I know a QS9000 administrator who got caught for speeding and asked for certificates of the last time the radar gun had been calibrated. They didn’t have any proof it ever was calibrated so he got off.
Talk to the officer before court starts…that’s why they show up early. Remind him that your brother or your nephew or a relative of your choice, who is also a cop, called him to give you a break as a courtesy. If he has a ton of tickets issued that he is dealing with on that day, no way is he going to remember a phone call. They get a LOT of courtesy calls from police who are looking to get a relative out of a jam. Believe me, the ticketing officer has certainly made calls himself. It’s worth a shot.
I will tell you how I beat a speeding ticket for doing 34MPH in a 20MPH school zone (for the record, I don’t make a habit of speeding thru school zones, it was not that long ago that my son was of school age).
First thing I did was take pictures of all the school zone speedlimit signs and warning lights showing that none of them listed fixed hours of operation , that the signs stated that the school zone was in effect when the lights were flashing.
Then I located a witness who was willing to come to court and testify that on the day of the ticket they drove thru the same school zone where the ticket was written and that the flashing warning lights were not in operation.
Last but not least, I hired a lawyer who specialised in traffic law (got his name and phone number from my uncle the cab driver, who gets pulled over more often than the average non cab driver) to defend me in court.
Case Dismissed!
Peace
LIONsob
get your speedometer calibrated and claim u had faulty equipment. Odd thing is that your speedometer doesnt have to be off any. This worked for me, but i also had my friend’s dad, a lawyer, cover my case. He went in there with the papers of the speedometer calibration, told the judge i was a good citizen (which i might actually be), claimed the faulty equipment, and poof… no more ticket no points. this was my first ticket though so it might be different in your case.
word of advice though, dont act like a lawyer if u do any of these tactics cuz then u insult those legal people… it would be as if someone was barking off bits of technical talk in your line of work, and u knew that he/she was purely an amature or a novice in that area… itll just make u look like an ass!
Johan, was that Officer Keevil (rhymes with evil) who wrote your ticket? The tough gray-haired VA trooper? He’s notorious for not cutting anyone any slack. I think he’s the hardest-working cop in Virginia. The last time he pulled me over, I had the cruise control set at 69*; he told me he was writing me a ticket for 74 even though he’d followed me for 5 miles doing 77. He could have given me a reckless driving citation, but he just decided to be “nice” to me that day.
WTF???
Anyway, every time I have gotten a speeding ticket and posted online asking for advice, the most common response is a lot of holier-than-thou types saying “you shouldn’t have been speeding in the first place, asshole!” I meant to make an MPIMS thread about this: Where are all these pious citizens who never go above the speed limit? Because I certainly never see any of them during my daily commute. If you go 55 (in the right lane, no less) around here, all the other drivers get angry at you for blocking their way.
*having heard directly from the head of VDOT “You won’t get pulled over for going 65 in a 55” and been assured by a taxi driver friend of mine that 70 is the actual cutoff speed; he said it’s safe to cruise at 69.
I helped a friend get out of a speeding ticket from a laser gun. He was on his motorcycle in busy commute traffic and was flagged down due to a reading on a hand-held laser. According to the regulations that my friend found, the laser gun is supposed to be solidly mounted (i.e. on a stand or fastened to the police car, not hand held). I gave him a little sketch showing that if the gun was pointed off-target by just a hair, it could be reading the speed of a vehicle the next lane over a few hundred feet away. Again keep in mind that this was in busy traffic, he wasn’t the only vehicle in the area. He’s a former motorcycle racer and he said that he was not speeding.
Friend took this to court, showed the regs on laser guns to the judge, presented him with my math, and the ticket was dismissed. The officer who wrote the ticket took the sketch, looked at it and put it in his pocket.
Personal view - and yes I’ve sped before too (shock): If you were speeding and you get a ticket for it, take it like an adult. No I’m not saying that people who argue a ticket aren’t mature but if the CHP pulls me over and we both know that I was doing 75 in a 65 zone, arguing it is like the kid with his hand in the cookie jar saying “I’m not taking any cookies Mom!”
If you weren’t speeding and you think that it wasn’t a fair ticket, I guess that’s what traffic court is for, but like everyone else has said be careful how you present your case - if you aren’t on firm ground then it probably won’t go too well.
A lot of us say “just don’t speed” because the SDMB rules prohibit us from discussing how to get away with illegal activities. So I can confidently say that I plead guilty to my ticket and didn’t get the points nor the insurance surcharge, although I had to pay court costs, which coincidently enough was the price of the original ticket – but it wasn’t the money I cared about.
I’ll point out I was on the I-94 freeway and it was almost 1 a.m., and there’s not a lot of traffic. Obviously I don’t remember all my exact words, but it went something like this: “I don’t have any valid excuses for exceeding the posted speed limit, but I was not endangering others nor myself.” Case dismissed but with the court costs, which I couldn’t argue against since I was guilty after all.
**
Faulty equiptment is not a defense to speeding. Speeding is a strict liablility crime, it doesn’t matter if your speedometer is perfectly accurate or whether it is completely broken. What you described later was basically a judge cutting you a break because you made an effort and because you had a lawyer telling the judge you were a good kid. It happens.
The statutes in your location are likely different however, the PA Vehicle Code: 3368 © (4) states that “No person may be convicted upon evidence obtained through the use of devices authorized by paragraphs (2) and (3) unless the speed recorded is six or more miles per hour in excess of the legal speed limit. Furthermore, no person may be convicted upon evidence obtained through the use of devices authorized by paragraph (3) in an area where the legal speed limit is less than 55 miles per hour if the speed recorded is less than ten miles per hour in excess of the speed limit.”
The short explanation of the above referenced paragraphs is that (2) allows only the PA State Police to use radar. Paragraph (3) would include VASCAR, ESP strips, and the stopwatch-usable by all law enforcement professionals.
Speedometer accuracy is not an inspection code item in PA, therefore the owner bears the burden of ensuring quasi reliability.
Getting lucky with a lenient judge is one thing-pressing that luck is another.