Jesus Flippin Criminy. How about some jail time? No fuck that! Hanging’s too good for him!
Get a life, people. Shit happens.
Ya see, people? This is a nice, well crafted response. No snark, no assholishness, just simple advice and anecdotes.
Lighten up. You’ll live longer.
The next exit is 15 miles out of my way. The exit in question *is *my exit.
A four-lane highway but the next exit is 7 miles away? Sounds unusual, but OK.
Traffic court varies a lot depending on your state/district, but where I live (central NC) it is very easy to obtain a “prayer for judgement” if you have a clean record.
The process is:
[ol]
[li]Show up to the courthouse at 8:00 AM or whenever it opens and get in line to talk to the DA.[/li]
[li]Wait forever with a lot of unpleasant and unhappy people.[/li]
[li]Hand the DA your ticket and ask for the prayer for judgement. [/li]
[li]Pay your ticket fine at the register. There is no effect on your insurance so long as you don’t commit another traffic violation in the next year.[/li][/ol]
You could also pay a lawyer $200-300 to do this for you.
Often the DA will reduce the ticket to 9 over in addition to (or instead of) the PFJ. 9 over is fewer points on your license/insurance than 15+ over.
Regarding the part about 2 officers being involved, only the officer that signed the citation is required to be present. He is the responsible issuer.
If it were a larger crime with a more extensive police report that had participation from both officers, then you would have a point. But all this is is a traffic citation.
Especially when you drive like a mope. Our friends and loved ones are out on the same roads your speeding & cutting across multiple lanes on in heavy traffic.
And we’re the assholes, huh?
Think I was snarky? Print off a copy of the explanations you presented in the OP and see how sweet the judge is to you.
How about linking us to a Google map showing where this happened and where there is no exit ramp in 15 miles. I’m sure it exists, I’d just like to have a visual.
See if your jurisdiction will offer a deferment of the ticket. You will still have to pay the fine but normally in a deferrment, as long as you don’t get another ticket within 6 months, the current ticket will not count as a moving violation on your driving record.
Most likely the officer used LIDAR (laser detection). These things are very difficult to disprove in court. Your best bet is to see if the officer doesn’t show up to your case, in which it will normally be dismissed, otherwise, if he’s there, likely you will be determined guilty and have to pay the fine.
Exactly. If you can’t do it safe and legal, go another way.
Can you do defensive driving? I got nailed in town (should have known something was up when the lanes were clear. Copper reduced my speed so I could take a DD course. I’m just out of pocket for the course and court costs; no points and insurance seems to be the same.
If I’d tried to get a court date, I’m sure they would have nailed my ass to the wall. Cop did me a favor; that’s the cost of doing business in the big city…
Thanks all for the helpful advice. I’ll post again and let you know how it went.
To the less-than-helpful:
Normally, I’d just pay the damn ticket. However, I think that the speed was justified in the particular situation and warranted to maintain a safe and defensive perimeter around my car, given the density of traffic on the road. And also given the geometry of area and my route, I had no choice but speed up to safely merge across 3 lanes of traffic. At no point were pkbite’s friends and loved ones in danger, although I *did *aim for his/her dog.
I’m not going after any device maintenance logs, officer training, or any of the obvious excuses that people use to get out of tickets. I was speeding, after all.
If the judge doesn’t feel like this is a good enough excuse, then I’ll pay the fine and take the points. No big fucking deal. I’m exercising my Sixth Amendment rights.
I didn’t ask for anyone to judge whether I was guilty or not, whether I’m a safe driver or not, or whether I run over nuns for fun.
Thank you, have a nice day and switch to decaf.
I understand it is only a traffic citation, but aren’t you still entitled to face your accuser? The guy writing the citation didn’t see what happened. How can he testify as to the speed?
In 28+ years I’ve seen the “guilty with an excuse” argument (which is what you’re proposing) work so rarely I can remember each of them. But if it works for you (meaning a complete dismissal, NOT a reduced charge/fine) then please post it and I’ll be here to eat plenty of much deserved crow.
Knowing what I know from lots of first hand experience, if it were me I wouldn’t admit to doing anything. I’d go after the officers radar gun. I’d subpoena the operators manual under discovery and try to match it’s weaknesses (there are some) to my situation. I’d subpoena the officers training records for such device and try to show he was not proficient in it’s use. I’d try to impeach his testimony as to what he saw. Perhaps with all the traffic he didn’t exactly see what he thinks he saw. I also would be aware that the officer(s) can testify to anything I said at the scene. So if I admitted it to them I’d have to be prepared to have that come up in court. If it were me I would realize that unless it causes a hardship with work/family it is better to fight a ticket than just pay it. Just paying it is an automatic guilty. At least going to court I know I have a bit of a chance. In more heavily populated areas if everyone that got any sort of violation starting as low as a parking ticket plead not guilty and demanded a full trial the system would collapse from sheer volume.
These are just a few things that I would do. I offer you no answers. This is not legal advice, I am not a lawyer.
See, you’re right. I know you’re right. Ignore the naysayers; did you know speed limits are supposed to be the average speed of what 80% of people do on a roadway? The abuse of power by our government is literally incomprehensible. I’ll give you an example. There’s a psuedo-highway near me where the SLOWEST people, the grannies - I’ve stayed behind them just to see how slow before - go 7-10 miles over the absurd 35 mph limit. It’s non residential, it’s a major road with barriers in the middle and guardrails on the side, a straightshot for miles. It should be a limit of 60, but it’s not. People get nailed, but what are you gonna do, drive slow enough to get rear ended? I cross my fingers and drive 55.
But don’t say you’re justified at your hearing. Don’t say you were right, or imply it in any way. Don’t say “but the next exit was far away!” They don’t give two shits. Say you’re sorry, that you’re guilty, that it’s the first and last time you’ve ever done it, mea culpa. Then they’ll knock it down. But saying you were justified - no way. That shit won’t fly.
I’ve only ought one ticket and I won.
I was driving in downtown Minneapolis about 20 years ago, on a road that had been freshly resurfaced with gravel and tar stuff. So there were no lane or road markers on the road surface. There was a large truck parked on the right side, obscuring the road signs and blocking the right lane so it couldn’t be used. I, like several other vehicles, went straight though a left turn only lane, because that was pretty much the only way to go straight.
A cop stood on the other side waving EVERYONE over, and then ticketing us in turn. A total bullshit move, and he was a complete asshole about it. In fact, he physically manhandled the guy behind me (dressed in punk) out of his car and body searched him before getting to me.
So I decided to go into court and fight it.
I tried to get to the County Assistant DA, who was running the court cases for the day, but he wouldn’t hear me and just said they were prosecuting everything to the fullest that day. The courtroom was packed, with a lot of other people who had been pulled over at the same intersection. As luck would have it, I was first up. I was sworn in, and asked to describe what happened on a mapboard. I did so. He asked the Officer if he had anything to add, and he did not. I was pretty straight up and honest, and very detailed. Then the judge declared that the ticket was stayed for one year pending no further offenses. Then he stopped and looked at his docket, and asked how many other people were there for the same offense on the same day. Over a dozen hands went up. He thought about it for a moment and then said that all tickets for this were dismissed.
I walked out as the other people queued up to be dealt with, to the general thanks of the crowd.
I had a very similar “I had to speed up to merge with traffic” ticket about a year ago. I took pics of the scene, prepared a compelling (I thought) argument that I HAD to speed up to merge safely as oncoming traffic was coming up very fast. The judge said he did not need my photos and was familiar with the merge location, and would not even hear my evidence as my decision to speed up was predicated on my decision to jump out in front of the oncoming traffic with too little lead time to speed up at allowable highway speeds vs a big speed burst (72 MPH in a 55 zone). He took off a point , assessed the whole fine, and said (in essence) if I wanted to contest it further I would risk him assessing the full two points, so be grateful and move on. I crumpled like cheap cardboard.
In retrospect I realized my argument was tissue thin, and if that if the they have you dead to rights speeding you’re basically screwed unless there is some extraordinary set of circumstances at play. All you can do is show a copy of clean driving record (mine was) and plead/beg for some points leniency, or hope the policeman does not show. If the policeman was working a trap area (which mine was) where lots of people were doing the same thing I was, the likelihood the policeman will not be there is very low, as they usually arrange the docket so all his cases are there that day.
Bottom line is you may get a point taken off, but your chances for success based on a ‘speeding with explanation’ argument are pretty slim.
The judge threatened you – AFTER he sentenced you – to a greater punishment if you exercised your rights to appeal the case?
Wow. Gonna start a new thread on this one.
Then so be it. Like said before. No big deal. Pay $$ – Traffic School Comedy Club*, and we’re done here.
*not kidding on the traffic school comedy club thing. I heard they’re great!
Never pay a ticket. Never.
Take defensive driving if you can. Burn the ticket off that way. You’re out six hours time, the cost of the course, the court costs, etc., but the payback is that you will get a 10% discount on your insurance premiums which more than repays you.
Of course, the best way is don’t drive like a dick in the first place.
I helped a friend fight and win a traffic ticket in San Diego, CA a few years ago. He was not a native English speaker, so he really needed my help. California has something called ‘trial by declaration’ where you write up your defense and provide pictures by mail. The cop has to do the same, which is a big pain for them, but either way, it avoids you having to miss a day of work to go to traffic court. In my experience, most people are not good writers either, so I figured that might just be enough to prevent the cop from responding in which case we would win by default. They make you go to the court, get a form, and still pay the full fine, which they refund to you if you are declared innocent. But since we did that on our lunch hour, it was no big deal
The basic gist of the ticket was that the speed limit on the street was 45, but he passed a school that had a ‘25 when children are present’ sign. He got pulled over and written up ignoring the school sign. He told me it was a bullshit ticket because there were no children present since the school was out on break, which he knew because his niece went to that school. Well, I wrote all that up, cited all the laws, took pictures of the 45 sign, the ticket indicating he was, in fact, doing the speed limit independent of the issue, pictures of the ‘25 when children are present’ sign, and included a form the school provided that indicated they were on break on the date in question. I also provided the school ID of the niece indicating that she did, indeed, go to the school in question so he would have prior knowledge the school was not in session as he approached it. About the only weakness the case had is that the cop could argue kids were present even though school was out because maybe there were some using the basketball court, etc.
I turned all this in, and a month later, my friend was told he was innocent and got his money back, at which point he took me out to a nice lunch for my help. We never got any explanation as to whether our story was considered better, or whether we won by default because the cop didn’t turn anything in. Either way, it was a win! I figure there is no harm in doing this if your state allows ‘trial by declaration’. It’s far too easy for the cop to just show up in court and fight you on a ticket because it’s easy for them to do, and they can even get overtime. If everyone required the cop to write up an explanation of what happened, the guy would drown in paperwork, which was my thinking.
Unless I missed it, dmatsch didn’t say where he/she’s at. The defensive driving course is fine but not a cure all. For example, in Wisconsin it only knocks 3 points off your record. It does not remove the violation off your record, it still stays there for 5 years for your insurance company to see. Also, you still have to pay the fine and court cost of the ticket. So if you’re in trouble of losing your license by points, it’s good to take the course, but it won’t save your insurance. They’re not fond of clients having to take that course but are fond of jacking up their rates.
Not every state has the defensive driving course option. Mine doesn’t.
As far as I can tell, your best bet in Washington is to request that the ticket be deferred, and then don’t get any more tickets for the next year. You can do this once every seven years. And it still involves paying the ticket, plus an administrative fee, but it doesn’t go on your insurance.