Defense against CA 21651(a) "simulated island" traffic violation?

In My Humble Opinion
1

A friend of mine was ticketed this morning in San Diego under circumstances that seemed questionable because of a change to the painting of the road, and the appearance of what looked like a turn lane that was actually a painted “island” with two double yellow lines.

She was driving North on Sports Arena Blvd and was making a left turn into a Starbucks drive-thru. This is an area where (unbelievably) it is the only Starbucks on the road, so it does get a bit crowded. Previously, this had been a single double yellow line with a turn lane that goes into the store fronts in the next complex past the Starbucks. Now it has two sets of double yellow lines that extend out for a distance that look like a dashed turn lane for the Starbucks, when in fact it is considered an ‘island’.

I presume they put this ‘island’ there because they were having issues with people holding up traffic waiting to turn left into the Starbucks driveway (legally) when it was a single double yellow line and they figured rather than put up cones or a no-left turn sign, they would just extend the lines of the turn lane into an island instead.

So, she turned left, at which point two cops jumped out and stopped her along with three other cars that did the same thing, to get into the drive-thru lane. Obviously she is ‘guilty’, but is there an effective defense that can be made against this? The Starbucks people are obviously not fans of the police harassing their customers and while customers turning left is certainly a traffic nuisance when it is crowded, it was not this morning when she made the turn. Is in reasonable to argue “the last time I was here, that extra set of lines didn’t exist, looked like an extension of the turn lane anyway, and seemed to be designed to be deceptive”? Presumably if she had gone up another hundred feet, made a U-turn, and then turned right into the Starbucks driveway, the cops would have been unable to ticket her, so that seems a bit ridiculous. I will be doing a ‘trial by written declaration’ regardless just to make the cop work for the money either way, but surely others have been ticketed under similar circumstances and prevailed. We noticed there is another one of these ‘simulated islands’ by a nearby Jack-in-the-Box as well, which also appears to be a place for cops to hide and ticket people under similar circumstances.

2

legal question, reported for move to IMHO. (more likely to get a response there, anyway)

3

It’s hard for me to picture what you’re describing. Is this what you mean by a “simulated island”? If so, I don’t see any defense; it doesn’t look like a travel lane at all. Maybe your friend was surprised by the sudden appearance of the lines, or didn’t even notice them, but that sort of defense will not hold up in court.

4

Legal questions are best suited to IMHO.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

5

In California double, double yellow lines are considered an island and they are illegal to cross, just as driving over a concrete island is illegal.
I know of no defense, assuming the lines are in fact visible and not obscured by dirt, or faded to the point of not being able to see them.

6

Keeve - that is not how these lines look, but it is hard for me to describe them short of driving there and taking a picture because even the Google Streetview of the area doesn’t show them as they are new.

Rick - Unfortunately, they were not obscured or faded because they were brand new. They were the opposite of that. As I mentioned, there is no questioning whether she was ‘guilty’ because even she said that as she was turning she thought “wait, was that line hatched or solid?” and obviously realized it was solid after she turned into it.

That said, I know there are lots of ‘Ticketbuster’ type services out there that claim they can get your ticket dismissed or reduced. I assume they do this by banking on the laziness of the police and leniency of the judge, plus a good knowledge of what defense work against common traffic violations. I write for a living and have gotten people out of traffic tickets before, but this is a new one for me, and I was curious if anyone had fought this specific vehicle code violation and won with a strategy other than “I used the ‘trial by written declaration’ and the cop never submitted anything on his end so the ticket was dropped”.

7

I lived in that part of San Diego for 20 years, and I was never aware that there was any possible concatenation of circumstances that would lead to one driving north on Sports Arena Blvd, which is an east-west thoroughfare as far as I recall.

Nostalgic noodling notwithstanding, Google Maps informs me that the Starbucks in question is across from In-n-Out, and the strip mall where the Glasshouse 6 used to be, near the corner of Rosecrans, and that’s not a left turn I’d have ever attempted to make even if I did have the legal right-of-way, so I’d say the cops have got your friend dead to rights.

8

From the California Drivers Handbook:

Sounds pretty indefensible. However, “I’m sorry, Your Honor, but they just repainted there, and I wasn’t expecting the change, nor were the three drivers behind me” might work. Once.

9

I don’t understand how two double yellow lines can look like a dashed turn lane. Those two things not looking like each other is the whole basis for the system.

I don’t know how trial by written declaration works, but are you sure you aren’t opening yourself up to some issues as far as the unauthorized practice of law is concerned? You offer your services as a professional writer to people who are defending themselves in legal proceedings?

10

Sorry for the length, but I’m trying to picture this.

Do you mean that there used to be a left turn pocket at that location, and instead of properly removing the pocket and putting in a painted island, they just slapped another double yellow line along the opening to the pocket? Did they remove the thick white line from the right side of the pocket? Did they remove the big white arrow in the lane? Because if that white line is still there, the striping is irregular and ambivalent. If an arrow is still there, the striping is not only ambivalent, but contradictory.

If the white line creating the pocket has been removed, but the sandblasting left a clear indication of where the white line was, that could still be confusing, especially in heavy traffic when a person is travelling a well known road. Adding a sign at the intake to the pocket, blocking entry, or adding diagonal lines to the island area would make the new prohibition more clear.

Or was the median area a double left turn lane, with broken yellow lines on both sides? If they painted over the dashed lines with a solid line, without removing the underlying dashes, the dashes would still be visible as raised areas that cast shadows in the shape of the old dashes. Even without the shadows, the difference may not be sufficient to draw the eye, so that the typical driver will make the turn without noticing the change. This will be especially true if the rest of the lane remains a double left turn lane.*

The smaller change of a yellow line over yellow dashes might be harder to notice than the larger, more confusing change of yellow lines over old left turn pocket. There’s a significant body of work that has resulted in traffic signage and striping rules designed to prevent common driver mis-perceptions. Such a small change is very likely to cause a mis-perception, and probably should not be made on its own, with no other change to draw attention to it.

But to argue that in court, you might need a Traffic Engineer or other traffic expert, which is kind of pricey for a traffic ticket. Oh, and you probably won’t be able to make a case without pictures. Time of day and angle may matter if shadows confuse perception of the striping.

To combat the obviously common mis-perception, no-turn signs that block the turn or painted diagonal lines to draw the eye and make the new prohibition clear would help. Gluing down a line of temporary delineators to block the pocket would help, as wood a line of tire stop blocks (like you see at the front of parking lot spaces).

Traffic stiping and signage needs to take into consideration the behavior of drivers. It sounds like this change in striping did not do this. There are at least four things, low cost things at that, that would have made compliance either more likely or automatic for the vast majority of drivers.** Instead, they chose to use the police to combat the mis-perception. This is not the safest way to add emphasis to a small, unnoticed change. Police are not standard traffic devices. They’re a sign that something has gone wrong.

I don’t know if it’s possible for your friend to fight the ticket, but she can certainly make a complaint to San Diego’s Public Works Department and/or their City Council and ask for any of the above items to be added at those locations. She could take a crack at asking the City to pay the ticket that their striping design caused. She’d probably have a pretty good shot at getting at least the diagonal lines added. She can also write to the local paper or TV news about the problem, possibly even asking others caught by the change to join in.

A striping design that would be perfectly fine on a new street can be a bad design as a change on an existing street if it’s too small a change to be noticed while concentrating on dealing with traffic. I can’t point to a rule or regulation, but it’s bad practice to make a small change without doing something to address the huge weight of habit that the change will be fighting.

  • In fact, if the rest of the lane is a double left turn lane, with only two small sections of no-turn-here, that’s a non-standard lane. If that’s the case, I’d definitely fight the ticket. That would be an unsafe configuration.

**Although the vast majority of drivers would respond to the added emphasis, a few will make the turn anyway. I’d expect the sign and/or the delineators to be knocked over repleatedly for years and I’d expect tire marks on the blocks.

11

Grin! I thought the same thing, until I remembered it makes a bend at the west end to turn north toward I-8 and the bridge over the estuary.

All I want to add is my apology for my city’s cops being perhaps a bit too opportunistic.

I once got caught by Arizona cops, when I made the blunder of turning right on a red light. Legal in CA, not legal in AZ. The cop saw my CA plates and followed me until I blew it. My fault, my bad. But it leaves a nasty taste. We don’t like getting ambushed that way, even when we’re clearly in the wrong.

What happened to the tradition of letting someone off with a warning, if it’s their first offense? Unless Yarster endangered anyone, came really close to causing an accident, maybe forced someone to brake, then it’s only a technical infraction – a victimless crime, so to speak.

A decent cop would pull you over, explain what you did, note on their computer that you have no record of citations, warn you off, and let you go.

Then again, we’re in a budget crisis, and need the outside income… (Sigh…)

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You can try the first excuse and maybe get lucky with a sympathetic judge who will reduce the ticket. The second and third excuses make it sound like your friend doesn’t know the rules of the road and won’t be looked upon favorably.

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For people having trouble picturing this, take a look at Miramar Road in San Diego for a center turn lane. (Here’s a link that may or may not work: https://goo.gl/maps/ixBPn.) It’s essentially an area marked by double double yellow lines, except that the inside line of each pair is dashed instead of solid.

Now, if they suddenly decided to make this a “virtual island”, then I’d expect them to paint hash lines across it (like shown in Keeve’s link above), or put up cones, or something in addition to painting the dashed lines solid. Legally they don’t need to, but confusing drivers on a busy street isn’t a fantastic idea. If the OP’s friend took the day to argue this in court, I could see the judge throwing it out or at least reducing the fine. She should bring pictures of other virtual islands that are more clearly denoted, and also a close estimate of when this change went into effect.

14

Link didn’t work for me…

An island, as you describe, is a “turn lane.” You can move into it, intending to turn across oncoming traffic into a driveway…and you can turn from a driveway into it, intending to merge into traffic.

The dashed-lines change the intent. It’s only a double-double solid line island that is intended to be thought of as a big concrete barrier.

(Er… I think. Every chance I’m wrong, but I’ve been doing it this way for a while…)

I’ve got an example, but Google Maps doesn’t want to zoom in far enough.

I’ll come back later with a cite from the California Drivers’ Handbook.

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Smapti - fine, sue me, it is technically North EAST, eventually going just East as it parallels the 8 and becomes Point Loma Blvd, and yes, it is indeed across from the In N’ Out Burger. Yes, that intersection is busy in the afternoon with everyone going home and backs up, making that left turn hazardous, but in the morning that other side of the street is empty.

**Jimmy Chitwood ** - ‘trial by written declaration’ is a lesser known way to fight tickets in California. It basically means, “Hey, I’m too busy to take off the whole day and miss work to get my day in court. As such, Judge, I will write in my explanation of what happened and the cop can write in his and you decide who is right”. As a strategy, this can be very effective because cops love to show up in court IN PERSON because it gets them off the street and gets them overtime pay, but if they have to write a report up and send it in, its a pain in their ass, and most of them can’t write very well, so many will just let it go and not send in a response at all, in which case you win automatically. And even if they do, and you have a more compelling story, you may still win. Comedian Adam Corolla regularly campaigns on his podcast that everyone who gets a ticket in California should do this to fight the “chickenshit tickets” because if everyone used ‘trial by declaration’ the cops would drown in paperwork and stop the practice of speedtraps and other questionable practices like this. You do not have to be a lawyer to help someone else (like my friend, who is also not a good writer) write up a nice letter to the judge. And worst case scenario is, you waste a stamp, a little bit of time, and get the same judgment you would get anyway (traffic school) if you are found guilty. So, no big deal.

To everyone else, yes she is ‘guilty’ in the very real sense, and the simulated island is not striped. She realized she was committing a traffic offense as she crossed it, but had thought it might be a new turn lane like Greg Charles posted. Was it deceptive? Somewhat. Should she have noticed it? Yes. Did she commit the crime? Yes. But am I going to fight it anyway? Absolutely! I just wanted to know if anyone here had fought a similar ticket like this and been successful using an excuse I haven’t thought of yet.

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Greg Charles: Here is a cite from the California Drivers Handbook. Scroll down to about the middle of the page.

(If what I’m saying is not addressing what you actually meant, my apologies for miscomprehending. I do that a lot.)

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The problem is, the friend is probably more likely to have this happen (this did happen to a friend of mine once, who tried the “the officer who gave you the ticket never shows up, so you win by default” strategy):
“Guilty…oh, and before you think about going to traffic school in order to wipe the ticket from your record, keep in mind that the primary purpose of traffic school is to take the load off of the court system.” Among other things, not only does your friend’s insurance go up, but any chance of an automatic license renewal pretty much goes away as well.

18

California makes it difficult to renew your drivers license if you have a moving violation? That seems unworkable.

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How so? A moving violation = 1 point. It seems simple enough when generating a renewal notice to see if someone has any points or not.

However, I found a “checklist for eligibility for renewal by mail,” and, apparently, if you had a moving violation that was more than two years before your renewal, it does not affect your eligibility. (Any moving violation in the past two years and you have to go to the DMV.)

20

Your friend has two choices: bite the bullet and pay the ticket, or show up in court and contest it.

If she can spare the time, and she’s aggravated enough by this ticket, she should contest it. There have been a few times, in a few different jurisdictions, when either I had the time to spare (violation and court were during the summer, back when I was teaching) or the fine severe enough (~$500) that it was worth missing half a day of work.

And in all cases, I got either a dismissal or a greatly reduced fine - and each time, while I was waiting, I saw a lot of other cases, and even a bad argument usually got some reduction of the fine, while a good one would get dismissal of the charge.

If I were her, I would show up there early on a Sunday morning and take a pic of the simulated island. And if she goes by there regularly and there are a bunch of people pulled over when she passes by, she should pull over nearby and take a pic of the cars pulled over by the cops. She should also take a pic of any signage, or one that shows there isn’t any.

If it turns out that the cops are putting a lot of time into pulling people over for being oblivious to the island, but that there doesn’t seem to have been a similar effort to alert people that the island is there, her argument in court is that she tries to obey the law, but in this instance she was hardly the only one to have missed the memo on what the law required in this situation. Ignorance of the law may be no excuse, but *widespread *ignorance of the law is a systemic failure, not a driver failure.