How do I fight a speeding ticket if I wasn’t speeding? I was some ticked, I tell you that. I think the lady who was dinged just after me was pissed too, but I didn’t think to get her name at the time.
How do I fight a speeding ticket if I wasn’t speeding? Unsuccessfully, probably. What are the details of the episode?
check my reply to the other law breaker. There’s lots of stuff on the internet.
Find out your court date and request a continuance. Repeat 3-4 times, and have good reasons for needing one. Show up for court after the last re-setting, and it’s unlikely the cop will be there.
If he is, ask to put him on the stand for questioning. Next, ask several questions about how he determined you were speeding. If he used radar, ask him if the gun ever needs calibrating. How often? When was it last calibrated? How does he know it was working properly? How fast were you going? Etc. etc. See if you can poke holes in how he determined you were speeding.
That’s about all I can think of that you can do. Be prepared to pay your fine + costs.
I got a ticket for careless driving once. When I questioned the cop, he kept contradicting himself. Every time I pointed out a fact that he got wrong, he looked at his notebook and said, oh yeah, you’re right.
Then the judge said, “I find the officer’s testimony to be entirely credible and I am finding you guilty.”
My sister passed a parked, empty school bus once, I was in the car. Cop pulls her over, tickets her for passing a bus with flashing red lights. In court, we testify. The cop lies on the stand. She is found guilty and loses her license for 3 months. different judge.
Went through the speed trap, which I never saw. Around here they use handheld radar guns. Down the road the other officer signals for me to pull over, and proceeds to tell me that I was going approximately 10 km/h faster than I was actually going at any point along that particular stretch of road. There was another lady in a minivan who was pulled over just after I was, she didn’t seem to happy either. The officer did not know exactly where the speed trap was located.
Around here, the official limit is 35 km/h. I was actually somewhere between 45 and 50 km/h, which is the generally accepted limit, no-one ever gets a ticket for going under 50 km/h. The officer said I was doing 57.
It just ticks me off, because now I have to go to the police department in person to change my court date, as I will be travelling on the appointed date. I have to show up in traffic court to say that I will contest the charge. I have to show up again to actually contest the charge. After all that, I’ll probably still need to pay the fine and have my insurance premiums go up. All for something I didn’t do.
Um, correct me if I’m wrong, but you were speeding, right? You’re thinking of contesting the ticket because you were actually only 15 km over the limit instead of 22? I say pay up.
Dawn
Yeah. Shit happens. I was only giving my $0.02 on what he could do to try and get out of the ticket. Judges will almost always take a cop’s word, no matter what, because they KNOW you aren’t appealing a traffic ticket, even if the Judge is 100% wrong. It just ain’t gonna happen.
Frankly, the best chance to get out of it is to get several continuances and then hope the cop doesn’t show up. If he/she does, or if he/she is not required to show up, you’re hosed.
Hell, man! You were speeding! Generally accepted speed? I’ve never heard of common law speed zones, before. Take your medicine and pay the fine.
FYI - Radar units are “calibrated” every six months by a certified shop. The unit is “tested” at the start of the shift, after each stop and at the end of the shift. Policeman do NOT calibrate radar units, they only test them.
Also, police officers do not have to answer any quetions about “how” the radar unit works. He only needs to know how to set it up, test it and read it! Thats all! He does not need to testify about the technical aspects of the radar unit!
I’ve NEVER heard of a judge giving 3-4 continuances in a traffic case. 1 or 2 maybe if you have a GREAT reason…like your own death! : ) I never missed a court date in 22 years (except 1 when I was a Chief : )
If you beleive you were not speeding in this case, just chalk it up to all the other times you WERE speeding and never got caught, pay the ticket, and say…oh, well, its no big deal, and that the way life goes! I’ve had 6 tickets, including 3 for speeding…so who cares! I was a cop for 22 years including 10 as a “chief”.
Sorry Dawn, but you do not understand. Where I live, there is one national speed limit. 35 km/h. No-one drives at that speed, and no-one ever gets a ticket for less than 50 km/h. The “real” is 50, i.e. where enforcement starts.
**All for something I didn’t do. **
Well. . .you were speeding, just not as fast as the cops say, right? The “generally accepted noone-ever-gets-a-ticket under 50kph limit” cuts no ice in court, I’m afraid.
Anyway, I guess you could try to make the case that the radar gun was out of calibration. In my experience, though, that doesn’t often actually work. (And how do you know it isn’t your speedometer that’s out of calibration, sir? When was the last time it was calibrated? Do you have official documentation? The officer does, count on it.)
Also, you can try to argue that the second cop got the wrong car- if he doesn’t even know where his partner is located, how can he know what car his partner’s talking about? I wouldn’t predict much success there, either.
I think that unless the officer fails to show up, you’re going to lose. Sorry.
The other side of it is that the fines work on a scale. The faster you were going, the higher the fine. So yes, it is worth contesting.
I also didn’t explain another aspect of this very well. Even if there were tickets issued under 50 km/h (extremely rare), around here there are additional ramifications for doing over 50 km/h. Over 50, you cannot just pay the fine (I would have no problem doing that), instead you have to show up in court. Also, if you get dinged twice in a 2 year period for exceeding 50 km/h, then you may lose your drivers license. I do not want strike one against me if I was not in violation of that.
In other words, there are 2 speed thresholds that are in play, the speed limit and the 50 km/h threshold.
I understand. I just think your viable options are limited. Good luck.
(what country are you in, BTW?)
Bermuda
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I know a guy who was pulled over a number of years ago by US Park Police in SF …he was loaded and the arresting officer took him to an SFPD station where he was booked.
The guy’s whole family are cops and he was pretty sure he was going to beat it…they know all the tricks…so as the arresting officer was leaving he mouthed off about her not being a real cop and why doesn’t she go escort raccoons acros the road or some such thing. Needless to say he really pissed her off.
His buddies in the SFPD found out when she was to go on vacation and scheduled the court date for that week. She got win of the move, and flew back to the city from Mexico or somewhere just to testify.
She got the last laugh and he lost his license for 2 years…if he’d kept his big fat mouth shut he’d have walked away.