power of science.

Rather than engage in a fruitless debate with the officer who claimed that he saw him run a stop sign, Krioukov set to work at bamboozling explaining his way out by means of a complex mathematical proof.

From the Verge:

Krioukov claims that the officer thought he had seen him speeding through the sign because of three factors. First, the officer was viewing Krioukov’s Toyota Yaris at an angle, causing it to appear as though it were speeding up as it approached him and making it look more likely that he had run the sign. Second, his speed when nearing and leaving the sign wasn’t that different from what would have happened if he’d driven straight through: he says that because he had a cold, he sneezed and hit the brake quickly, stopping completely right before the sign and then accelerating quickly afterwards. Third, his tiny Yaris was obscured by another car at the moment it stopped, meaning that the officer didn’t actually see it at the moment it stopped.

Krioukov laid out these details in a paper, which documented the potential speed and acceleration of his car in order to prove that it could have been possible for the officer in question to have confused a fast stop with failing to stop.

Want to check out his proof? He has posted it here [pdf].