It definitely depends on the jurisdiction. In DC it is a pure formality and I have never heard of a ticket being overturned. BTW, it is not a court here but some kind of official. You can check out the incident I tell in this post.
Most likely. You don’t think the police are just picking your license plate number out a hat do you?
I do my fair share of speeding on the 73.
First- bad place to speed. You will go weeks without seeing a cop, then you will see 25 in one day. Also, lots of places for them to inconspicuous.
Second- Spent a lot of time recently in OC south court because of a small claims matter, & heard a lot of ticket fights. From what I heard, the cops are calibrating their radar guns at the beginning of each shift, etc. No judge I heard bought the “faulty gun or tuning fork” argument.
Third- yes, the cop will come to court. In SoCal, this used to be a problem, because cops didn’t get paid for the time spent on court appearances. But now they do, so i’s the stuff of urban legend (at least in our area).
Whether you end up in south court or harbor court (watch out for Frances Munoz, she hates everybody…), be polite, tactful, and prepared to lose. Unfortunate but a reality.
PS- the “yes I did it but I have a good story” defense never works…
Thanks everyone… I just wanted to clear up a couple of things…
no, I was not going downhill. My car was struggling up a hill, trying to stay at 75.
I know 75 is still speeding. I’d rather have 10 miles over the speed limit, which is what I htought I was doing anyway, than 18. But the cop said he wouldn’t have even written me up if I was going 75! So, according to my speedometer, I should not even have a ticket!!
I can go to traffic school, but these days it costs more to do that than pay the fine. Anyway, I want to try this and see what happens.
Thanks again,
SW
Please, read my comments in this thread.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=28324
Was there any other traffic behind, in front, or going in the other direction from you? It could have been a cross-reading, meaning he tagged you AND them, which would throw the reading off. Hell, he may have just guessed at a speed, or pulled it right out of his ass. He’s under no obligation to show you the detector, and there’s no official record of readings (as I understand it) so he could say you were doing 112, and there’s no way to refute that. All you can do is cause reasonable doubt.
It sounds like you’re on a good start getting your speedo checked.
File a continuance, it’ll throw off the court dating system, and lessen the chances the officer will showing.
That’s a good tip to start, but again, PLEASE read that thread.
And check these links. http://www.motorists.org and http://www.speedtrap.org
–Tim
There is no such thing in CA. Won’t work here.
No nolo contendre? Damn that sucks. California is turning into some shitty fascist state isnt it. Did they get rid of this plea all together, or just in traffic offenses?
I love reading these posts since I make my living as a police officer. No, A Girl, I’m not going to give up any secrets on this subject. That’s like asking Grandma for the secret recipe to her cookies ;). However, there are ways to fight traffic tickets, this isn’t Nazi Germany last I checked right?
I enjoyed Blockhead’s response to all this. Pulling over legitimate citizens like himself just warms my piglet heart to no end! I can usually pick up on that attitude about three seconds into the traffic stop and that usually turns a harmless warning or minimum-fine excessive speed into the “speed in excess of…” which can run into a few hundred bucks especially in construction or school zones in Florida.
BTW, exactly what are we supposed to be doing? The laws we enforce are state and county laws, not laws that my supervisor and his friends made up over a few beers. These are laws that the people want enforced, not the police. Please refer to my statement on Nazi Germany, first paragraph. The top of my paycheck still says “County Of…” not “Sheriff’s Department”. I know who my real bosses are.
Also, sorry to contradict the sage wisdom of Mr. Blockhead, I sorta do care about how fast people go. I don’t like doing traffic accidents. All that blood, body parts and crushed people, notifying next of kin, etc. have a way of really ruining your day. I’m not shy about giving citations for impeding the flow of traffic either. In fact my last ticket was to an erstwhile senior citizen who was clogging up the left lane and creating an unsafe traffic condition by doing 30 under the limit. He also had the same unique theory that Mr. Blockhead had-- that I had better things to do with my time. I enjoyed writing that one! Nu-uh, this is what I get paid to do, aim that radar thingy at cars and write a ticket if the number goes over what’s written on the sign. Real simple and beats asking people what kind of drink they want with their Value Meal. Unfortunately these impeding tickets do not carry the same impact to the wallet that excessive speed does. Must be a traffic statistic thing, I don’t know. My personal preference is that they should, however my feelings have little impact on the law. Surprising isn’t it?
Also, FWIW, it’s hard to clog up the “system”. That’s why they call it “traffic court”. (hint) 
Have a nice day.
Bravo, Bluepony! I couldn’t agree more.
Anyone who thinks that speeding laws are made up just to collect revenue clearly doesn’t have to deal with the carnage of road accidents.
There’s a simple reason why speed limits apply: it’s because speed kills, and excessive speed kills excessively. A simple lesson in physics should convince you of this.
When a vehicle is travelling a 60km/h (city street speed limit in South Australia) it is moving at about 17 metres per second. Allowing for an average reaction time, good brakes and a dry road, an emergency stop will require between 30 and 40 metres of stopping distance.
At highway speeds (110km/h in South Australia) the vehicle is moving at more than 30 metres a second, and the minmum stopping distance moves out to beyond 120 metres. When speed is doubled, the stopping distance is quadrupled.
In the event of a collision the prime detrmining factor on injury to occupants is kinetic energy:
Kinetic energy = 1/2 mass x velocity squared
Hence when velocity is doubled, kinetic energy is quadrupled.
There are at least three collisions in vehicle accident: car vs car, tree, wall etc; occupant vs interior of car; organs vs interior of occupants chest cavity, skull and abdomen.
Clearly the harder you hit the greater the danage is.
Anyone still want to tell me why speed limits are bullshit?
In Calif, they can only use a radar ticket if the street has a Speed Zone Survey done beforehand. If the survey says the speed is 75 & its posted at 65, then they have to drop the ticket.
Thanks for the help, everyone…
Hey, Homer… a jury trial for a speeding ticket? 
And thanks for the web site links, those were very handy. To answer your question, there wasn’t much traffic that day.
Let me reiterate: I am not upset that I got a speeding ticket. I was speeding. What gets me is that I was not, to my knowledge, going 83. I believe I was going 75. I’m fighting the extra 8 mph, not the ticket. If I had been written up for 75, this wouldn’t be an issue. But then, according to the officer, if I was doing 75, then he wouldn’t have written me up at all. When I told the officer that I had the speedometer on, he became quite defensive of his decision to pull me over and wouldn’t listen to my explaination or to my passenger’s. I’m sure the officer hears all kinds of BS all day long, so I can understand the defensiveness, but the 83 mph makes no sense to me since the cruise was barely staying on 75 struggling up a hill.
I figured I’d just let the court decide, even though now it seems the odds are not in my favor unless I pull this game and that one. Seems a little silly.
A girl
as a related aside, i’d like to know what bluepony thinks about this:
as long as i can keep the traffic stop simple, i take all speeding tickets to court. so far i’m 3 and 0 in texas. here’s the drill:
say as little as possible and never imply guilt.
never say you know why you were pulled over.
never say you thought the speed limit was higher than it was or that you didn’t know the speed limit (implies guilt).
if asked if you know how fast you were going, give a number that’s the speed limit or lower.
never explain why you were speeding (admits guilt).
never argue or offer any unsolicited info.
always have your required documention.
do not speak to the state attorney at the docket call - this is just another opportunity for you to incriminate yourself.
i had all three tickets dismissed this way. one was because the judge denied the second request for a continuance (officer on injury leave) and the others were dismissed by the state ‘due to lack of evidence’. i never had to say one word in my defense. i’d like to know if i’ve just been lucky or does my system have any validity?
ummm care to offer a shred of attribution on that one?
Try arguing that you were so stoned and drunk it sure didn’t feel like you were going that fast.
Free legal advice that is worth every penny!
Could your indignation stem from your not understanding the concept of Traffic School? Not all states have it, so let me explain. In California you have the option of pleading guilty, paying the fine, and paying an extra fee to attend eight hours of traffic safety classes. In exchange, the infraction is not put on your record and not reported to your insurance company. It has nothing to do with whether or not you’re a good driver, it has to do with whether or not you want to have points on your license. You can only do it once every 18 months and can’t do it for serious infractions, but they also have some pretty entertaining traffic schools options, too — I took mine at the LA Improv and laughed my ass off the whole time. Beats a bump in my premiums.
Bluepony, while I can see your side and agree with it, I can also see the other side because not all jurisdictions are alike. They way you say it is the way things should be but not the way they always are.
Some years back I got a ticket here in DC for making an illegal U turn. Now, I define a U turn when you turn 180 degress and head back on the same road or street. I turned onto a side street that did not come at a right angle so my change of direction was like 135 degrees and onto a side street.
I decided to fight it as a matter of principle. I photocopied a map showing what I did was turn on to a side street. I took photos of the intersection showing the signs marking it as a street with a different name, etc.
The case could not be more clear cut to me. In DC you get a hearing before an officer, no court. I presented my case to an officer who was obviously not paying attention to anything I had to say. After I was done, she just confirmed the ticket and that was the end of it. I was fuming. The whole thing is a mockery. Yes these people are supposed to work for the community but they were working for Marion “Crack” Barry.
I learnt one thing that day and that is that, even if you are right, sometimes you have to be practical. If I would just have paid I would have saved myself a lot of aggravation and a couple of hundred bucks I spent trying to fight a $50 ticket.
There have been exposes about the meter people here giving out tickets to cars who had fed the meter correctly. Also about meters that gave you less time than they marked. Also about parking signs that are deliberately deceptive in order to hand out tickets.
The DMV is riddled with corruption and about a couple of years back the feds went in and arrested a number of people for doing things like taking bribes to erase all your tickets.
Not to mention all the police corruption that has been in the news. I am not making all this up. This was all in the news. That’s the District of Columbia for you. welcome to the third world.
You might be able to plead nolo contendre, but there will be no “adjudication witheld”, ie they will treat it exactly as a 'guilty" plea, except it might help if you are being sued.
And Girl, I did not imply anything about your driving record. Traffic school is an especially good “out” if this would be your 2nd ticket in 3 years, as that is when your ‘good driver’ discount goes away. So, it will MORE than pay for itself if you use it to take your second ticket off record. The 1st is no big deal, I would fight that.
And one problem with traffic court is that it is run by "commissioners’, who desperately want a job with the DA’s office or a real judgeship. Thus they need the backing of the “law & order” block, thus you are guilty.
sailor: around here we call DC the “work-free drug place”. 
Bluepony: about that “we’re only enforcing the laws” BS. There are so many minor and obtuse laws that you could spend all day writing nothing but tickets. Most traffic violations are not “crimes”: and we hire you guys to stop CRIME. I’ll bet a nickle now there is a corner or two in your area where you could bust alll the minor drug dealers you want. Why not them? How about busting harleys for having mufflers made to be extra loud? Or drunk drivers? Or swap meets full of stolen car stereos?
What are you saying here? If we don’t have traffic cops, we have no way of regulating traffic. True, we could make all cops spend all of their time harassing drug dealers, who would complain that the cops time would be better spent chasing murderers and not pot pushers. Then the murderers would complain that the cops time would be better spent stopping major crimes against humanity. And of course, people who commit major crimes against humanity would complain that a cops time would be better spent catching that guy who cut him off at the corner and was doing 2 times the speed limit. As far as I know, cops do bust people who drive drunk, they do catch drug dealers, and they do bust people who peddle stolen goods. There is simply no shortage of crime. If you allow people to do whatever the hell they want to on the road, traffic fatalities will go way up. And people will start screaming for the cops to start policing the roads and enforcing the traffic laws again.
Everyone wants to pass the buck on who’s making the roads dangerous. It’s not me, it’s the guy that’s going slow. It’s not me, it’s the guy who’s going faster than I am. It’s not the people who go fast, it’s the people who go fast when they don’t know what they’re doing.
Quit passing the buck and whining. Take some responsibility. Driving is a privilege, not a right. When you are breaking traffic laws, you not only take the chance of getting a ticket, but of needlessly endangering peoples lives.
I read a lot of newspaper articles where people get killed crossing the streets because some speeding person ran the red (couldn’t stop in time). Major pile-ups on the highway because one person lost control and everyone else was doing too fast to stop before they collided. I just passed such a pile up today, and two last week. Speeding really does kill.
I think that we should be a little more thankful that people do take the time to police the roads, and whine about it a little less.
And if I did get pulled over, I’m smart enough to know to talk nice and be civil. I lived in Tx for 20 years, I know what kind of legalized “gang” they can be. Or do you disagree that cops there are brutal?
I suppose my opinion of them is obvious. And don’t even start with the “I bet you call us when you are in trouble”. Never have never will. The fact is cops enforce laws at random and then not even consistently. One cop told me (in dallas tx, btw, that he won’t pull them over unless they are going 15 mph over the limit. what a nice guy. warms my heart.) What’s your limit bluepony and other cops? 1 mph? 10? Seems to me to be fair you would have to ticket anyone going 1 mph and up. But of course you yourself PROVE WITHOUT A SHADOW OF A DOUBT that even you don’t agree with the laws. Otherwise, you would ticket everyone who went 1 mph over the limit. Afterall, you couldn’t possibly be a hypocrite (the crux of the matter, imho). A beautiful blonde is more likely to get a warning, if anything at all, then some guy like me NO MATTER HOW POLITE I AM TO MR.COP. btw-I’ve never had a ticket of any kind. But I do despise MY TAX MONEY paying some fat assed cop to sit around and suck down coffeee and donuts and then pick and chose who he wants to ticket because of their “attitude”. The cops are the ones with the attitude, and EGO’s. They want you to be in awe of them and act like they are gods of some sort. They love it when people grovel and talk to them as if they hold their very life in their hands. (sad truth is they often do and can often get away with murder.)
A cite on slow drivers causing problems? Geez, you’ve obviously never driven. I can drive home from work and see how people driving 55 and less in a 70 zone are causing traffic jams and near accidents (hopefully near accidents. sadly an incident last week on the freeway I frequent there was a death, caused by A SLOW DRIVER. Arkansas Democrat/Gazette reported the incident in 7/25 paper. I didn’t see it online, but I didn’t do much of a search. It may be there online. It was in the printed paper. I read it at lunch and I saw the wreck as I went home last week. It was on I-40 near Conway, AR. living in Arkansas I’m sure has opened me up to more ridicule. but I can take it. LOL!) And a lot of them do it in the left lane. They piss me off but nothing I can do about it but smile and wait to pass. Life goes on and I eventually get home.
If you’re tired of seeinf traffic accidents and picking up the severed limbs then I suggest you get a new job. It won’t end aytime soon DESPITE YOUR VALIENT EFFORTS, Mr. Cop.
The money often goes to the state? And?? Your point is what? It’s still a way of fattening the coffers at decent peoples expense. Until you enforce the letter of the law you are still nothing more then a hypocrite. What about Montana? I understand there is at least one freeway there with no speed limit. Are there dead bodies all over it? I doubt it. I could be wrong though. To that I concede. Perhaps I’ll investigate it someday. My point is that speed limits are arbitrary numbers that some cops enforce and others don’t, and rarely to the letter of the law. Although one town I know of in Tx is very strict (Lavon). 1 mph WILL get you a ticket there. Perhaps the only cop not a hypocrite? And what of traffic laws NOT APPLYING TO COPS EVEN IF THEY ARE OFF DUTY? It’s a fact, at least in Tx. Mr. Cop, when you pull over a speeder and he shows you his Tx badge, what do you do? You say, “Oh. Nevermind”.
Hypocrites.
Sorry, if I have to chose sides between blockhead and bluepony, I’m with bluepony. You can’t just disqualify society’s right to have someone to enforce the laws. And, believe me, a society where nobody respects the law is not a fun place to live in.
I have a problem with the corruption and policies in DC but i do not have any problem with the concept of a police department the way it should be.
To say you don’t need the police and will never call them is outright foolish. Try go live anywhere where there is no police and see how long you last.