Straightforward part: If I had a question about a specific traffic law in my area, how do I figure out the most effective lawmaker to write to about it?
Less straightforward part: so I’m cleaning up my apartment, which i moved to from NYC years ago, and come across a copy of this letter I wrote to a NYC traffic judge complaining that the ticket I got for speeding in a school zone was issued at 1)a place where I would need special training to get up close to the speed limit and 2) a place nowhere near a school. It was the block right in front of my house, where I started from a dead stop, made a left turn and came to a dead stop one block away at a red light, a slightly uphill block at that. So I’d need to make the left turn with my foot to the floor, and gun it for 100 feet to get past 30 MPH and then slam on the brakes at the red light, which somehow I think I’d remember doing.
The judge naturally rejected my argument, and I paid the fine, so this is purely a theoretical complaint at this point, but I had the thought to write to a lawmaker for my old district and find out which school was I close to (I walked or drove on that block every day for 30 years, and never saw a school, children walking–there’s not even a sidewalk on that block–or any builidng that could conceivably be a school.) and how it was even possible to get up to speed. But first so I can avoid some of the run-around, does anyone know if I want to write to the congressperson, assemblyman, state senator, city councilmember, or who?
Well, it wouldn’t be the US Congress for sure. While the school zone law may be a state law, I think the actual application of it would be a city issue (especially in NYC which has especially broad powers for a municipality), so you’d probably want to try the city council member first. Or, since it’s NYC, maybe also the relevant borough president (they don’t have any actual powers but they can exercise ombudsman-like functions in routing complaints to the right desk and following up on them).
WOW, does the NY city council website suck. No email address (gotta sign up with a password to use my own email) and a buggy site to write a “message” (mine got lost twice before I gave up). Hell with it, I paid the fine and I’ll die in ignorance.
When I was trying to improve my terrible Postal service, I wrote to everyone. Local, regional, state, national. As far as I can tell it wasn’t about finding a specific person so much as just making enough noise to get noticed.
Granted, they are probably more concerned with the USPS service to an entire community than they are with your individual school zone inquiry, but I feel like there’s a staffer or an intern somewhere that will get your message and look into it for you and shoot you an email back in like a week or two.
I don’t think this is a “complain to someone” situation. Sounds like it’s a matter of law, if what you state is true. Council people can’t get you out of a ticket, but a lawyer can. If there’s a school zone that’s not properly marked then maybe the council member for the ward can work with the safety director to get it properly marked but even then that’s after-the-fact. In order to affect YOU your lawyer would have to prove that it’s improperly marked.
I’m a council member in a very small city (pop 12k) and I would tell you to talk to a lawyer and appeal the case (or represent yourself). And in the meantime I’d take a look to see if we have an unmarked school zone. But we have a little Mayor’s Court with a part time prosecutor. NYC is a whole different animal. Council members aren’t as directly involved in the traffic business as we would be here. In fact, NYC traffic violations are adjudicated by the New York DMV. That is way outside the council’s jurisdiction.
I don’t know how you managed to be found guilty if the facts you state are true. Sounds like you had grounds for appeal, and there’s a link on the DMV page I linked to for appeals.
Looks like the appeals process is pretty straightforward. There would be no legislator to appeal to. Just appeal to the division that issued your fine.
Well, i was literally ticketsd driving my rental car to the airport for the last time for months (and as covid had for years) and i had bigger fish to fry. The city counsel doesn’t make it easy to query them.
I really doubt any of them would answer - if you want to provide the location, I can try to figure out where the school is but just so you know , the school zone can extend to 1/4 mile from the school *, so the school isn’t necessarily on that block.
* Which covers probably 3/4 of NYC - thankfully there’s not a school zone for every school.
I did get an answer. Turns out there is a school within a quarter-mile of my former home–BUT only if you’re a bird, able to cross (fenced-off on both sides) an active freight track. If you’re a person, or a car, the nearest route to that school from my block is over a mile away. What a rip-off.
As far as the website goes, I filled out an interminable form, and got a “required information needs to be filled in” message and I couldn’t see what the hell they were talking about, so I assumed the form didn’t go through. Turns out, it apparently did.
The closest I can recommend as to who to talk to is the person or committee responsible for making/amending the local by-laws. What organization makes the rules where tends to vary so there’s no one right answer.
Even mundane things like school zones and enforcement can be surprising complicated behind the scenes. In my town we’ve had a stretch of E to W road signed as a school zone for years, with tickets handed out for just as long. 1 month ago the signs disappeared on the E to W stretch, but remained on the N to S stretch (school is on a corner). Then, they re-appeared. I asked my officer collegue about it. He found out that:
Someone in the planning or bylaw group discovered that the E to W school zone couldn’t be enforced because a) the school front faced the N to S road (not the E to W), b) the building was too far away from that road to qualify for the designation, and c) a chain-link fence blocked any pedestrian access to the road anyway. All these are local legal reasons why they can’t enforce such a law, and anyone could have challenged their tickets citing those reasons but nobody knew about them because they were so technical. BUT, due to political pressure they put the signs back up to “encourage” drivers to drive slow anyway. SO, there is currently an “illegally” signed school zone in my town which the public is unaware of, which will have no further enforcement action taken on it. The town is willing to risk a near-zero % chance of a lawsuit over the signs to slow people down because it’s cheaper than actually making the proper changes to the laws. Thousands of such minor unseen issues exists around the world.
The point of my paragraph is that sometimes signs exists where they shouldn’t, it often won’t be known who’s technically in the right at the time, but it will always be considered the sign or the officer by default. So in court you’ll have a couple minutes to convince a judge you’re to be believed over the officer or the law, which requires a very well spoken case, even when they facts are on your side.
If you do find out the correct people to talk to, you should have a case as to the liability that group is facing with the bad law or rule, rather the “I personally don’t like this”. In my province a few years ago we had a barbless fishing hook regulation come into effect, and hundreds of violation tickets were handed out and fishing equipment confiscated for violations. Someone with legal expertise realized there was a wording issue with federal law that made this provincial law unenforceable and made it public, so the province had no option other than to rescind all those tickets and reimburse everyone they had fined. It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to rectify.