I got a ticket in the morning at the exact same spot about a week before your friend. Its a nasty trap in my opinion. While I am as guilty as your friend it is still dirty. They just painted those double yellows and instead of posting a sign they just post up there and issue tickets. When i made a left into that parking lot the officer was off his bike standing in the parking lot just pointing at people and lining them up (I was the third car inline). While three or so of us were getting our tickets others made the same violation without being looked out. After receiving the ticket I got my coffee and stepped outside to watch him issue at least ten more tickets. The city must be making a killing there. Its a BS trap! I think my only option will be to try and show up in person, plead guilty, and ask for a reduction in ticket price. Seriously LAME…
Im wondering if the city can be contacted to get the details regarding when they repainted the lines and if in fact they changed it to a double yellow or if the paint was just so warn drivers couldn’t tell it was always a double yellow.
When was that? it’s been legal in every state since 1992, I believe.
So for you potential visitors to our great state, you can turn right on red. Don’t let that stop you from coming. There are, however, plenty of other valid reasons… 
Cool! Obviously, this was before that, but, most certainly, I’d never learned that they’d changed it. Thanks for updating me!
(What’s a couple of decades between neighbors? Have I plugged the Phoenix Zoo lately? Wonderful! I want to go again!)
From the sound of the OP and this post, it appears to have all the same logic as a speed trap, even if it isn’t exactly about speed.
California has an anti-speed trap law. They aren’t allowed. I wonder if the anti-speed-trap law is very specifically about speed or if it is more generally applicable.
If the cops are sitting on that location just pulling people over all day faster than they can even write them up, then there’s an argument that they are just, in effect, speed-trapping. Depending on just how the law is written and just what piece of this the judge is getting, such a defense might fly.
The speed trap law is too specific to apply directly. It specifically addresses speed, and it exempts local streets.
https://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d17/vc40802.htm
So your mother never gave you the if everyone jumped off a bridge would you Talk?
Just because San Diego is full of people that either don’t know the rules of the road or don’t bother to look out at big window on the front of their car for road markings that doesn’t make it a “trap”.
I have never seen a can of yellow paint in the trunk of a police car so they could create a “trap”.
If you really think it’s a trap go talk to the traffic department. I will bet there has been more than one accident at that location which led to the striping.
I ran into one of those in Florida. I turned into a shopping center the wrong way on a one way “street” within the shopping center, and there weren’t any warning signs going my direction other than a white arrow which you can’t see until you pull in. There were two cops there that had already pulled over one person for I assume doing the same thing. Thankfully, though, I didn’t have my registration with me, so to save face they wrote me a ticket for that instead, as I was to believe a moving violation would have been more expensive. I would have fought it (and probably lost because revenue) because I went back and looked for the signage afterward and didn’t find it.
Yes, that’s right, and is what I actually said. However, my point is just that if they suddenly change what’s always been a turn lane into an island, they really should make the marking of it clearer, at least untill people got used to it. If the OP’s friend argued that in court, she might prevail in spite of the strict letter of vehicle code. Of course, she might not.
Yes, very true. One of the options in traffic court is “Guilty, with an explanation.” This very often results in a reduced fine. The judges actually are pretty reasonable blokes.
If someone could document the change in lane paint patterns – “Up until the 14th of May, this was a turn-in lane, and I’ve used it that way since 1994” – a judge would be very likely to show lenience. I have actually seen them throw out tickets entirely on those kinds of grounds.
(I used to date a law student, and court-watching was our idea of a fun date!)
The traffic department, usually a section in Public Works, is where to go if your friend wants to get the striping and signage changed. Evidence that the current striping is not working will help. If that doesn’t work, the next step would be complaining at a City Council or County Board meeting.
A Traffic Engineer is supposed to use their professional judgment, taking typical human behavior into account, when planning infrastructure changes. Using delineators and diagonal striping would be the wise thing to do when making this kind of change. The smaller change is effectively camouflaged and is not being seen by drivers.
This may not be the case. Years back I went to court over a traffic ticket for making an illegal turn, which I had done, but with reason (a cop had someone pulled over in the turn lane, so I turned from the next lane over). The options were “guilty” or “not guilty.” I pled guilty, ready to give my explanation, and was immediately directed (along with everyone else who’d chosen the “guilty” option) to the cashier’s window to pay the fine, without ever seeing the judge. Oops.
There’s an xkcd for everything.
No, I wouldn’t talk; I’d look around to see if there was a reason why they had all jumped off the bridge.
(Hey, it was your punctuation - or rather, lack of it. :D)
If there’s a particular situation where people are unwittingly violating the law in unusual numbers, then maybe the city/county/state/whatever should put more effort into alerting people beforehand rather than catching them afterwards. Because, you know, governments exist to serve the people, and not the other way around. If they prefer catching to alerting, it’s a trap AFAIAC.
We clearly have different definitions of ‘trap.’ (See above.)
And the striping isn’t the problem. The problem is that, for whatever reason, the presence of the striping, and the absence of the left turn lane that was, are failing to register with large numbers of motorists. These largely aren’t scofflaws who are aware that they aren’t supposed to turn left but are doing it anyway.
Think of it as a test of the necessary powers of observation and perception while driving. Failing to observe the actual road conditions in place (clearly demarked “do not enter” paint) and going from memory (“that’s a turn lane, always has been, always will be”) is, IMHO, rightly punishable.
Perhaps the fairness of changing the lane marking without warning is questionable, but if you missed the prominent paint on the pavement, are you so sure you’d notice a sign?
Driving on autopilot is arguably as dangerous as driving distracted. They can result in exactly the same outcome: driving without proper awareness of actual road conditions.
ETA: the argument “Lots of drivers were doing it” only proves that many drivers are bad, which is already amply demonstrated by manifold other examples.
Yeah, but if lots more drivers are bad in one particular place than in the vast majority of other places, doesn’t that suggest that the problem is with the place more than the drivers?
Do the Police and Public Works departments of your town have responsibility to test drivers? Honestly, I’d be surprised if your State DMV decided to cede that responsibility to local government.
Human beings naturally recognize patterns. If a particular street has a left turn lane every day for 30 years, that’s a pattern and people WILL recognize it. To make an unannounced change and then plop a cop there to write tickets is taking inappropriate advantage of our natural tendency to follow patterns.
Sure; and this is one of the ways local governments decide where to make improvements.
When a whole bunch of people have gotten ticketed turning through a “virtual” traffic island, that is often addressed by the city building it up into a real concrete traffic island.
It’s a sad truism, out in the back country, that stop signs are memorials to the deaths of drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians. The county doesn’t have a lot of money, and so uses deaths as one of the ways to determine when an intersection needs its controls upgraded.
Thank you all for the feedback. I drove by the same Starbucks yesterday and the two motorcycle cops were at it again nailing multiple people at a time.
My defense will be using the Trial By Written Declaration and then point out that the “simulated island” is new, and not striped, fitted with flexible poles, ‘no left turn signs’, or other visual cues to alert drivers to its presence. I will then finish it off with an explanation about how she is a safe driver without a ticket in 15 years, and ask for a reduced sentence to a non-moving violation if they feel dismissing the ticket is unreasonable.
Though she is guilty, I will not say those words anywhere in the document, and will roll the dice and take my chances. Worse case, she gets traffic school anyway and we waste a lunch hour getting the forms filled out and turned in. It’s worth the time in my opinion.