yep, I know…when I saw the lights behind me I thought ‘wtf???’
Then Rambo came out “sir you were speeding”…I thought about telling him that I wasn’t the fastest out there by any mean and probably the easiest to catch but decided it was wiser not to…
anyway, thanks for the tip Monk…I will tell them ‘Monk said so on slowtwitch’ then Dan will go to jail for contempt to the court 
Back when I lived in Houston Texas I contested a speeding ticket. I was speeding at the time though the ticket sucked b/c he got me on one of the long offramps coming off I-59 where the speed limit was 70. Anyway I had heard that if the officer doesn’t show up for the court date your case is dismissed and you don’t have to pay. So I trekked down to the Houston Courthouse and of course my officer showed up. I was called up in front of the judge along with the officed who wrote the ticket. The officer told his speal “I caught her on my radar going 10 over the speed limit” and then the judge asked me what my appeal was. I told him the crap about it was on the off ramp and I hadn’t had time to slow down. He didn’t laugh or roll his eyes at me but I could tell he wanted to. I had to pay the full fine.
Based on my experience you will get to stand up in front of the judge and give you side of the case. I’d advise you to be prepared and well rehearsed with your appeal. Technically you are in the wrong so your only saving grace is that the judge will take pity on you.
Good Luck!
I got a ticket for running a red traffic light the other day… it was back in September… after jogging my memory I remembered… I was in a hurry to get home and watch the Vuelta! LOL…
man…what a sucker! 
I am going to call the DA’s office as PH (I think suggested)…only 4mph higher and I did the defensive driving etc…just got there one day late…
but then no one told me: IF I go to court, can I say “objection your honor!”?
or if he/she asks me something, can I say “Objection your honor, leading the witness!”…I have a whole bunch of things to try there! heeheh…
How about: I was ‘rushin’ back to my computer to chat on slowtwitch…if I do free publicity for Dan, can I get a slowtwitch T-shirt?
A friend of mine is a writer and musician.
This is his story:
Amuck in America by Joey Sweeney
En Route to Minneapolis, June 4: Night 14
After playing Bloomington via Nashville, and Chicago the night after that, The Trouble has slipped into a Midwestern loop that will pretty much take up most of the rest of the tour. What this means in practical terms is that the drives get longer as we crisscross the flat expanse of the American heartland and that, in doing so, we will have plenty of time, each of us, to practice our own take on the Fargo accent, as we have reached that particular epicenter of dopey, fake-nice America.
For the last few days and the next handful to come, we spend our afternoons in these roadside cheese shops that pop up in Wisconsin the way fireworks stands riddle the highways and byways below the Mason-Dixon line. They’re part tourist traps, part desperate local trade and we are shocked and amazed at what simple joy is brought to us by sitting in the van eating cheese in total silence. In front of us, there are only three things: the vista of loveliness that is the famous Blue Mounds of Wisconsin, a Triscuit stacked with five-year-old extra sharp white cheddar and the future.
But behind us–we knew it wouldn’t be long before *this *had to happen–is The Man, clocking the doings of us all. And on this sleepy stretch of road, on a silvery Monday afternoon in that time when the coming is over and the going has yet to proceed, our van captain is clocked (erroneously, we believe to this day, erroneously, we say!) at more than 15 miles past the legal limit and, just after we realize it’s too late, the sirens go up. Shit.
But what’s this? For a moment, it seems as though The Man is pulling over car next us, not us, even though he’s just flagged us over, too.
All too soon, it becomes clear that this guy’s a cowboy: He’s roping two steers at once. And by the time he’s gotten it through our thick skulls that he wants everyone on the side of the road, we’re pulled over, mildly catatonic and completely affronted at the breach of cop-citizen manners this guy has taken up.
And when he finally gets out–what is it that cops do back there in the time between when you get stopped and when they approach the car? Is it prayer? Are they playing with themselves?–it’s all we can do not to explode in laughter: This guy is 22, tops, (a realization that, yes, does make us feel a little pathetic that we’ve all got a good five years on the cop who’s stopping us) with a Pillsbury middle and a Dudley Do-right hat-strap pulling into his pudgy face as he opens his mouth and proceeds to ask us in the deepest, dopiest heartland brogue if we know why he stopped us.
Millions of reasons go through our heads–because we just spent the last 40 hours mocking your whole gay middle American youth pastor/Promise Keeper culture; because your penis is the size of a fat little thumbtack; because you need to write tickets so the local government can pay for the inferior education and abysmal eating habits of your sorry, mean children–but eventually, one of us just says, “No.”
In due time, it is revealed that the man we have dubbed Officer Terdy Lundegaard had us clocked at 81 and 75 mph (horse shit, I tell you!), and will be issuing us a citation in the amount of $150. Since we are out-of-staters, we have two choices: either pay the fine now, or follow Terdy into town to contest it, which, as Terdy points out while eyeing up our equipment, “mide take a liddle tyme, guys.”
And because we know that this is an understatement bordering on the obscene, that in fact, if we did follow Terdy into town, that he and his boys would take our time and make Laffy Taffy out of it, stretching it until it was cartoonishly long, making the whole thing a joke about time itself, perhaps, and because we also know that we’re already 30 minutes behind on our desired ETA in Minneapolis for the show tonight, we make a silent admission: We’re fucked. We have to pay and get going.
Conveniently, Terdy has a card-swiping machine in his prowler, and can take credit cards or ATM/debit. (This piece of knowledge sends our anger glands into overdrive, and in subsequent retellings, Terdy’s credit-card capability will loom large.)
And it must be said here that The Trouble, being a band with at least some kind of tabs on our own mostly working-class lineage, has no problem with cops. We respect them, and as often as not, we’d rather hang out with them than the indie-rock pantywaists we’re currently traveling the country trying to impress.
But it is so hard to give it up to a cop with a fully operational e-commerce device in his cruiser. And this is the reason people on shows like COPS or Real Stories of The Highway Patrol give chase: not because they’re innocent (as we are!), but because they can’t bring themselves around to the fact that the guy who’s trying to bust them is just so … so lame.
Thoughts like these loom like thunderclouds in the car, and when Terdy returns to the driver’s side window, having just swiped away the last $150 of our band money, it’s all we can do to take the card back, roll up the window and get back on the road in total silence. Total silence.
I was at traffic school 2 months ago. During the discussions the lecturer, 25 years a traffic cop, said “always go to court if you can, 30% of the time the traffic cop doesn’t have time to show up and it’s thrown out”.
Cop: License and registration please.
F: here you go.
Cop: FRANCE-WAH??? what kinda name is that boy?
F: Its a French name officer.
Cop: A FRENCH NAME??? well ain’t that purty. You from France boy?
F: Yes sir.
Cop: Do they let you drive like that in France FRANCE-WAH? Huh??? cuz here in Texas we have laws see. This ain’t no race track like them roads in Europe boy.
F: I’m very sorry officer was I speeding?
Cop: SPEEDING??? boy you was doing 64 mph and here in Texas we give Frenchies the chair fer drivin like that. Assume the position, SPREAD EM BOY!
F: ARRRGGGGRRGGGGGGGGGGG, not the mace, please ARRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHH, please no not my face…AOOOWWWWWWWW that hurt, please don’t hit me anymore.
Cop: Goddamn Frenchies eatin good horses, what kinda people are you! SMACK.
Hey Francois,
If you go to court it’s likely to be thrown out. In CA the police have to show regular testing on their radars etc. 4 mph is such a small percentage of your total speed that it could be accounted for by calibration error in the car’s speedometer or the radar gun. Just tell the court that you weren’t going that fast, that you were adhering to the speed limit. The cops usually give you 10 mph leeway around here.
It’s worth a try.
Colin
I’ve been to traffic court a few times. In my state the judges are pretty generous about letting you plead to an offense with no points if your record is pretty clean. You still end up paying the full fine though. They do ask the cop if its ok with him/her so it is best to be nice to the cop if you run into him in the hall before the hearing (and hopefully you were civil during the ticketing!) If the cop doesn’t show up you walk.
Unless you have an iron clad defense, like you can document with photos and 27 witnesses that your car was not on the road at the time the ticket was issued, think twice about arguing your innocence or trying to justify your transgression. I sat through a bunch of cases and everyone I saw who claimed they didn’t do it or had some excuse got nailed. Everyone who acted deferential and contrite got to plead to a no point offense (if they had a decent record). If you don’t go first, listen to the cases before you to get a feel for what the judge is like.
Could always use the “How many kilometers are in a mile?” defense. They can’t kill you for a rounding error … but then again …