March 04, 2004
Murphy's Irish Law
I lost my virginity Tuesday night. Just kidding; I've been pulled over by the cops before. However, the last time I received a ticket I believe I was 16 years old, and it was completely bogus: I would have had to floor it from the corner I turned a mere 2 blocks away, to the speed trap to have achieved the speed they said I did, and I couldn't have braked for the officer standing in the road. Since that officer is still alive, I obviously didn't have the pedal down that whole two blocks. But I digress.
I'm normally a rather meticulous driver. I don't habitually speed, don't tailgate, always use my turn-signals, stop for yellow lights, change lanes to let people merge into traffic, etc. I even consider driving to be a skill worthy of improving on, so I do things like double-clutch even though my transmission has synchronizers, practice heel-and-toeing (that's some tough stuff), and so forth. In short -- and I know everyone says this, but they're all liars -- I consider myself one of the better drivers out there. Murphy had it in for me Tuesday night though:
I blew a stoplight. I was distracted by something (I know I was hunting for parking spaces at that approximate time, so that was likely it), and when I looked up and noticed the light was no longer green, I was moving too fast and was too close to the intersection to make anything other than an ABS-engaging stop full of sound and fury. So I rolled on through. Right in front of a cop.
Officer Witzel was a friendly lady, and we exchanged pleasant words before she headed back to her car to verify all my paperwork. As it's early in the month and quotas aren't due to be filled, I expected to get off with a warning. Negative-o. Not only did I make a driving mistake uncharacteristic of me, but I ended up with an unforgiving officer to teach me the error of my ways. Perhaps I should have cried to elicit some pity.
In any case, I have a few options available to me:
1) Plead guilty and pay $91.50, acquiring a currently unkown number of points on my clean record. Section 1E-3 of the Nebraska manual leads me to believe it could be 3 or 4. Based on those points, it's "safer" to willfully drive well above the posted limits. Hrm, I wonder what kind of behavior is being encouraged here?
2) Take STOP class, which eliminates all the fines, costs, and points of the ticket. I did this for my first ticket. Boring beyond comprehension. It also costs $60 now, which is not significantly different from the full ticket cost.
3) ???
4) Profit!
5) Attempt to plead it away in court.
6) Attempt to plead it away to...the county attorney? I've heard of some groveling procedure that others have used to reduce their speeding tickets, but I'm not familiar with it. Readers, any help?
When casting your votes, keep in mind that my car is insured through my company, so the potential raising of my insurance rates is not a concern.
Oh wise and experienced P.H.A.W., I seek your advice in particular.
Comments
We all have those moments and they just arent fun at all, especially when u are a cautious and safe driver like it seems the kahle family is. Just seems we have just the bad luck of having something distract us at the wrong moment. I also point out that i am also a very safe driver, drive a manual, and love my car very much. I dont wanna hurt my plum colored Charlene.
I would go with stop class also, i did with my ticket of Negligent driving that the officer didnt have to give me. She probably felt that this kid with a trench coat needs to learn a lesson or something and gave me a nice ticket to go along with my allready small accident i felt horrible about (especially hitting someone who i knew was in the car ahead of me lol). Luckily i took most of the damage, which im thankful for. Stop class can be not that bad also if your lucky. I had a teacher that has a great sense of humor and actually could do decent as a comedian if she tried too. All in all, the 8 hours went by fast, and wasnt as bad as people had told me. Maybe i was lucky. btw, the charlene thing was a joke, i really dont have a name for my car.
I'm going to plead my case Monday to the city attorney. I need to do that in person, and I'm not in snazzy enough dress today to feel confident groveling. I lose nothing by asking for leniency, and I may be able to get the ticket dropped. If that fails, and the license points at stake are more than 1, then I'll likely suffer through STOP class.
I'm not as...well-seasoned...as Adam, but if I were you, I'd go with Option #2. If you're eligible for it, do it. You'll pay less money than the ticket, it won't show up on your record, and most importantly it won't show up on your insurance.
It's the safest and cheapest route. You know you actually committed the violation, so fighting it in court might be a waste of your time and you'd have to pay the full amount anyways if you lost.
That is, unless the cop screwed up in some way. On my last traffic ticket, the cop wrote down that the violation occured at an intersection that didn't exist (so where does 1st Street and 2nd Street intersect again?). Although I got the ticket thrown out before it actually went to trial, my lawyer (yes, I hired a lawyer) told me that errors on the ticket might be worth some points in the proceedings..."if the officer didn't know the intersection where it occured, how she we be sure she actually saw my client?"
If you end up fighting it, I believe you'll have a much better chance of winning if you've got representation, but then the cost of getting a lawyer will be far higher than just going to STOP class. I found the whole lawyer/trial thing to be rather fun (mostly because I won)...I felt like a hardened criminal sitting among defendants in drug possession and child support cases while I held my $51 traffic ticket in my hand.
As for #6, Marcus asked around and apparently that doesn't necessarily work in Lancaster county. He did it all the time in Illinois, but around here he didn't have much success.