Okay, last week I got my first speeding ticket in all my years of driving. Yes, I was indeed over the limit. I admit that. I am willing to pay the damn bail and go to traffic school. But I must ask out of curiosity: Since they spelled my last name and street name wrong on the citation that was sent in the mail, could I try to fight it (hypothetically) ?
Depends if they got your driver’s license number right.
Generally speaking. No. Though your lawyer may say differently. Typos usually aren’t sufficient cause to pitch a ticket, especially if the officer that issued it, didn’t hand it to you directly. And for all you know, the DMV may have the info wrong on your file, and that being where the pd likely gets their info…there ya have it.
Give it a try I say. I’ve only had one speeding ticket my entire life. When I got it, I didn’t want a tarnished record, or the increased premium on my auto insurance, so I decided to go fight it. Now, I had absolutely nothing going in. I was doing 75ish on the freeway which was 65. I figured I would just say the universal “My odometer was messed up” excuse and see where that got me.
Well, when I went into office with the ticket guy (whatever he’s called) I just stated that I wanted to contest the ticket. He dinked around on his computer for a few minutes and put me on probation. If I got any tickets within a year, the speeding ticket would be put on my record.
The weird thing was he wasn’t even interested in my excuse. He just looked at my record and saw that I had a clean record.
If you have the time to go to court, and don’t mind all the mind numbing waiting, go ahead and fight it.
I got a ticket around 1970 for running a stop sign that got tossed because the cop spelled my name wrong on the ticket.
I almost always go to court. At the minimum the judge will cut the fine down, usually to half.
Of course you can fight it. But can you win?
Here’s an answer straight out of law school: it depends.
I once tried to fight a ticket that had an impossible date on it. The cop had written “Sunday, day 6 (of month)” when Sunday was on the 5th of that month. I challenged the cop on the stand to point out on the court’s wall calendar just what day that was, but the judge wouldn’t allow it.
That was also the judge that said that if the radar gun was pointed at a stop sign, and it read over the speed limit, that stop sign was going to be convicted in his court.
So maybe if you get a judge with more brains than ego, you could win.
Bah. Maybe you could, maybe you couldn’t, but you admittedly broke the law, and knew about the possible consequences beforehand.
Just pay the fine.
Hard to say…the citation notice that came in the mail was apparently transcribed wrong from the handwritten cite I got from Officer Friendly. I believe the DMV has had the correct info all this time. Well, I have till July 14 to figure out what to do. Around here, if you go to traffic court for a day, you can get the transgression wiped away and it won’t affect your DMV point value or your insurance. So I guess I’ll go that way.
I was definitely going 55 in a 35mph zone. In my car, 35mph often feels like I’m crawling, so I tend to speed up a bit without even thinking about it.
I do appreciate all the comments.
Where I live, if I contest a ticket in court and lose, an extra penalty and court costs are added to the ticket. So a $40 ticket can come to $80.
It’s probably smart to get informed on the consequences of losing before you try to fight the ticket.
You’re kidding me… Defending yourself unsuccessfully can get you an extra penalty?? That’s insanity. Wow. Remind me not to move to Montreal
yeah, its called court costs. If you fight the ticket and lose, its assumed you’re wasting their time I guess. Bottom line, you have to pick up the tab for the time they gave you to hear out your excuse.
Court costs in Denver too… $25.
As I understand it (from friends who’ve done this and “won”) the cop has to show up in court as well or otherwise you automatically win. And he has to show up on his day off, b/c obviously court isn’t part of his beat…so you can get a ticket thrown out just by showing up to contest it if the cop fails to show.
A friend of mine also got out of a legit speeding ticket b/c the cop wrote down the wrong car model. Right brand name, wrong model.
So the mis-spellings are worth a shot.
I’d get out of any ticket if I could; I drove a piece of shit car in college and the spedometer genuinely didn’t work and I was going downhill on the interstate at the “flow of traffic” speed and I was the one who got tagged. Speeding? Yeah. Bitter anyway? Yep.
Besides, I have tons of girlfriends who’ve gotten out of tickets because of sob stories or great tits (I’ll admit I got out of one once too–no insurance, no tags, expired license–the works) and most of the guys I know can’t get out of a ticket to save their lives…so if the system ain’t fair why should we be?
My friend Chris got a ticket thrown out because the cop put her sex down as male. Grantd, she’s no girly-girl, but she is still quite clearly female. So (she argued) how many other observations did the cop get wrong?
[Soapbox on]
Wow, this is a really sad thread. To see people trying to use a system to get them out of something they’ve done wrong. (Since the OP was hypothesizing that’s fine).
I can’t believe the lack of responsibility and abuse of the systems, as well as wasting a police officer’s free time to get you out of a fine that you’ve duly earned.
Especially this sentiment:
Shudder.
[Soapbox off]
Wow! Talk about a “Get out of Jail” card… wish it were so here as well. (Here the cop has to show up on demand - but it will count towards his working hours, maybe even as overtime - so fat chance (s)he won’t show… :()
OK - I’ll bite ('cause I can’t resist) - was it a good sob story or great tits?
OK, OK, I get the idea. Sorry. You can stop hitting me now…
Actually managed it once, by being really polite to the officer. Having zero moving violations on my record after over twenty years of driving helped, too…
Dani
Here in Colorado, at least, officers are paid for the time they spend in court, and in most cases, are required to by their departments. They can get in trouble for not showing up in court. I wouldn’t count on this as a defense strategy.
A guy I knew in San Francisco got out of a jaywalking ticket because the cop wrote down that his eyes are brown, and his eyes are blue. He argued in court that if the cop got his eyes wrong, maybe he got the colour of the light wrong. The judge dismissed the case and ordered the cop to get his vision checked :eek:
I had a similar situation once where the police officer wrote the wrong date on the ticket. He caught me speeding on the 16th of the month, and wrote down that it was the 15th. So I decided to take it to court to see if I could get out of it based on the wrong information. When it was my turn to stand before the judge, I explained how I wanted the ticket dismissed because it had the wrong date, and since I only had 30 days after getting the ticket to set a court date (basically a quick arraignment, but I had to go to the court house in person to do it). I said it presented a hardship because I only had 29 days instead of 30. The conversation went something like this:
Judge: “That doesn’t matter. use you were able to make it down to the court house in those 29 days, right?”
Dag : “Uh, well, yes. But I had to take a few hours off of work to do it.”
Judge : “You were able to do it, though. You were not harmed by the lack of the extra day. Now, if you were unable to make it in that time, the court would issue a bench warrant for you to appear. If that happened, then you would have been harmed and you would have a point.”
Dag (thinking quick) : “So if I just ignored the ticket and let you issue a warrant for me to appear, I could get out of the ticket? Honestly Sir, I didn’t think that would be a good idea.”
At that point the judge smiled and dismissed my ticket. I was lucky that time.
By the way, cops do get court time. I’ve had the court call up and change my court time because the officer had to change his schedule. Still, there is always a chance that the officer will not make it to court, which is why I take all my tickets to court. It still sucks though, so I just drive slower now.
That wasn’t quite what I said. I was curious about the whole thing, never having been through this before. I posed it as a hypothetical, since I figured out over the past couple of days that it probably wouldn’t be worth the time and effort and gasoline to go to court and try to get out of it on this technicality. I paid the ticket and the traffic school deal today, online.
I still intend to write to whoever sent the courtesy notice and tell them to get the info corrected, though, since I wouldn’t want it to create a problem.