A little while ago, I took a road trip with a couple of friends, during which one of them got a speeding ticket in Wyoming. For a variety of reasons (mainly being lazy and unorganized) the ticket never got paid, and the court date was last Friday. What’s going to happen, and will it come back to haunt him? Unpaid tickets go to warrant, but since we live in California, would a warrant for unpaid traffic fines in Wyoming really matter?
They are starting to swap this sort of file nowadays. I seriously doubt Wyoming would send a deputy down to extradite your friend, but when he goes to renew his driver’s license he might find a little note saying he has to clear the Wyoming ticket first.
FWIW, I’ve had an outstanding speeding ticket warrant from New Mexico hanging over my head since 1990. I’ve never heard a peep about it from anybody. 
Here’s my anecdote:
I got a speeding ticket outside of Grosse Tete, LA in 1990. I blew it off, because hell, I was living in Texas and driving on a Nebraska license, so who gives a hoot?
Many months after I blew it off the fine had grown to several hundred dollars, and the state of Louisiana notified the state of Nebraska and the state of Nebraska sent me a notice that they were going to take my driver’s license!
Apparently, Louisiana is a compact (?) state with Nebraska. They share that kind of info.
So blowing it off instead of just paying the fine really screwed me over. I had to pay 300-some-odd dollars instead of 70-something plus I had to go through administrative hell to get a new driver’s license (the cop in LA took my license. LA then sent it to Texas as I had a Texas address, and Texas sent it back to Nebraska as the license had a Nebraska address on it and then it disappeared).
So, I’d wanna find out if Wyoming is going to notify California…
Had a similar incident happen. About 8 years ago I got a ticket out in wisconsin. Going to court to fight it, I was told to pay it or have my liscense susupended in wisconsin. Heck, I figured, how often do I drive in Wisconsin? Never. So I left the ticket unpaid. Well, it came back to bite me because when I went to renew my liscense I was told to get the original ticket in Wisconsin taken care off. I had moved since then and now had to drive all the way back into Wisconsin to take care of the ticket which was only about 150 bucks more then what it was when it was originally issued. Pay the ticket.
Forgot to mention. Since I waited so long, my liscense in Wisconsin actually got revoked. So after I paid the fine for the original ticket, I had to go and reinstate my liscense. Well, after two years, you have to take a road test again. So I had to schedule a road test, passed it, brought it back to the DMV and got my liscense renewed, went back to minnesota and got my new liscense. Fun.
How about parking tickets? I got a parking ticket on a trip to New York City, and now back home in Virginia I may or may not remember to pay it. Does New York get Virginia’s help in enforcing parking tickets? Obviously not in the same class as speeding tickets, but still I would like to know.
The only thing I remember about a crappy docusoup following baillifs in London was one of the bailiffs actually getting a speeding fine - from his holiday in New Zealand, and his first reaction was “Why can’t we do that?!?”
Everywhere I’ve lived, unpaid tickets, whether for parking or moving violations, eventually turn into bench warrants if not paid. You don’t want those things outstanding for the next 50 years.
One of my more unpleasant childhood memories was watching my father being arrested for outstanding bench warrants after a routine traffic stop. They took him downtown, where he was offered the choice of paying all the tickets and penalties on the spot or going to jail.
This is more likely due to the complete inefficiency and ineptitude with which New Mexico conducts its official affairs than any kind of leniency.
Whatever works…ya know?
In many big-city jurisdictions,* parking * tickets are considered *civil * violations. The DMV can hold up your registration renewal, impose fines and penalties and put a boot on your car, even impound it, but they aren’t going to arrest you. But any moving violation is a criminal charge, and when you get the citation you are essentially being released on your own recognizance. If you don’t pay it or go to court your driving privileges in that state are almost always automatically suspended, even if they don’t issue an arrest warrant. Then, down the road, if you are ever stopped in that state again, or if a cop just runs your plates while you’re stopped at a light, you get arrested for driving on a suspended license. And as an out-of-state driver who thumbed his nose at a previous ticket, they will probably take you in and impound your car. Personally, I wouldn’t want to take that chance.
You really, really don’t want to do this. The other state wants you to do this. They thrive on you doing this. Clearing up a mess from a speeding ticket in another state that you don’t pay can easily cost one thousand dollars. It is a criminal violation. You really, really, really don’t want to do this. Plus, when you’re stopped at any time, with this as an open violation, the police will search your car with a fine (read VERY fine) tooth comb. Ohio (with a hurting economy and declining revenue) loves speeding ticket revenue. You may very well have been stopped with those out of state plates shining brightly. They will not forget. They will attempt to extract the highest penalty allowed by law. Wyoming wants that money. They will get it.
FWIW, these are called reciprocity agreements between differing states. My license in PA can be revoked for an unpaid ticket in VA. Also, a moving violation in VA, even if I’ve paid the ticket, may result in assessment of points against my license as if the violation had taken place in PA. There has been a push to get all states on the same page regarding CDLs, as many drivers used to hold multiple licenses in different states owing to numerous violations. That has pretty well been eliminated, so with that infrastructure in place, non CDL operators are a logical jump.
Last year I went to renew my Maryland driver’s license and found that it was held up for a speeding ticket I had gotten in Massachusetts 10 years ago and had ignored all that time.
On the plus side, Massachusetts was very efficient in collecting the fine: I called them from the MVA and they took my credit card on the spot. The downside was that it cost me $170 (which, based on what others here have said, apparently isn’t as bad as it might have been), and I still had to go back to the MVA a week later, after the payment had cleared the computers.
The odd thing is that I had renewed the license at least once since getting the ticket, so this computer connection the states have made is a fairly recent thing. It’s also not universal: I got a ticket in Ohio eight years ago that hasn’t caught up with me. Yet.
So the short answer is, like everyone else has said, pay the ticket now.
Eugene McCarthy once said that “The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency.” So, frankly, I’m a little scared at how efficient these frigging bureaucracies are getting.
In the winter of 1992, I got a speeding ticket in Alabama. When I got back to Georgia, I mailed off a money order to the county court in the county where it happened, and thought no more of it. I allowed my Georgia drivers license to expire in Jan 1993, since I was never driving in those days. In the fall of 1993, when I had occasion to start driving again, I went to renew my license, only to discover that my license had been suspended because of an unpaid ticket in Alabama. By that time, I’d lost the receipt for the money order, so I had to shell out for a new one and pay an additional fine for being late with the payment. I also had to get a letter from the court in Alabama that the fines had been paid before I was able to renew my license.
If you don’t pay it, you can generally expect that the best-case scenario is something similar to mine. Worst case would be that you’d get pulled over for some other reason and the cop would find out during the routine check that you were driving on a suspended license, which could well lead to a trip to jail and the vehicle being impounded (this did happen to a roommate of mine one day – I had to go down and bail him out later that evening).
Used to be you were safe- although you’d have to stay out of that state for ten years or so. Now, as the above posters have said- you are likely in trouble. Try and get it fixed now, I don’t think it is really too late.
Unpaid parking tickets are pretty safe to blow off (when they are in another State).
Yeah, sorry but almost ten years ago we all got stopped for driving snowmobiles on a NY state hwy (I have a PA liscence). I was the only one who produced a liscence and was consequentially the only one who wasn’t ticketed.
So far, nobody (including my wife) has had any trouble with not paying the fine. :rolleyes:
Actually, New York is incredibly aggressive about getting parking tickets paid. They have reciprocity agreements with practically the entire eastern seaboard, and probably some other states, too. If you are in New York, they have a fleet of hungry marshalls and sheriffs towing cars owned by those with overdue tickets - and it typically only takes a couple of days after you’ve passed the towing minimum for them to find you (if you park on the street). They’ll hold up your registration in other states for overdue parking tickets. I don’t think they can influence your diver’s licence, though.
OK, thanks everybody.
I’m glad I asked this, since we’d all assumed that nothing would have come of it provided he didn’t get pulled over in Wyoming again, and since he has no reason to ever go back there, the odds of that are mighty slim. I’ll get on his case to pay it.