lol seriously..

The officer is not present during the hearing though? & how would they identify me if both my name and ID is incorrect. Just doesn't make sense to me. The car isn't even under my name. Only thing correct is my home address

Bunch of Boy Scouts!!!

Really? It's California, the land of fruits, nuts and illegals.......just move on and do what you want. :driving:

kind of ironic.

Yup....I believe this is the very reason that up here in B.C., Photo Radar is no longer used. Period.
Courts ruled that the owner could not be held responsible for tickets sent to them in the mail (as owner of a car caught speeding by an unattended photo van) when the driver of the vehicle could not be identified in the photo ticket when the owner denied it was them.
It all got really rolling when public outcry pretty much proved the vans were being set up in 'dicey' locations for generation of income over speed enforcement. Some of the stories are epic.
Now you have to meet face to face with your accuser. No chicken**** photo radar tickets arriving in your mailbox when you lent your car to your stoner brother.

104

Some of you guys are silly. You know the consequences of speeding. Yet you decide to do it, and when you get caught, you get mad at the officer for doing his job. Enforcing the law. Sometimes it sucks, on both sides.

Some of the advice in here is pretty good and some of it isn't so sound. Do not ignore this. As the others have said, a little mistake isn't always going to get the ticket thrown out. The last thing you want is a bench warrant and a suspended drivers license. Some departments give their officers assigned court dates and times through the year. If you keep rescheduling then it will more than likely be rescheduled on another one of the officers court dates. If it isn't, that officer will more than likely be issued a subpoena to be at court. That means that he technically has to go.

I would simply go to court and fight it yourself. Theres no sense in hiring a lawyer for a little traffic charge. Decide whatever your defense should be and roll with it. If you got a ticket in California, use that guide that someone posted. That is actually a really good defense in the way that law was written.

Almost by definition, people who drive 50 in a 35 are not good citizens. Man up. You got caught and the ticket, along with its associated costs, are supposed to be painful and ruin your day.

:icon17:

cops word vs yours in court, along with tons of identical information on the ticket matching you. You lose every single time. If you don't want to get tickets, follow the traffic laws. Otherwise live with the consequences.

I found out that in Indiana a couple "myths" about traffic court are not true. My teenage son got a ticket for running a red light. Somehow the officer wrote the ticket to me because the title was in my name. I thought, cool, the officer screwed up, this will get dismissed. I waste a morning trying to get the ticket dismissed. They won't budge, and I file not guilty and get a date with the judge. I waste another half day of work going to court. The officer is a no show. Again, I think I have a perfect situation to get this thrown out. Nope, the judge says the officer needs to be there to verify I wasn't the driver and gives the officer an out by rescheduling. So I waste another half day of work, go back to court and the officer tells the judge that he made a mistake and the ticket was removed from my record and they re-issued it to my son. Once it was corrected, my son paid the fine and didn't hassle with going to court.

So, if the officer doesn't show up, it doesn't get automatically dropped.
If the info on the ticket is completely incorrect, they can fix it as needed.

If you are guilty, you may be able to to defer the ticket. In Indiana, you can get the prosecutor to give you a deferment. You basically pay the fine plus a monthly fee for 6 months. If you don't get a ticket during the 6 months, the ticket is dropped. You don't get points and your insurance will not know. But, if you get any ticket during the 6 months, you loose the money you paid and have to deal with the original ticket all over again.

one time i got a reckless driving ticket going 0mph... yea 0 as in zero miles per hour. guess what i still had to pay $600 for a lawyer, $400 for the ticket and $100 for the defensive driving school.

unless they give you a blank ticket, you will have to pay for it. i have never seen a ticket get dismissed because something was written wrong on it.

every time i got a ticket i went to court and got it reduced so it doesn't go on my record and i get no points. more importantly the insurance doesn't find out.

Also traffic court is one of the most boring, aggravating, and staged courts of all time. They can postpone, delay, make you come back as many times as they want. Its not even worth going. The traffic court judge I was in front of over an expired meter, his name was Judge Steven Segal, I kid you not, and he was just as much a pompous jerk as the real one! He was on stage, and all the people at court were his audience, he only got to like 5 cases, and the other 25 people there had to come back another night, after sitting there for 4 hours until 11pm on a work night.

Radars and laser jammers.......... Haven't had a ticket in 8 years and trust me, I push the limit on a regular basis. If I don't wanna speed I drive my smart car, which is my DD, but when I get in my Nismo or SRT8 there's a strong chance I'm getting in the triples.

OP, a few things:

1. if the cop wrote incorrect info on your ticket, a good lawyer will question the competency of the leo.
2. provided the leo got you with a laser radar gun, you could check public records whether the device was properly calibrated, which again, a good lawyer would eat up.

I gotta ask; what exactly were you doing/not doing to receive a ticket for reckless driving, when your car wasn't even moving? A burnout?

Amen

no, i was driving 40 in a 25 zone coming into a turn that had pot holes in the road. i got as close to the double yellow line without crossing it, a cop was coming on the opposite end and turned around after me. i immediately pulled over cause i thought she got me going 15mph not a big deal. she comes up to the window and states "you could have lost control and hit me" and proceeds to write me a reckless driving ticket.


i could have won the lottery but didnt. wish i could go collect the 200 million jackpot with that statement :roflpuke2: :roflpuke2:

don't laugh man... i saw it happen although it was a pelaton of bike cops. about 6 of them somehow pulled over a car. the crazy part in the opposite direction another group of bike cops had someone else pulled over.

okay it was pretty funny :rofl2:

seeing a bimmer and a caddy being written up by a bike cop :tup:

1) Which is garbage because ANYONE can make a mistake. This is why I have a strong dislike for defense attorneys.

2) Most newer LIDARs (laser) calibrate themselves when you turn them on. Also on LIDARs, calibration is literally pushing a button and waiting 5 seconds. Radars are just as easy.

You've left out one very important detail. When you put government and legalese (the language of lawyers) in anything you need to throw all semblance of common sense out the window and promptly dive after it, if only to ensure its demise.

I hate cops.. Have gotten false tickets twice.. I would ask a lawyer

:shakes head:

America ain't ever gave a 7uck about y'all
Let the streets be the prosecuter, judge and jury
Let me have a trial by fury

Must..... resist... ignorance...

So she writes you a ticket for what could've happened and that's justified just because there cops and guys on here are actually defending these azzholes that we pay to protect and serve??? What a joke!!!

Lol.. Any recommendations?

I have the ESCORT 9500 in my SRT8 and the 8500 in my Nismo and neither have ever failed me. Got K40 Jammers on the SRT8 and getting ready to do the same to the Z.

1. lets see how liberal you are if a doctor was to amputate the wrong limb. yes, anyone can make a mistake, however, leo are trained to pay attention to detail. if an leo cannot even get basic information, a good lawyer can and will argue the integrity and accuracy of the ticket itself.

2. true, but, not all states use the same radar gun. either way, there will be some record that the device has been calibrated. if this cannot be produced, a good lawyer can and will argue the validity of the ticket.

exactly

Hahaha. Man you've got me pinned wrong. First off I'm pretty conservative. But at the same time I'm not an "azzhole" like JC says. People make mistakes. You're comparison of a doctor amputating the wrong limb is somewhat more extreme than writing a number or a letter down mistakenly. My point with that is, a defense attorney can knowingly defend someone who has murdered someone, or robbed someone, but then get the guy off on a technicality. If your or a loved one was a victim of a crime and their defense attorney got them off of an assault charge for a typo, you would be pretty angry.

So because this officer wrote down one digit wrong out of the guys license number, he is therefore proven incompetent for the entirety of the case? Lol give me a break.

I understand the calibration of the equipment. I'm just saying that you shouldn't bank on that because officers know that will get the ticket thrown out, therefore they will probably take the ~5 seconds to do it.

Lol.. Bro.. Murder is also "extreme" (more so than amputation even) so.. Him speeding a little.. Really shouldn't be compared to any of that..

In my personal experience.. Cops have straight up lied.. I was speeding, cop pulls me over and gives me a reckless driving ticket.. When I read the ticket.. It said (I'm being serious here) that I was driving in such a reckless manor that cars were swerving off the road to avoid me crashing into them.. I couldn't believe it.. Had to get a lawyer and go through the court stuff.. In the end.. Cop agreed to reduce it to careless driving rather than reckless..

Bull f***ing shi*.. Had to pay court fees, lawyer, the ticket itself.. And had to do a ridiculous amount of community service hours..
All because the cop decided to lie and punish me for a more severe offense than what I had actually done..

Another incident.. Was speeding (82 on a 70).. Cop pulls me over.. Tells me I was doing 90.. I tell him I actually had cruise control set to 82 so I wasn't going 90.. His response.. "Oh.. So you're admitting to speeding then" gave me the ticket for 90.. This might seem negligible (90 rather than 82).. But it's not.. Going more than 15 mph over gets you points and therefore higher insurance rates.. So rather than paying it and that's it (what I deserved).. I had to do the whole driving school crap to avoid the points on my license.
Sorry.. I have no respect for cops

I get where you're coming from. A couple of cops lied and f'ed you over, but saying that you have no respect for cops is pretty harsh. I doubt many of us would be willing to do what they do day in and day out. This thread is related to a speeding ticket, but cops do a hell of a lot more than write citations. Sh$t that I wouldn't want to do, and I suspect that you wouldn't want to do either. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, unless you live in a suburb or the country, I doubt giving out citations is really high on the list of stuff they want to get done in a given day. Being shot at, putting up with bullsh&t from the people they are trying to protect, getting in to physical altercations, etc...no thank you.

All that noted, I understand that there are some real azzholes out there who get off on hassling car enthusiasts (and speeders, in general), but, again, saying you have no respect for cops is pretty harsh. I'm sure if you were ever in need of real assistance from a LEO, you would feel differently.

I'm not an apologist, just saying that I appreciate the fact that most cops have a difficult job that is pretty thankless.

:tup:

I'm confused. What does your point have to do with mine? That I would be angry because the OP was speeding?

The point of my analogy of wrong amputation vs speeding is the principle of attention to detail, and not so much of the level/degree of severity between the two. Both require specific attention to detail. If the leo writes inaccurate information on a citation, how much credibility do you think s/he will have in court? A decent lawyer can likely get a speeding ticket dismissed without any typos/inaccuracies, thus I'm pretty sure that a decent lawyer could get an inaccurate ticket dismissed, under what you stated as a "technicality", which btw you just proved my point to be valid (i.e. getting off on a technicality), after calling it "garbage".

And yes, all because one letter/number/character is off, a lawyer could use that and possibly get the ticket dismissed, as you have stated, on a technicality.

Sure, officers know to calibrate their equipment, as they are trained to do so. Officers are humans as well and can get complacent, and most importantly, as you also have stated, humans (which includes leo's) can make mistakes.

In the OP's case, it seems that the errors on the ticket may have occurred because the OP didn't have his license with him. Driving without your license is one thing; speeding without your license is another. I would have been more concerned about the ticket for driving without my license present. OP didn't say if the cop cited him for that, but I'll take his omission as a "no." Kind of a lucky break, in my opinion. Not beating up on the OP, but where is his responsibility and accountability?

true, i must have missed the part of about no wallet. however, leo's only need your SSN to look you up in the system in cases like this one.

Man, a bunch of tado about a ticket. When you get close to 15 points and on the verge of loosing your license. Then talk to me. Yeap, just a little bit crazier in my younger days...:)

The murder thing was in regards to my dislike for defense attorneys. Which isn't extreme. Defense attorneys get people off for murder all the time for technicalities such as the infamous "if the glove don't fit, you must acquit". For real!? EVERYONE knew he did it (OJ Simpson if you don't know). I wasn't comparing his speeding to murder...

Im sorry you have had bad run ins with the police. But you having no respect for someone you don't know, because of a few bad apples is very ignorant. There are over 700,000 police officers in the states. All of them must be bad right? Thats like saying, "I had this tech at Firestone tell me my battery was bad, but I just got it. He was trying to jack me around! All mechanics are all liars!".

Me personally, every time I have been pulled over, I knew exactly why as soon as I saw the lights. I was in the wrong every single time. Most recently at ZDayZ. Other than that, I have never been harassed or lied on. I have never been treated badly.

My point was from my original response of how stupid it can be to let someone off of a major crime for a trivial mistake of an officer, hence why I have a general dislike for defense attorneys.

I understood your analogy, however the severity of attention to detail in the situation you presented was very extreme in comparison to the speeding ticket. Which is why I went to the murder extreme.

We are arguing the same thing lol. Yes, a defense attorney can get you off of a crime that you committed on a technicality. Which as you have pointed out, I find as "garbage". On a speeding ticket, no big deal. Im sure that officer gives not a flip at all if the ticket is dismissed or held. But in cases that are more severe, where someone was actually victimized, that gets under my skin. How has justice been served on something like that? Could you explain to the victim of a violent crime "Hey look, I know that guy did it, but because a minor mistake was made in the investigation, we are letting him go."

Call me ignorant all you want.. But the whole.. "Just a few bad apples" thing.. I just don't buy it.. Seems more like just a few GOOD apples are left.

I go by how I've been treated.. If I get pulled over and the cop treats me fair.. I have no problem with that particular police officer.. But thanks to my personal experience.. Just seems like they can do whatever they want and screw people over without any repercussions.. I just can't support that.