Last night, I got a “no right turn” ticket on the corner of 34th and 7th in Manhattan. $90 - so no big deal, but I’m kinda ticked about it.
The officer says there’s a sign there saying “No right turn, 8AM to 8PM, except busses” I was in a low-slung sports car with (surprise) a massive bus blocking my view.
So here’s my General Question… If I contest the ticket on the grounds that the bus blocked my view of the sign, do I have a prayer of getting out of it?
BTW, I’ve never taken this route before, so I had no idea I couldn’t make a turn there, else I would have taken a different route. I wasn’t trying to get away with an illegal turn - I legitimately didn’t see a sign there.
I don’t know how the traffic courts are in Manhattan. This may be more trouble than it’s worth but I would suggest taking two pictures, one of the sign, and another reproducing your situation, i.e., sign blocked by bus. Maybe it would be sufficient to just talk through it but traffic judges are typically unsympathetic to excuses, they’ve heard them all.
Now that I think about it, if the sign was blocked by a bus, doesn’t that mean the bus was in the right lane and you were in the second-to-right lane? And doesn’t that then mean that you turned right from that lane to get around the bus? Sounds like you could have gotten a ticket just for that move.
Contest it, you might win – probably a 50-50 shot. Maybe the issuing officer will be out sick that day, maybe the judge got up on the right side of bed – or not.
No. The bus was in front of me waiting to make the same turn. It was just so damned TALL. (Not a commuter bus but a charter bus.) Didn’t help that I was in a Corvette and sitting inches from the road.
Sounds like you should have waited until you had a clear view of the intersection before making the turn. If the bus was parked and blocking the sign that would be one thing, but all you had to do was wait until the bus was far enough into the intersection to see. I don’t see how a judge is going to look favorably on this.
I don’t agree. If you’re 2 cars lengths (probably closer since the bus would be crawling) you’d have trouble seeing over the ‘top’ of the bus. I’ve had to back off by several tractor trailer lengths just to see those signs hanging over highway exits when behind a truck.
Of course, it depends on where the sign it. Sometimes the signs are on the lights across the street (on the lights you should be looking at) sometimes they are next to the turn on the sidewalk and sometimes they’re across the street but on the sidewalk (so only about 8 feet high making it impossible to see if something is in front of you).
I’d fight it. Just issue the ‘I’ll see you in court’ letter. Heck, you might get lucky and have the charge thrown before court. I had 2 charges dropped like that once without having to do all that much.
I have no idea what courts are like in NY, but here if you contest and lose, you pay not just your original fine but also some hefty court costs. It can cost you twice the original fine. On the other hand, usually when you show up at traffic court they tell everybody that if you want to settle right now they’ll chop your fine in half. YMMV, IANAL.