BG Legal: Court for speeding tickets

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

I don't think calibration records matter. I haven't taken Evidence yet, but I think it has something to do with the cop being an expert.

If it was based on observation, i.e. following, then I think you're fucked.

[jmc]

I don't think calibration records matter. I haven't taken Evidence yet, but I think it has something to do with the cop being an expert.

If it was based on observation, i.e. following, then I think you're fucked.

Calibration records only matter, if its something like 10 MPH over the speed limit.

If your going 20-30 mph over the limit, the device will not be that far off even if it has not been calibrated in a year.

However, courts could always just throw it out for "lack of evidence" or something along those lines (if there are no calibration records)

[Siniroth]

Spoiler: show

Keep speeding, just be smarter about it.

I had 6 tickets within a year and a half of getting my license, had to do driver re-training, etc. Sucked. Now I've had 0 in close to 3 years and just the other day I was doing 110ish coming home after class.

Don't speed in areas you aren't familiar with.
Don't speed between 10am-3pm, cops have nothing better to do during this time.
Don't speed for excessive amounts of time.
Leapfrog.

I don't drive as wildly as I used to since a Scion TC is no Lexus IS and crashing does/will happen and will take the wind out of your sails hard, but I still push it up occasionally when I know it's safe to.

Getting tickets for doing 80 in a 50 and shit is dumb, really. If you're getting ticketed for anything under 95 you're driving like an idiot. Do some basic math and you'll see that the not-getting-pulled-over 70mph is making the entire length of your trip less than 1-2 minutes longer than the pulled-over-80mph is, usually.

Unless you spend 95% of your drive on the highway, for large amounts of time, and near zero time on city streets or side streets, there really is no excuse for doing 80 over 70 or 75. It's silly and it's not the benefit you think it is.

Ex: Traveling 20 miles at 80mph will get you to your destination just under 3 minutes faster than traveling at 70mph. In a 55-60mph zone won't get you pulled over 99.9% of the time and 80mph will almost 100% of the time if a cop is there. 3 minutes worth it? Nope.

Edit: Seriously though, thinking about it I've never gotten a ticket for going over 95mph since any time I do I am thoroughly anal about taking precautions. I've gotten up to 147 without incident, but have gotten nailed repeatedly in the past for just cruising at 80-85. You just get complacent after a while and don't realize you're actually breaking the law, lol.

This, specifically the areas you aren't familiar with bit and the being thoroughly cautious, has saved me from getting a single speeding ticket, and I speed almost constantly.

[Gadritan]

This, specifically the areas you aren't familiar with bit and the being thoroughly cautious, has saved me from getting a single speeding ticket, and I speed almost constantly.

h8. you.

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

Calibration records only matter, if its something like 10 MPH over the speed limit.

If your going 20-30 mph over the limit, the device will not be that far off even if it has not been calibrated in a year.

However, courts could always just throw it out for "lack of evidence" or something along those lines (if there are no calibration records)

Calibration records if they matter at all, will always matter no matter the degree of speeding.

Your last statement is incorrect. If all the State has is the officer tailing you at X speed. His testimony will be enough. If the radar gun is all, unless it's introduced at trial, then state will likely not have met it's burden b/c it's not introduced into evidence or something like that. I'm not sure of the technicalities b/c I haven't had evidence yet.

[Heavencloud]

I'm actually fighting a ticket now for something like this.

Trooper doing a detail in the far left lane slowly moving following a traffic crew picking up signs. Passed him, 2 exits later he is pulling me over... He gets upto the window, asks me what modifications I have to my car and to pop my hood lol

Nothing like getting profiled, with my police jacket sitting on the backseat.

Ended up claiming I went 90 MPH past him, and wrote me up for 90 in a 55 -.-


*Edit*

I drive a un-modded Subaru WRX.

This is why sometimes I'm glad I don't have a WRX, as fun as it would be, no hoodscoop allows me to get by cops pretty easily. I recall one time I was going 60 in a 45 and a cop was sitting right there (it was raining hard too, bad time to be speeding lol) and he just ignored me... Scared the shit out of me. Don't think I would've made it if I had a rex.

As of now, yet to be pulled over in over two years of driving. I speed daily (but as Sath stated, only in areas I know very well and for short periods of time).

[jmc]

Calibration records if they matter at all, will always matter no matter the degree of speeding.

Your last statement is incorrect. If all the State has is the officer tailing you at X speed. His testimony will be enough. If the radar gun is all, unless it's introduced at trial, then state will likely not have met it's burden b/c it's not introduced into evidence or something like that. I'm not sure of the technicalities b/c I haven't had evidence yet.

Probably depends on the state and their seperate laws then.

On a MA citation, the officer either estimated the speed or clocked the speed. If clocked, he/she needs to put how and what type of device in which he/she would need to list Laser and that alone presents itself to trial.

Then again, in MA you don't even go up in front of a judge when challenging tickets. You go in front of the clerk magistrate. Kinda odd here

[Zeb]

This is why sometimes I'm glad I don't have a WRX, as fun as it would be, no hoodscoop allows me to get by cops pretty easily. I recall one time I was going 60 in a 45 and a cop was sitting right there (it was raining hard too, bad time to be speeding lol) and he just ignored me... Scared the shit out of me. Don't think I would've made it if I had a rex.

As of now, yet to be pulled over in over two years of driving. I speed daily (but as Sath stated, only in areas I know very well and for short periods of time).

I've never been pulled over in my STi in the 3 years I've owned in. I do speed, but not like a dumbass. 9 over on some roads, 14 over on others, which is pretty typical for most drivers down here.

[Amele]

Calibration records if they matter at all, will always matter no matter the degree of speeding.

Your last statement is incorrect. If all the State has is the officer tailing you at X speed. His testimony will be enough. If the radar gun is all, unless it's introduced at trial, then state will likely not have met it's burden b/c it's not introduced into evidence or something like that. I'm not sure of the technicalities b/c I haven't had evidence yet.

most jurisdictions have a presumption of accuracy with respect to police equipment, unless it can be demonstrated that there is reason to doubt it.

Ideally, your lawyer would request the calibration record, and when the state failed to produce it or produced one that is facially too far back from calibration, you could then move to suppress the radar gun and motion for dismissal on lack of evidence..

..this is more effective under 10mph because over 10mph the judge is likely to find the police officer's verbal testimony as to what he witnessed as an expert sufficient even without the gun, unless you have some way of demonstrating that you couldn't possibly be traveling that speed.*


*an old physics professor of mine in undergrad had a great story concerning tire marks and angular momentum that he used to beat a speeding ticket, but for most people this part means "you're fucked" unless it's something like 80mph in a car that can't clear 70 going downhill with a tailwind...

edit: realized this didn't really address the 'evidence' question: simply noting 'radar/laser/etc' device on the ticket is generally sufficient to be considered as introducing it into evidence. - the accuracy of the device can still be challenged, and you can sometimes demand that the device itself be presented before the court, although it can be difficult to ensure the prosecution is complying with that (how do you know what the gun looks like?) and even more difficult to get access to it before it's been re-calibrated..

[BerenTebogo]

Sath >.<

I can't believe you of all people would say something stupid like that. Again, for that to be true you'd have to eliminate every single other variable. Traffic lights, traffic itself, etc. You don't just magically have every green light and the road to yourself.

If you barely miss scooting through a light and have to sit there...that's 2minutes or so. That could cause you to catch the next light, and so on. Don't give me the "just highways," thing either like none of them have traffic lights, or that it's the only variable. It could be the difference between you getting stuck in a wad of idiots that don't know how to drive that slow you down, which could cause you to get a light or get stuck in another wad that you wouldn't have hit otherwise.

Or you end up getting caught behind a wreck, or even be involved in one. One of the first things I've always thought when I've been in a wreck (and I know it's the same for most people) was "wow, if we'd been her 1 second earlier we would have died." Or "wow, 3 seconds earlier and we wouldn't have been hit." etc.

There is no point considering variables that can never, ever, ever be quantified or held to any baseline, ever.

Over the average of your day to day driving, ie. to and from work, store, etc, as the amount of circuits you complete increase, the average of red/green lights will eventually settle into the ratio of the timer for each light. Ex: Green light #1 lasts 1:30 Red light #1 lasts 1:00, as you continue to drive along this route day in and day out you will eventually encounter roughly 3 green lights for ever 2 red lights. That is the only level of variable control you can apply to the example.

As the lights and traffic patterns even out the time you save (ie. the 3minutes in my original scenario) will average out along the total cumulative ratio of green to red along the entire route. Or, in other words, a whole mess of different timing variables that will undoubtedly come out to a 1:1 ish ratio, meaning the 3 minutes will make you hit green lights invariably as much as you will hit red lights.

Traffic is completely unquantifiable So are accidents. So are some of the other things you mentioned. Some of your examples are basically the equivalent of saying "you shouldn't drive your car when anyone else is driving their car because bad things can happen that you cannot control."

An average is just that, an average. The (very loose, to be honest) example still holds because as the sample size (number of trips) increases without bound, any large traffic jams or accidents you experience become anomalies in a large data set that, despite having uncharacteristically large values, do not effect the average in any appreciable way.

If you want to expand it to encompass any trip, any day, any time, even ones you'll never take again, well...I'll check back in 35 years. Let me know how you're going with integrating those enumerable unknown variables.

It's a friggin generalization, lol, and you made me write all this. Fuck. Offffffff.

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

edit: realized this didn't really address the 'evidence' question: simply noting 'radar/laser/etc' device on the ticket is generally sufficient to be considered as introducing it into evidence. - the accuracy of the device can still be challenged, and you can sometimes demand that the device itself be presented before the court, although it can be difficult to ensure the prosecution is complying with that (how do you know what the gun looks like?) and even more difficult to get access to it before it's been re-calibrated..

You could be right but I don't think so. From watching trials it appears evidence can only be introduced through witnesses, not warrants or indictments. Again, I haven't had the class though.

And to JMC I think it depends on how busy the jurisdiction is honestly. There are parts of NC where you don't see a judge if you don't request it and others where you automatically go before the judge.

[Amele]

You could be right but I don't think so. From watching trials it appears evidence can only be introduced through witnesses, not warrants or indictments. Again, I haven't had the class though.

And to JMC I think it depends on how busy the jurisdiction is honestly. There are parts of NC where you don't see a judge if you don't request it and others where you automatically go before the judge.

I haven't had evidence yet either, but federal evidence rules don't generally apply in state courts, unless you're out of state and get it removed.* (even then, many states don't always hear traffic violations at trial - in PA for instance, you're almost always before a magistrate or if you are before a judge

we're both equally (in)competent in this area I think - I would say that you're right, technically, the cop is serving as the initial point of introduction during his verbal testimony, so when he says "I saw the gun say XX, as noted on my report/the ticket" there's a presumption that the gun is accurate because he's a competent expert witness and most jurisdictions customarily accept the purported accuracy of police equipment at face value, so the burden is on the defense to challenge that before they move to dismiss.

*edit: which wouldn't be state court anymore

*of course, maybe your school covers state evidence rules for your state, mine doesn't since most of its graduates will be practicing out of state and they figure we'll learn what we need to on the bars of choice anyway.

[Iku]

I am not sure why people feels the need to speed 20 over speed limit. For the last 5 years, i only got 1 speeding ticket for doing 30mph in 25mph zone in a military base.

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

I haven't had evidence yet either, but federal evidence rules don't generally apply in state courts, unless you're out of state and get it removed.* (even then, many states don't always hear traffic violations at trial - in PA for instance, you're almost always before a magistrate or if you are before a judge

we're both equally (in)competent in this area I think - I would say that you're right, technically, the cop is serving as the initial point of introduction during his verbal testimony, so when he says "I saw the gun say XX, as noted on my report/the ticket" there's a presumption that the gun is accurate because he's a competent expert witness and most jurisdictions customarily accept the purported accuracy of police equipment at face value, so the burden is on the defense to challenge that before they move to dismiss.

*edit: which wouldn't be state court anymore

*of course, maybe your school covers state evidence rules for your state, mine doesn't since most of its graduates will be practicing out of state and they figure we'll learn what we need to on the bars of choice anyway.

My school doesn't, but the state where I will be practicing, and currently interning, is an almost exact replica of the federal rules with a just a couple major exceptions.

And in your scenario I'm not sure the cop can testify to the speed although I don't know why. It happened in a recent DUI case. The cop was about to say what the speed was, defense attorney objected b/c it wasn't in evidence, and the Judge sustained the objection. Maybe that's just NC though.

[jmc]

My school doesn't, but the state where I will be practicing, and currently interning, is an almost exact replica of the federal rules with a just a couple major exceptions.

And in your scenario I'm not sure the cop can testify to the speed although I don't know why. It happened in a recent DUI case. The cop was about to say what the speed was, defense attorney objected b/c it wasn't in evidence, and the Judge sustained the objection. Maybe that's just NC though.

That could be because of his the criminal complaint was written against the DUI suspect, or how the incident report was written as well.

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

That could be because of his the criminal complaint was written against the DUI suspect, or how the incident report was written as well.

It's definitely not because of the incident report. I'm pretty sure those have nothing to do with how evidence gets introduced.

And the "complaint" was your typical citation.

[Tythera]

I always do the 10% rule (1.1 times the speed limit), I've never been pulled over in 10 years of driving, knock on wood

[Haruk]

so since this is pretty similar to what i'm about to ask, imma just ask here instead of making a new one..

basically today i was at a stop light with 2 passengers, i checked all was clear, so i go. then all of a sudden these old 80 year old immigrants come flying down the road definitely going way over the speed limit and clip my car and pretty much ruins my front bumper, fender, hood, and a couple other random things that i can end up fixing myself for relatively cheap
old guy was crazy, he comes out of the car and asks if im on dope, which we apparently mistaked for "are you an adult?" so i said yes, then he asks me where it is and starts searching my car and im just like wtf?

anyways cops and ambulance come(no one was hurt, but since the 2 chicks in my car were under 18[17 assholes, im 18 before anyone makes any pedo jokes]) they are forced to go into the ambulance and test em, i just go with them to make sure they're all okay while cops talking to the old people.

anyways turns out no one at all was hurt, we get back out and cop gives me a ticket for not paying attention to the stop sign, which i can totally see how he'd come to that conclusion, but then he just leaves before i can say anything. any way i'd be able to fight this at all outside of just hoping the popo doesn't show up to court? can't really see the law being on my side since theres no evidence of them speeding aside from what my passengers say, and i doubt i'm gonna be able to get insurance to side with me for this. we apparently both have the same insurance, except i don't have coverage for collision(expensive as fuck being 18 and a guy, even with no previous tickets) and don't really see a legitimate case to argue with so insurance doesn't further rape me in the asshole, and also have to pay out of my pocket to do the body work

also fyi: i've never gotten a ticket before. i've gotten a shitload of warnings from cops, and some other random things like for loitering too late at night in a park, but no actual ticket until now. kinda shitty, since just today i was telling my friends about how i've always gotten away with getting pulled over and never got a ticket

sorry that was really long, just wanted to put up all the details and see if BG legal can halp me at all

[Acturus]

so since this is pretty similar to what i'm about to ask, imma just ask here instead of making a new one..

basically today i was at a stop light with 2 passengers, i checked all was clear, so i go. then all of a sudden these old 80 year old immigrants come flying down the road definitely going way over the speed limit and clip my car and pretty much ruins my front bumper, fender, hood, and a couple other random things that i can end up fixing myself for relatively cheap
old guy was crazy, he comes out of the car and asks if im on dope, which we apparently mistaked for "are you an adult?" so i said yes, then he asks me where it is and starts searching my car and im just like wtf?

anyways cops and ambulance come(no one was hurt, but since the 2 chicks in my car were under 18[17 assholes, im 18 before anyone makes any pedo jokes]) they are forced to go into the ambulance and test em, i just go with them to make sure they're all okay while cops talking to the old people.

anyways turns out no one at all was hurt, we get back out and cop gives me a ticket for not paying attention to the stop sign, which i can totally see how he'd come to that conclusion, but then he just leaves before i can say anything. any way i'd be able to fight this at all outside of just hoping the popo doesn't show up to court? can't really see the law being on my side since theres no evidence of them speeding aside from what my passengers say, and i doubt i'm gonna be able to get insurance to side with me for this. we apparently both have the same insurance, except i don't have coverage for collision(expensive as fuck being 18 and a guy, even with no previous tickets) and don't really see a legitimate case to argue with so insurance doesn't further rape me in the asshole, and also have to pay out of my pocket to do the body work

also fyi: i've never gotten a ticket before. i've gotten a shitload of warnings from cops, and some other random things like for loitering too late at night in a park, but no actual ticket until now. kinda shitty, since just today i was telling my friends about how i've always gotten away with getting pulled over and never got a ticket

sorry that was really long, just wanted to put up all the details and see if BG legal can halp me at all

There are several poor decisions on your part in this story, but I'm a little baffled at the fact that the cop didn't take a statement from you.

Hire an attorney if you intend to fight.

[Ikith]

So I just realized on my court hearing date that is says:
"You have requested this because you do not believe that you have committed the infraction"

I didn't check that on the ticket when I sent it in I checked:
"You admit guilt but you feel that the circumstances are of importance" or something along those lines.

What do I do? Am I SOL or do I just call the court or something?

Court is today in like two hours and I'm nervous as fuck and I don't have an attorney but I am still looking... Fuck!