dude, you are quite lucky. last i heard 20 over can be concidered reakless driving. but i agree with just about everyone else. never admit or tell the officer you know why pulled you over. and always always always be polite. no need to be a jerk, who knows, you might stike up a conversation and he may just give you a warning instead.

here in stafford, va. questioning the radar / laser gun doesn't work. the judge asks the officer if he calibrated his equipment and asks to see the calibration report. maybe that's a bunch of bench / officer bs but while i was sitting in court waiting my turn that's what happened.

can you believe the judge upheld the summons even though the plate number was written up wrong. my plate is vanish-d the officer wrote vanished. i pointed it out to the judge but he responded with "but we got the right man, didn't we ?" i just stood there with this dumbass look on my face. duh...uhhh... duh...talk about being sent for a loop, that was one curve ball i wasn't expecting.

 

The whole point to all this is, you don't know what will happen if you plead not guillty. You might get off by simply showing up. As in my case. Depends on where you are and the policy of that area. If you plead guilty, case closed.

 

One other thing you all might want to do if you plan on defending yourself in court, is to make sure you know the exact means by which the officer clocked you. Was he following you, did you drive through metered lines, did he use radar K, Ka, X, or did he use Laser.

If you go after the calibration for each of these, and the officer is able to produce evidence to the recent calibration, you may need to take it one to two steps further. For example, ask to see the information on when the tuning forks were last verified to be correct. They may have been dropped etc. and may be out of tune. If he/she can provide that information, then ask to see evidence that the instrument used to verify the tuning has also been correctly maintained and is accurate. Ask to see information on when it was last inspected etc.

If the officer can't produce this information, ask the judge to dismiss the ticket for reasonable doubt that the officer's equipment isn't up to par.

If the officer can produce all of this information, well, then your goose is cooked and you've just ticked off the judge/officer. Have your wallet ready!!!



Josh

 

(1) Pay ticket. (2) Slow down. $100 isn't much to have to pay for that much over the speed limit and time is money. By the time you fool with getting a lawyer, paying a lawyer, going to court, etc. you will have wasted hundreds more than if you had just paid the 100 bucks.

My .02

Mike

 

If it were just the fine of $100 I'd just pay it too. But insurance costs can be in the thousands of dollars. That's why you should fight it.

 

Always fight it! It's just an illegal tax.

 

True. Depends on the points and whether or not your state department of motor vehicles reports them to insurance companies. Some states don't report points to insurance companies until you reach something like 3 points.

Mike

 

I got tagged for the same 75 in a 55, I don't know where you're from, but here it was $141.00+29.00 for the right to do Traffic School.
I did the Traffic School on the Internet, it was a piece of cake.

The TS was $19.95 but the shipping of the certificate brought it up to $54.00.

 

With regards to "calibration" - I got picked coming out of Atlanta on a road trip once, and the cop asked me if I wanted to see the gun calibrated.

Out of curiosity I said yes. There's two tuning forks that the gun displays a speed readout from the vibrations of the forks (I believe they were 25 & 55MPH). Interesting to see, unfortunately, they also write on the ticket that you witnessed calibration of the gun - there goes that defense.

As far as costing 100's of $$'s to fight a ticket - in Fl., one moving violation on my State Farm policy can cost me $300 a year in increased premiums (for 3 years until the ticket comes off). That's almost $1,000 in extra premium. It's well worth the $100 I pay my ticket attorney go see if the cop shows up (dismissed for lack of prosecution), or just gets a better deal (court costs & adjudication withheld -ie: no points). If you've got a horrible driving record, you can hang it up. Dismissals don't show up (he's 8 for 8 so far in the last 6 years), and they'll usually accept 1 ticket witheld a year, before considering driving school or points.

My check (and the ticket) are in the mail the next day - regardless of circumstances. The most recent one will be dismissed automatically -speeding, when he didn't write down what I was doing or the posted limit - but still worth the $100 not to have to go do a motion to dismiss it myself.

Regards,

Rick

 

I like this one.

Get pulled over for 65 in a 55. Cop "do you know the speed limit" my answer "well sir it must be 45 because I was going 55" LOL

This is advice for a clean record, if you have a bunch of tickets on there you might want to fight it. In other words swing for the fences.


If you can go to traffic school and erase ticket do it.....

If your state does not offer traffic school to erase ticket and you want to save a buck or two go to court and see judge they will usually reduce fine.....

If you don't care too much about the $$$ and again there is no traffic school option pay it and move on....

 

I would go to court.

I think many traffic laws are written to generate revenue rather than protect the public (75 on a highway with today's ABS, active handling, air bags, etc. is much safer than the cars when the roads were designed).

If we can take the profit out of relatively low speed violations, it may help make them go away. If everyone charged with less than 30 MPH over the limit went to court, the courts would clog and the law would change.

On top of all of that, if you show up, they are more likely to give you a break on the points etc.

Just my $.02

 

As noted in an earlier response, check out any traffic school offered by the state, on-line or otherwise, that will allow you to keep the points/ticket off your record. Otherwise, and check with the clerk, you may want to consider asking for a hearing. If you're dead in the water and the officer shows up (assuming you remember what he looks like), you can plead guilty (normally the magistrate offers those present this option after warning about the court costs, etc.) and ask that judgment be withheld. What this means is that it does not go on your record as long as you keep it clean for a year. That way, even though you pay the ticket, it does not go on your record for insurance purposes.

 

Fight it!!!! They don't like when you pead not guilty and will usually cut you a break..I got caught doing 53 in a 35 zone...Met the cop before the trial..He let me plead to 40 in a 35 zone..A fine with NO POINTS!!

 

I got my first speeding ticket in 12 years last November, 53 in a 45 zone (in the C6). I took an on-line driver improvement course and the locality buried it, just like it never happened.

The "if you were speeding, then pay the ticket mentality" is stupid. I don't know about anyone else, but I have two other cars and a house with the same insurance company. They give you one strike regarding increased premiums or cancellation, but you never know when the next ticket is going to happen, so it just makes sense to avoid the first one if possible.

 

Indeed, traffic tickets have become more of a tax revenue for most counties than truly a saftey or enforcement issue. Sad - like we don't have enough taxes. I'm all for speed limits on city streets...but they should consider upping or doing away with freeway limits

 

Even on city streets, if they really wanted to do something about it from a safety perspective they could electronically limit the road I'm sure... we have limiters in our cars' computers, all they'd have to do would be to broadcast something similar via RF and our engines would all hum up to the 35mph or whatever and that's it for that road. (obviously oversimplifying but the point is clear) - Emergency vehicles could simply not have these limiters in place.

Now, that said, I know it's a little too much to contend with in a freedom sense, but I was just illustrating what could be done if it REALLY were for safety's sake.

I always thought speed limits were intended (from implementation) as safe-driving *guidelines* - like the yellow signs on offramps. Do you get pulled over when you take a 25 ramp at 40? No, but you may wipe out, right?

I dunno. Was just thinking about this yesterday and found this thread...

 

You got tagged for going 70 MPH?

How do you do that.... If Grandma does 70 in the Fast lane out here in CA everyone gets pissed at her for going too slow.

Sorry, I feel for you. Where was it.

If you are going to try to beat it however a good strategy is to wait three ot four weeks 'till your court date and call or send a certified letter to the court requesting a change of venue to the County seat, also ask to be scheduled on a specific date as far out as they will let you. (they may not give you the date you asked for but they will push it out if you have a good reason)

This is because when you are cited the officer will schedule you for HIS local court on HIS court day for which he may be getting overtime (~$200.00) to show up and testify.

If you make it inconvenient for him to show up on a day that he won't get paid for, in a court where he does not know the judge and is two hours away..... chances are good he won't show. (I hated court days but it was part of the job. If I was working patrol on a day I had one case scheduled, it got missed and I got no flack over it)

This of course depends on your jurisdiction. Good luck.

LEO's please don't give me trouble over this... there's nothing secret here, it's just the system.

Al

 

In NJ, pleading not guilty can get your points lowered, but fine stays the same.

 

It's worth the time to go to court and plead not guilty....especially if you have a clean driving record and weren't rude to the officer.

A couple hours in a courtroom certainly is worth more than the increased insurance premiums for the next three years.

 

I would check with the locals about the various options. I got a 68 in a 45. My insurance agent told me to go to court and ask to take a defensive driving course. Bottom line, it cost $25 more than the ticket would have, and cost me half a Saturday. But it kept the ticket off my record and saved me about $600 in insurance over the next 3 years.