Email The Judge To Contest Your Speeding Ticket
from the sounds-smart dept
Someone I know was on vacation in South Carolina earlier this year and got a speeding ticket. According to the local law, she was then required to show up in court - even though she lived 3,000 miles away in California. She got around this by hiring (for about the price of the ticket itself) a lawyer who could represent her, instead. Clearly, such laws are designed to the benefit of local lawyers (and the local police coffers), but one judge in the Northwest is being a lot more reasonable about things. He's letting motorists charged with moving violations email him to explain the circumstances and plead their cases electronically. Once he understands the details, he's often willing to drop or lessen the charges. This, of course, is how things like traffic violations should be handled. There's no reason to make people show up in court, except under some specific circumstances. This policy frees up court time and makes for a much fairer system. Of course, unfortunately, those are two reasons why it's unlikely to catch on in many places.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
It'll never happen in California
you have to go to court twice (2 days pay)
if it's you word against the cop, the cop *always* wins
you're guilty until proven innocent
there's no concept of "reasonable doubt"
you cannot contest to a higher court
you have to go to court where you were caught, not your local one
if you appeal in writing the cop gets 6 weeks to file a report
if you lose, you have to go to a court-appointed traffic school not a local/cheap one (if you get the option of traffic school)
a certain [sounds like a lizard] insurance company actually sponsers speed cameras/radar
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Odd..
I'm not sure how well this would work for actually contesting a ticket, but email is just another form of communication.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: It'll never happen in California
[ link to this | view in thread ]