ok - I probably shouldn’t be doing this, but I am going to give this one last try. Really, I have no beef with anyone in this thread and I don’t want it to become a trainwreck. I try to avoid wrecks 
I am going to try to address a few questions, please forgive my crappy quoting abilities.
"Apparently she’s gone. All she really had to do to quiet the jerks was say, “You know, I know it’s my fault. There were mitigating circumstances. Will that help? What can I do to reduce my expenses?”
ok - I really feel like this is what I have been saying all along. I went back and re-read this whole thread after taking a break and I see several instances where I point out my own responsibility here. Yes, I am trying to maybe get my ticket reduced and not have to pay my deductible, but that is not the same thing as saying I have no responsibility. I think maybe people are confusing me trying to get a ticket reduced and getting a deductible waived as denying fault. I don’t see it that way - guilty people get fines reduced all the time. I am just trying to consider how my insurance and a judge might see this. This was probably a bad idea to introduce since no one here is an agent or a judge (unless I missed something in this thread). Thankfully I don’t have to rely on the mercy of those here because I would not stand a chance!
But I have been trying to avoid the whole “who is at fault here” issue, because:
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It really does not matter who is at fault in the general sense of the word. It only matters what the judge thinks and what my insurance agent thinks. Both have been known to take many things into consideration besides “did you actually slide down that hill yourself, you and no one else hit the other car” - I said in the OP that I did not dispute that I slid down the hill and hit someone. I don’t see how that is construed as blaming anyone else. I am just trying to gather info about how a judge / insurance agent might interpret my ticket, and what my ticket wording even meant.
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I was trying to avoid the thread taking this sidetrack in the first place, which is why I did not start an IMHO thread asking “am I at fault here in this accident?” I honestly hesitated posting this thread in the first place, because I was afraid of this kind of response. Not that people would think I was at fault, but that ‘fault’ would become the primary issue of the thread when I really didn’t care about that. I am not sorry I did though, as this thread has been 90% helpful (and thank you to all those who have given me real answers)
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My question in this thread was really to find out what my ticket was for. I got sidetracked from there.
as for this:
“we woke up to find several parked cars clustered at the bottom of the hill - they had slid down overnight.”
“Somehow I doubt that is the case.”
I mean exactly what I said here. Twice in the past 3 winters, there have been instances where parked cars (yes, parked, stopped on the side of the road, on the hill, with parking brakes engaged) have slid down to the bottom of the hill. Once it was my just husband’s truck, once it was my neighbor’s car and another car I didn’t recognize. In hindsight I shouldn’t really have brought that up since it has no bearing on my situation now, and it brought on another sidetrack, I guess I was just trying to point out how crazy this hill really can be.
“What does the fact that it is your own street have to do with it? Are the rules of the road different the closer you are to home?”
You seemed to imply that I could just choose not to drive on my road when conditions were bad enough for me to slide. Just don’t drive until it is safe. I was pointing out that since I live on that road, I cannot just avoid it. It is slippery for most of the winter. Since it does not get plowed regularly, snow quickly packs down on it and when the sun comes out the next day, it softens but does not melt, then freezes again at night, ensuring bad conditions for much of the winter. Being homebound is really not a choice I can make. I am not exaggerating when I say that yes, my neighbors and I really do slide down this hill on a frequent basis. Luckily, it really is infrequent to get other traffic through there so normally nothing happens. Now, I do manage to make it 90% of the time, but it still happens quite a bit over the course of the whole winter when you add it up. So far no one (my neighbors or myself) has managed to come up with a solution to this. Plows can’t keep up when it snows as much as it does here. So people saying “But it was your fault! you shouldn’t be driving at all!” …I don’t know what to say about that. Maybe in a perfect world I wouldn’t, but I don’t see how I can avoid it. Yes, it is my fault when I slide and hit someone…I just don’t know how to do anything other than what I am already doing to prevent it from happening. That is where most of my frustration is coming from. I know it is dangerous to drive on this road, I just don’t know what to do about it.
“It’s not like we’re dealing with one of the real crazies on the board.”
I think this should become my sig. Thanks
oh, and this:
"did you signal the turn as you were sliding? Could the citation be for failure to signal? " Just plain made me laugh out loud at the idea - next time I slide away I will make sure to turn my signal on. If that ends up being why I got the ticket, I will laugh.
Hopefully this can be over now. I feel like I got the answers I was looking for to begin with, and don’t need to drag this out further, although if anyone really wants clarification on something I will try.
-Velma, not one of the real crazies.