I picked up my daughter from her cousin's house in St. George Utah and headed out to Pinetop Arizona for my XFs first road trip. My daughter's Aunt (from her mother's side) says...'don't get any tickets'. :evil:

Yep, less than a hundred miles into this 1300 mile journey, I got a f(*)ing ticket! :evil:

I am heading eastbound on 89 around Fredonia, AZ. Just cruising along having a great conversation with my daughter when I see a cop coming in the opposite direction. I immediately brake. The cop keeps moving along. Whew! I said. About 3/4 mile to a mile down the road there is another cop standing in the middle of the road. He had already pulled someone over going the opposite direction and stopped me as well.

He says, "why were you going 88 mph?" I said, "I may have been going a few over 65, but nowhere near 88." He said the other officer clocked me at 88.

Well he writes me for 88 in a 65. Since it is over 20mph I am not eligible for traffic school. In AZ it is 3 points on the driving record. I don't know yet what it will do to me in NV.

I am thinking of contesting it. There are a few mistakes on this ticket.

1. He has my hair listed as brown. My DL lists my hair as blonde, which it is.

2. The code for my 'offense' is 28-701.O2.A3. He has a D in place of the O.

3. He first checked the section for Civil Traffic, crossed it out and then checked Criminal Traffic.

and best of all....

4. He lists my car as a 4DR. TFF!!! :lol:

The fine is $223. I could pay it and go on with life, or I can contest it. Do I get a lawyer? Represent myself?

I am thinking that since he got the 4 listed areas wrong, how can the officer be depended upon to know the speed at which I was travelling when it wasn't even his radar?

Any help would be appreciated!!!

BTW, The XF handles awesome in all situations. I hit everything but snow. That is it handles awesome at the speed limit, of course. :wink:

Oh, yeah...He also starts to inquire if I am LDS. I am like, WTF?!?! At first I didn't know what he meant. My response was going to be...I tried a little pot in college, but never took a hit of LSD. After the third time he asks me looking at dumbfounded face, I said, No, but my daughter is. Which she is.

WTF does this have to do with my driving. I am also considering getting a Civil Liberties attorney. :evil: :wink:

The whole time this is going on, I am hearing Dueling Banjos playing in the back of my head.

Sorry I am a horrible writer, but one more thing.... In front of my 11 year old daughter...four times he says that he could "slap the cuffs on me and take me in". I can't say anything for fear he 'cops' a really bad attitude and attempts to cuff me. Then I would still be in jail.

The whole exchange I had with this officer was 'Yes, Sir and No, Sir" on my part. He could have cut me a little slack and treated me a little better in front of my daughter.

What a way to start off my vacation. :lol:

 

I'd be furious and fight it if I were you. He was totally out of line in several areas.

Go for it.

Doc in Mesa, AZ (mormon country but I am NOT)

 

I beleive here in Texas you get cuffed automatically at double over the speed limit..

-marc

 

Fight it yourself and do it just like you said in your post... He got things wrong on the ticket etc. Also mention the guy that wrote it is not the same guy who clocked you.

Good luck and keep us posted.

 

LDS means Latter Day Saints...the Mormons. I believe he was asking if you were Mormon. You were close to Utah, right? Utah has a HUGE Mormon population. I'd bring that up in court.

 

I had finally figured out that he was asking me if I was Momon. That is when I told him that my daughter is. (not my doing, of course but she is.) Arizona has a huge population of Mormons. Especially up that far north.

My only problem with bringing it up in court is that chances are, the judge is Mormon too. If I take an attorney along, then at least I will have someone to notify my family of my whereabouts. I wonder what a mormon jail is like? :lol:

Does anyone have first hand experience with getting out of a ticket because of these types of errors?

 

Cops look for speeders, who know they are speeding by looking for the brake lights, or nose dives. If the nose of your casr dives, or the brakes go on, it's a give away and if they don't have the radar pointed at you, they will faster that you'll slow down to the speed limit :wink:

 

I'd fight it for sure! way to many mistakes on the cops side... first for the LDS comment I'd sue the court if they made me pay the ticket... here in Michigan suits like this pass all the time... can make a good size penny off a comment like that and by a good size penny I mean you'll be driving that Xfire up to Renntech LOL

 

Look, fight it if you want, the results will all depend on the judge. The discrepencies on the ticket could be totally discounted by the judge if he/she so chooses. They're nitpicking, and the judge won't go "AHA, you've really got us there!"

It's a crap shoot.

Forget the advice about suing. This is the real world. This is small potatoes misdemeanor stuff, and if the local judiciary decides you need to pay the fine, you pay the fine, no matter how righteous your case. This is not a case that goes up the appeals ladder, and any self respecting tort lawyer won't take your case in a suit. You might get the pimply faced yellow pages advertising new lawyer willing to take your case on contingency while he/she tries to build a practice, but that lawyer will be a chump and you won't win.

If you must contest, best to go in, plead honest misunderstanding....new car wasn't used to the 'feel' yet. Show some pix of the car...if the judge is a car buff might even go 'wow, that's a nice car!". If your record (or what the judge can access from the terminal in the bench) is otherwise clean...you might get spanked with a point and court costs. You really need to remember, the judge holds ALL the cards, is absolute king in traffic court, and most suffer fools lightly. Remember, these are TRAFFIC court judges. They've seen it all, heard it all, and you're not going to tell them anything they haven't heard a million times before. They smell the BS before it comes out of the mouth. Best to be straight up, most times they'll deal straight right back.

If you've got a driving record that the judge can access, and it's spotty, you'll take the hit.

If you're clean, plead 'oops' and you'll likely come out with a lighter wallet, but less so, and a point, but not as bad as it could be.

IMHO

 

There are ways to beat a radar ticket. Here in VA, radar can only be used by a cop to "verify" your speed, he/she must be able to estimate your speed within 5 mph without radar to even get a "radar operator" certificate. Hmmm...the Google ads below are offering me two links right now to sites for how to beat a radar speeding ticket! How's that for context sensitive ads!!!

You can fight it if you want, with a combination of the 'oops, new car' defense. If you've got a decent record, as has been said, you could end up with just a slap on the wrist and court costs.

As others have said, I think the LDS comment by the cop is a non-starter for trying to get the ticket tossed, but who knows???

If it's gonna be a pain to travel to fight it, you might just call your home state DMV and ask if out of state tickets like this will be counted against you at home, and if not you might just decide to pay it and be over it.

You're lucky... here in VA that speed would have likely got you a "reckless driving".

 

Asking you if you're an LDS maybe your ticket out - it's the password especially if you have a clean record ( just my guess ) It happened to me before and like you I also have a clean record..the cop accomodated me on talking my way out from getting the ticket ..asking me if i came from the freeway which I lied and answered "yes" telling him that I was disoriented with what the speed limit is on the side roads as I've been driving for awhile in the freeway

The cop just gave me a warning ticket

MY BAD ADVICE: You can throw that ticket in the trash if you're from Nevada and you got the ticket from Arizona. Just don't drive in AZ after that 'cause a warrant may have been issued towards you in the state of AZ for not paying the ticket Then wait for a few years for the statute of limitation expires.

 

My only experience with this stuff comes from a ticket I got in Colorado several years ago. I found out the points from CO wouldn't count against my AZ license, since the AZ authorities would have no way of knowing if the CO violation would have been one in AZ. So hopefully for you NV views it the same way.

As for your other stuff, I hope you view libertarians like me in a whole new (positive) light.

 

I believe things have changed. The MVD should be linked to all other states by now, at least it is for CDL's...

 

They can but most of the time if you do exactly what they ask, they won't.

I was pulled over for doing 80 in a 35. Thats exactly what he wrote down on the ticket. I was on my sportbike very eary Sunday morning. Not a soul was out, except for this cop. Just my luck.

GET A LAWYER. I get one EVERY time I get a ticket. I have none on my record. You end up paying a little more, but most get thrown out or just settled between the lawyer and states attourney. The judge will agree, as long as you aren't a crack head. Everything is cool.

I'd rather pay a lawyer more money up front than pay $$$$ in insurance costs for the next 4 years.

 

I really am amazed at the responses to this post. Not one person recomends accepting the fact that a law was broken and you were caught. Getting lawyered-up and fighting the ticket seems to be the theme here. Not one reply about accepting resonsibility for your action and taking your well deserved punishment like a man. Personal responsibility is so foreign to todays thinking. Sorry if I may come across as a Saint here, I am not, I pay for my mistakes, feel better about myself and learn.

 

2. The code for my 'offense' is 28-701.O2.A3. He has a D in place of the O.

I believe if the statute you are sited for is wrong the ticket will be thrown out However handwriting can make a D look like an O and vice versa

 

I suggest you go back and read his post.... he copped to "a little over 65" but not 88. I never got the impression he was running from his responsibility, but rather contesting what the cop said and commenting on the cop's clearly inappropriate behavior. Now if he was going 88 then you have a point. But a bigger question is whether the speed limits are appropriate, I guarantee you more often than not someone going 90 on the highway and obeying proper procedure (slower traffic in right lane, stay right except to pass, etc.) is being safer than the petty little tyrant doing 55 in the left lane in the name of "safety". And that's what speed traps, red light cameras, speeding cameras, etc. are all about, right? Safety?

I actually had a Glendale, AZ cop (an idiot by the way) try to convince me that the city lost money on every ticket he wrote. Damn I hate it when people insult my intelligence like that.

 

I beleive here in Texas you get cuffed automatically at double over the speed limit..

-marc

What is your reference??

I avoid az.... x wife lives there

 

I got pulled over in Duck, NC this week doing 60 in a 45 on route 12. The cop just asks for my license...not the registration. He says "I'm not worried about the speed so much, I'm sure you can handle it...this looks like a fast mother f*$ker..I'm just worried about one of the 14million GD deer coming over the top of your hood" No ticket, no warning, just a "You might wanna slow down".... Good Times.

 

Now there's a good cop.... doesn't have the god complex. Every time I see cops giving decent people the business, I wonder how many actual crimes are getting committed elsewhere. Like in my city, my office building happens to straddle the "red light district" if you know what I mean. Every so often the police decide it's time for a crackdown, so numerous officers squeeze the tube of toothpaste and drive the entreprenuerial ladies elsewhere in the city (I'm not naive enough to believe they actually stop offering their services). I wonder how many convenience stores are getting robbed, homes being burglarized, etc. while all that man... oops person power (I'm nothing if not politically correct) is being wasted harrassing prostitutes.