And I don't know exactly what I should do...I WAS speeding. But the officer put down that i was going 20 over, and that's just not possible. The speed limit goes from 55 to 45 to 40...I got up to 60mph in the 55 zone, then i let my JEEP WRANGLER coast. With slight engine braking and INCREDIBLE air resistance, there's no way I was still going 60 when i got all the way to the 40 zone. I didn't accelerate at all. The cop used the radar on me, and I THINK that he did it while I was in the 45 zone, then he assumed that as I entered the 40 zone, since I did not hit my brakes at all, i was not slowing down. I don't know...but I know that 20 is outrageous.

but I can't exactly try to fight it or anything, i was definitely consciously speeding. Advice?

FIGHT IT. FIGHT IT FIGHT IT FIGHT IT!!!!!!!

I got ****ed over when i citation for driving 'carelessly' (yeaa i went from 0-5 miles over the speed limit whent he red light changed to green) and i got pulled over and the mother****er told me i was driving carelessly, so i was like 'ok whatever' and he cites me $105, and i am like 'well...i guess?' and plead guilty, and then i get a 3 points taken off my license!!!!!!

I see TRUE careless driving EVERY day either before or after work. ithe other day i was so pissed off at this person that was tailing me that i let him/her take a turn, and i kept going straight, took another turn, ended up behind the ***** and tailed him/her for a pretty long time., w/my high beams on just like they did to me. (minus the 2 feet distance from my bumper)

Change your assigned court date and hope the cop doesn't show up.

Yeah you really don't have any other hope of beating it besides that.

...or just don't speed.

It's your own damn fault.

Count down to Brian's post in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...

:p

Or.. you could be a responsible citizen and pay it, as you did do something wrong, and the state is fining you for your consequences...


Or fight it, whatever.

every day i drive 140kph to work.
my highest speeding ticket was for 138kph.

another time, i was driving down the highway one day with a friend. we were going to visit a former co-worker that lived about 1hr. away. by the time i saw the cop parked off the side of the road it was too late for me to slow down. but i didn't know how fast i was going. so i glanced down and my passenger and i both realized at the same time i was driving at 158kph. the cop didn't even move. i was sure i was burned.
it was amazing that i had no idea that i was driving that fast yet felt so comfortable.

oh yeah, and i agree with fishstickz ^^^^ just pay it. you were speeding.

i had to go to a class because i had so many speeding tickets. out of 15 people there i was the only one, the only one, that knew i was there because of my own actions.
everyone else there was blaming the other drivers or the cop or whatever. they were all in this class because they had too many speeding tickets. it's their own fault.

I know I was speeding, and I WOULD just suck it up and pay it. Except that if I'm not mistaken, 20 over is a fairly high amount. I am guilty of speeding, for sure, but i'm NOT guilty of going 20 over. Trust me, I'm one of the people who hates it when people can't take responsibility for their actions. I knew what I was doing when I was speeding...and it wasn't what I've been accused of doing.

Holy ****.

If they're accusing you of a crime you didn't commit (for instance, speeding 20MPH over the legal limit), then you should fight it. But you need to educate yourself before you fight it. Remember, if you pay the ticket, you are pleading guilty for going 20MPH over the speed limit. If you were only going 15 over, they should have cited you for that. Now that the cop has lied on his ticket (very common), you have a moral responsibility (if only a small one) to stand up for what's right.

The problem here is this: If you go into the court and tell the judge you were only going 15 MPHover, the judge will find that you committed the infraction of 20MPH over because by admitting to breaking the law by any degree (even 1MPH over), the judge thinks you deserve it.

The absolute worst thing you can do is go in there and admit to speeding (even 1MPH over the legal limit).

Every state is different. Here in WA, you get a ticket and you are responsible for checking a box on the back (I didn't do it or I did do it). Once you check "I didn't do it." and mail it back, they will mail you back a court date. In my state, the "defense" that works the best is this:

1. Once you get the court date, you will also get a list of your rights. You have the right to subpoena witnesses (including the cop that gave you the ticket) to testify on your behalf. Here, the cops don't have to show up, but if they don't, it's (almost) an automatic dismissal of the charges against you.

2. Request a copy of the citing officers sworn statement, a list of witnesses that will be called against you, and any other evidence they will present. It is required by law that the prosecuting attorney give you this information. Here in WA (at least in Kitsap County), it's as simple as a letter to the court with the ticket number, which they will forward to the prosecuting attorneys office.

3. Also (in a separate letter) request a subpoena for the officer to be present. This is probably the best defense as they (in my experience) rarely show up. Out of the dozens of court cases I've witnessed, I've only seen two cops show up.

3. Once you get that information back in the mail, go over it with a fine-toothed comb. The problem here is that you have to be familiar with the law in order for this to be useful. There should be a note as to the exact law you're accused of breaking (in WA it's RCW some.number). LOOK THAT LAW UP. Also here, if they don't file the ticket with the courts in a certain number of days (typically two business days) the judge has the option to dismiss. In this case, the first thing you have to do is move to dismiss. The law in WA clearly states that if the ticket wasn't filed in time, the judge should dismiss it. Some judges ignore the law so don't use this as your only defense.

4. When the subpoena arrives, you are responsible for serving it. Different states and even different counties have rules on this. In one county I had to pay the local sherrif a $20 fee to serve it. In some you're allowed to use registered mail with return reciept. Here in Kitsap County you can actually use first class mail (with no delivery confirmation). The problem here is that sometimes things get lost in the mail.

5. Spend a few hours at least (preferably a few different sessions with a few different judges) watching other peoples trials. Keep a close eye on what the people who get their tickets dismissed say before each judge. If you're lucky, you will get a nice judge at your trial (not likely).

6. Once you get to trial, if the officer doesn't show up, immediately move to have the ticket dismissed. "Your honor, I move to have this ticket dismissed because the officer I subpoenad did not show up on time." Usually they will dismiss it. Sometimes you have to ask twice. Sometimes they will try to worm their way out of it with questions like "why should I dismiss this ticket?" In this case, you absolutely must stick with your guns and keep stating that you correctly and lawfully subpoenad the officer and he did not show up, and you have the right to have him there. I've seen it take up to 3 times asking before the judge will dismiss it. They will take advantage of a nervous person, so it may be good to have notes.

7. Sometimes the judge will order his court clerks to try to contact the officer to find out why he is not there. The lawfulness of this is questionable - they will not show you the same courtesy if you don't show up when you are ordered to by the court. Most of the time, if they can get ahold of the cop, the cop will say he never got the subpoena (yah right), another one is that they are "in training" and can't make it. You need to move to dismiss. They will probably deny you. In this case, you need to move for a continuance (which is basically to delay the trial to another date). This is in your best interest because if the cop did not show up once, it's likely he won't again. So accept or ask for the continuance and when you get your new trial date, FOLLOW ALL THE STEPS AGAIN. Usually if they don't show up the 2nd time, the judge will dismiss (I have never seen them not dismiss if an officer fails to show up twice).

I have more to write but I am out of time, I'll come back later.

REMEMBER I AM NOT A LAWYER.

Does it actually matter whether you were 20mph or 15mph over the limit? I mean, you were still speeding, but do you pay more or something?

Wow, Brian - that's some really good advice.

BTW, whereabouts in Washington do you live? Just curious, as I live here, too.

If you weren't going 20 over, then fight the Hell out of the system. They shouldn't charge you like that (although you should pay something, as you were speeding).

Mort-Hog: Yeah, the more you exceed the limit, the more you pay.

I live in Kitsap County... a town called Silverdale.

Anyway, the problem with the legal system is that you can't really just go in and say, "Your honor, I was going 15MPH over the legal limit, not 20, and I would just like to pay the fine for 15 over, not 20 over." You can't plead guilty for a crime they didn't accuse you of committing! That's the problem. And that's why cops put 5-10MPH over what you were actually doing, because the money goes to the state general fund, and when the legislature decides where the funds go to, they take into consideration where it came from. So the cops say, "we'll bring in an extra 5 million in 'revenue' this quarter and you keep 1 million of it and we'll use the rest."

The system (especially around here) is completely corrupt. The judges get paid from the same fund so they have absolutely NO incentive to be fair, their incentive is to have as many "guilty" findings as they possibly can. The only exception to this, in my experience, is when the judge is is out sick and they have a "pro-tem" judge to fill his/her shoes. In this case, they generally hire a lawyer who doesn't work for the state, and they are generally favor the accused more than the accuser (which is how it's supposed to be - innocent until proven guilty). A major issue here is that they don't have to prove "beyond a resonable doubt" that you committed a crime. Since it's an "infraction" not a criminal offense, they use a completely different standard. They have to prove with a "preponderance of evidence" that you committed the infraction. This is their loophole - since it's not a criminal offense, they can lie to themselves and think that they're doing the public a greater good by bringing money into the system (nevermind the 7 years of higher insurance premiums hard working citizens have to pay with a ticket they didn't deserve on their record). If you look in the dictionary, "preponderance" means "overwhelming," so logically, a preponderance of evidence would mean overwhelming evidence. But the judges decided at some point in time that "preponderance" actually means "the majority" which is something like 50.01% of the evidence has to favor the cop. Now, they consider the cops "sworn statement" to be "evidence" (not testimony, which is crap, because when I write something on the paper and submit it to the court, they don't consider THAT "evidence"). You are screwed from the beginning.

You can't go into court (here in WA at least) and tell the truth about exactly what happened. If you do that ("your honor I was only going 2 mph over the speed limit, not 15, so I should not be convicted of going 15 over") they will convict you of exactly what the officer accused you of. You have no chance.

So your only hope is to get off on a technicality. Luckily, there are literally HUNDREDS of technicalities that you can get off on. Hell, you can question the officer and if answers a question wrong or inaccurately and you can prove it (like if he doesn't know the maximum range of his radar or laser device), he's an incompetent witness and all of his testimony can be thrown out, leaving no evidence against you, and therefore your ticket will be dimissed.

The problem here is having all the information readily available and having the willpower to follow through with it. When you really get down to it and think about it, they could completely irradicate speeders within a MONTH if they really wanted to. If they made the fine for speeding $100 per MPH over, nobody, and I mean nobody (except maybe bill gates) would speed. The problem is that the state, the court system, the cops, and whoever else all get money from the "revenue" generated from speeding tickets. It's in their best interests to have the fines set such that they are earning more money from the tickets than they spend paying the cops to write them. And that's why they leave all these loopholes - they want people to speed. Seriously, COPS WANT PEOPLE TO SPEED SO THEY CAN GET PAID. Hell, around here you get awards for giving out the most speeding tickets. And yes, they all lie on their tickets. They will act like they were doing you a favor for writing that you were doing "50+" in a 45 zone instead of the 65 you were actually doing. This is not them doing you a favor. This is their way of bribing you to just pay the ticket and not fight it.

And that's the reason cops aren't required to show up to speeding ticket trials around here - they make more money by writing 5 more tickets in the amount of time it would take them to go to court and actually face the music (that they don't know crap about their equipment, that they aren't qualified to write tickets, and that they are lying sacks of crud).

So anyway, there are literally tons of sites on the internet that will sell you books trying to help you get out of your ticket. They are generally not worth it. Some offer money-back guarantees. I have never purchased one, but the few that looked decent had the exact same information I am giving you above in their "teaser" pages. You can always go into a book store (or perhaps amazon.com) and leaf through the pages and decide how you want to proceed.

I still think your best bet is to get all the information you can, sift through and make sense of it all, sit through as many trials as you can, and do your best to get it dismissed without ever having to even say "I wasn't speeding." That's the trick: they are accusing you of going 20 over. You weren't going 20 over. Therefore, you are innocent of the crime they are accusing you of committing. You can file at least a dozen motions to dismiss (based on technicalities, inaccurate information, cops not showing up, invalid radar/laser/tuning fork/speedometer certifcations, etc.) before you are even sworn in!

Hell, even if you thought you were going 20MPH over the speed limit, who's to say your speedometer is 100% accurate? It's always in your best interests to plead innocent, get the information they have against you, verify that the cop dotted all his is and crossed all his ts, has valid training, certification for his equipment, etc. If he's got that all taken care of and you agree with his estimation that you were in fact speeding, you can always go in, change your plea, and pay the fine.

The system is stacked against you - you can't even get ahold of that information without first pleading innocent and requesting it. If you plead guilty, they have no obligation to send you anything and as soon as the court gets your paperwork, they will file it on your driving record and you will be screwed.

"But...your honor...the air resistance! THINK OF THE AIR RESISTANCE!"

I have nothing else to add...do what Brian said I guess.

I'm seriously considering pleading not guilty, because like Brian said, I am not guilty of the crime they accuse me of. But a small town probably has a larger likelihood that the cop will show up....

I'm just going to assume that since i got a citation for a minor accident once, and the ticket is for TWENTY over, they won't just drop it..so I'm really thinking about going through all of that. I'm probably grounded anyway so I'll have plenty of time to work on it.

So, the moral of the story is, don't speed at all so you don't have to go through all of this crap.

:: In the legal system, nobody cares what you say or what you know or what really happened. All that matters is what you can prove. A police officer is a lot more believable than a citizen, all other things being equal. The officer has his proof: his radar gun clocked you going 20 over. Do you have phiscal proof you were only doing 15, or just what you believe due to coasting and air resistance? Unless you plan on calling an expert witness to testify on your behalf on how much a jeep wranger built in your year can slow down given the wind speed and slope/gradiant of the road, sucks for you. Remember, if you plead guilty and show up to court, they will 99% of the time knock it down.

:: "COPS WANT PEOPLE TO SPEED SO THEY CAN GET PAID." Possibly and probably true. Because police officers don't make jack **** for money. What most people like to fail to mention is police officers do more than pull you over for speeding. They protect you from criminals. They put their life on the line every day to protect you, and they dont even know you. Would you ever risk being shot and killed over a stranger you have no personal relationship with? They do it every day. But they love their job so much, they will do it for less than they deserve. If you want the police to outsmart the criminals, the police need better technology and better training every year. Criminals get smarter all the time. The police need to be able to afford the new technology and new training. Plus they need to earn enough income to support themselves and their family. Maybe if your town/county/state voted a large enough increase in pay for law enforcement officers, they wouldnt feel so inclined to jack up your speeding ticket.

:: So as not to seem totally bias, if you do choose to fight your ticket, here's a simpler/clearer explaination of what Brian said. Know your 6th ammendment rights.

- You have the right to confront all witnesses against you. In this case, the ONLY witness against you is the officer that pulled you over. If you plead not guilty and get a bench trial, they might stick another officer on the stand with your paperwork and he'll read what the other officer wrote. In which case, you politely/professional object and say that the officer on the stand did not witness your crime. The officer that did witness it is not available for you to question, thus infringing your right to confront ALL witnesses against you. If they shrug it off and keep going and find you guilty, go find a lawyer straight out of law school and you can win a pretty nice lawsuit.

- You also have the right to a quick and speedy trial. If you tell the court that the only officer/witness to your crime is not available, whether he's out on patrol or taking a coffee break, if they send someone to get him, you object once again. That infringes your right to a quick and speedy trial because the only witness against you is not available. Once again, they should dismiss your case then and there.

- If you are that determined to fight this, and the officer does show up, plead not guilty and request a trial by jury. Otherwise you get a bench trial with the judge. A judge cares only if you broke the law. A jury of your peers will take into consideration WHY. Also, the judge will side with the police more times than not. A jury might feel the same as you. And you have a better chance of a mistrial or aquittal with a jury because they must decide unanimously to find you guilty, or else you are not guilty.
Request a trial by jury and set a date. When you come back for that date, refer back to the 'quick and speedy trial' and 'confront all witnesses against you' stuff, as it applies once again. If he isnt there for one reason or another, you should be free to go. If he shows up once again, you are SOL and suck it up.

I often wonder how Brian knows so much about speeding laws in the United States. His posts in these threads giving advice about speeding tickest are always the longest and most intricate ones he posts.

Yes. Going 20 MPH over the limit carries a larger fine and more points to your record because it's considered wreckless driving or something to that extent.

Fines are not "if you speed at all, here is your punishment". They are usually grouped together. 5-10 over is one fine, 11-15 is more, 16-20 is even more. 20 or 25 over can count as reckless driving and carries a lot more weight than a speeding ticket.

Wow. Thats like a 45 minute drive from where I live. I go to Silverdale quite often to buy stuff too.

Nice, where are you? Port Orchard? Belfair? If you're over 18, we should get together and do something. If not, I'm not about to be arrested for trying to "hook up" with a "minor."

Unfortunantly I'm 14. I live in the Port Townsend area though.

I've gotten two speeding tickets in WA since I got my drivers license over two years ago. The first one I fought and lost because the judge was completely unable to understand what the legal term "without prejudice" means. There is a long story behind this one but I don't have the time or desire to go into it now. The second one I subpoenad the officer and he didn't show up. The judge delayed the trial because they called the officer and he said he never got the subpoena. That time, I had used registered mail. The second time, I actually paid the sherrif $20 fee to deliver the subpoena personally. That morning, I drove out to Shelton (a 40 minute drive from where I was) and the cop didn't show up again. This time he called in and told the judge he couldn't show up because he had to watch his kid. The judge dismissed my ticket.

I recently got another ticket when I was literally doing 5 MPH *under* the speed limit. I told the cop he must be mistaken because I was going 5 under, I had barely merged into traffic and didn't even have time to get to 60 yet. He told me he saw me doing 75(!) in a 60. I'm going to fight that one on the 20th. The guy is a complete liar - he wrote on his sworn statement that I admitted to doing 65 in a 60, when I clearly told him I was only doing 55. His whole reasoning for pulling me over was that I was "the only jeep on the road." Gimme a break, it's a very common vehicle, he obviously didn't get a good look at the one he clocked and therefore pulled me over. I hate dirty cops.

Vash you posted a lot of stuff about how good cops are- in my experience the opposite is true. They take hours to show up when our house and car got vandalized, and they refused to arrest the person who did it despite the fact that there were dozens of witnesses. They don't have time to show up when 5 peoples cars get broken into at a local gym but at the same time we see them out there pulling over people going 5 mph over the speed limit.

I think they should separate the "real" cops - the ones that actually solve crimes and take down real criminals - from the "revenue"-generating traffic patrols. You're talking about a whole other level of people. These traffic-patrol aholes are on a simple mission: generate money for the state and for themselves. And they don't get paid poorly, they are over 60k a year here, full benefits, they always whine for more, and all they do is sit around in brand new cars till their machine goes off and then they pull people over. It's ridiculous.

The only time a traffic cop solves a "real" crime is when they find people drinking and driving or doing drugs. And I doubt they get more than even 1% of those people.

why should you pay it if you have any hope of fighting it? Paying it is the most painless part, it gets worse when your insurance hikes your rates up.

Wow - I didn't know you were that close. I too have been to the Silverdale area some. I live in Sammamish, which is basically triangulated by Bellevue, Issaquah and Redmond.

I usually don't. I'm usually an excellent driver. But all it takes is one poor decision. And I make a lot of poor decisions.

Also, I'm going to go back and check out the area in which it happened. I THINK that he was sitting right at the spot that it turns from 45 to 40, so even if he really did read 60 as I approched, that's only 15 over unless he took another reading after i had passed him. Or if he paced me, but if he did that he'd know that I was not keeping my speed..and he didn't put "pacing" on my ticket. So...I wish I could read his report so I'd know exactly what HE thinks he saw.

Brian: You must have a lot of terrible officers in your area..that sucks.

I went for a ridealong with GPD back in September (should be going with the sheriff's office in a few weeks), and we weren't messing around -- we didn't even have a radar mounted in the vehicle. Only two traffic stops in the entire shift (5pm-3am)..one resulted in an arrest (pulled over for no tag, warrant for probation violation resulted in an arrest), and another was a verbal warning for a taillight out.

Move to FL.

I think the cops are forming some sort of conspiracy against you Brian. They probably have your liscence plate number. Hmmm, wonder if they stake out your house...

"They take hours to show up when our house and car got vandalized, and they refused to arrest the person who did it despite the fact that there were dozens of witnesses. They don't have time to show up when 5 peoples cars get broken into at a local gym but at the same time we see them out there pulling over people going 5 mph over the speed limit."

Response time, depends on what else is going on at the time. If nobody is in imminent danger, they arent in a huge rush. In this case it sounds like the people you were waiting on were the investigators. I'm not totally sure about what hours they work, but if it's odd hours like after 5pm then they might have to call the investigator at his/her house to get them to come in.
Dozens of witnesses, eye witnesses are notorious for being wrong. You have have 12 different witnesses that saw 12 different events or 12 different people. If they cant all agree on the same color of the vehicle or the same attributes of the subject, they're no good.
5mph over, depends on the area, road conditions, and how fast the rest of traffic is going. If it's 10pm at night and very rainy, and the flow of traffic is generally going 5 mph under the limit due to road conditions and visibility, a car going 5 over the legal limit would appear to be going 10mph faster than the flow of traffic. Even though he's technically only going 5 over, he is as much of a "problem" as someone going 10mph over the limit under normal road conditions (which you can argue if 10mph over is a problem or not).

Fact is, cops aren't going to put a lot of effort into something like a car getting broken into. The time spent looking for such a criminal rarely pays off with an arrest. The cops have more importnant things they need to be doing with their rime in my home town, so it doesn't bother me that much.

My dad has the same experiences with cops that Brian does, he’s gotten pulled over a couple times for some seriously ridiculous ****.

Around here, 20 over is considered Reckless Endangerment (Driving). You have your license suspended/revoked for 6 months, sutomatically.

Okay, here's a little update. I've dscussed the situation with my friend who is "in" with the cops (he's part of a program where he rides with them and learns about what they do, so he's friends with all of them).

He said that the cop gave me a general speeding ticket, despite the fact that he put "60 in a 40" and due to county or state law or soemthing, it basically means that it's just a normal speeding ticket, which is just under $100.

It was kind of an awkward conversation..I was talking to him (online) about it, and saying what I've said here...that i'd perhaps plead not guilty because of the way the road was laid out...and he told me that the road was actually laid out slightly differently, which completely invalidates my entire argument. So even if the cop was mistaken, there'd be no way to prove it. Additionally, the cop is a good guy, hence the general speeding rather than the 15-20 over ticket. But he's alsoa good cop, and if I wanted to fight it, he'd be there in court with me.

So I told him thanks for the advice, and next time he sees the cop, to thank him for going easy on me.


I'm not sure exactly how much of that is true, this particular friend is known for exaggerating and sometimes just plain lying...but I don't think he'd do that about this, and either way, it has eased my mind.

Summary: Cops in my area rock. I've talked to some, and seen some work, and with this added to that, I feel really good about the police in my area. They're cool guys, and good at what they do. So they're not all bad, eh?

No comment.

I could be wrong, I've heard that you can also request in court that the officer show that his radar gun was calibrated properly when he clocked you, and that his certification for the radar gun is up to date. A long shot, but you might look into it.

Makes sense that you could do that. It falls into the "evidence against you" category.

That may be, but you don't have to prove anything in court to arrest someone. You just need probable cause.

I can vouch for officers in kirkland, kenmore, redmond, and bothell, bellevue (all cities in washington in the same general area) acting as brian described. Not all of them, but a good majority at least.

One of my friends once went into a safeway, and when she came out there were two cops digging through her car. They claimed she left her door open and so they thought it'd be a cool idea to search her car. They found marijuana paraphenelia and some pot crumbs on her floormat and charged her with possession. This was in bellevue, btw.

This just happened 2 weeks ago, I don't know what she intends to do about it.