Wide Open

I got a speeding ticket the other day …

53 in a 35.

Yeah, yeah, yeah …

I know.

Sounds worse than it actually was …

Really.

Any 5 lane road in a non-residential area with nothing but fast food and office buildings lined up continuously on each side of the thoroughfare simply should not be zoned 35 mph,

Unless of course it’s a speed trap for out-of-towners.

Which it was …

And I was.

Now I was pissed when I saw the lights flashing behind me …

As I was cutting it tight getting to court,

And I was only about 2 miles from my destination.

So immediately upon seeing the Officer signal me to pull over …

I decided that I was going to implement …

“Make them pay for giving me a ticket” procedures.

So sit back kids,

And get some free worthless legal advice –

Amy-wan Style !! 🙂

Now understand …

Despite what those books say that pop up in a google …

beat speeding ticket

It’s hard to actually beat a speeding ticket.

A speeding ticket is a civil infraction of some sort …

Meaning that in a tribunal or court resolution of any kind,

Your “guilt” does not have to be proven beyond reasonable doubt as it would be if you were charged with a crime.

Instead,

Your “responsibility” for violating the speed limit only has to be proven by the
preponderance of the evidence …

Which just means that the trier of fact has to decide that it’s a fraction more likely that you were speeding than you weren’t.

And honestly,

If it’s your word against a cop’s word …

A magistrate or judge is almost always going to find that it’s a little more likely you were speeding than you weren’t.

Of course, if you’re a citizen of the community giving the ticket,

And he or she is an elected official …

They’ll stroke you with a few compliments of some sort,

And maybe even cut you a little slack on the fine if they can …

But regardless,

Whether you’re a local or a foreigner …

You’re going to lose.

The only way you really can win is if the cop just doesn’t show up.

And that happens very, very rarely.

Now of course,

There are some things you can do to increase your odds in that respect,

And one should do them.

However,

That’s not my objective in these settings …

My goal is for the traffic stop and ticket issuance itself to cost the locality that hired the officer more to issue me the ticket than they get in return from my fine.

In this case …

Either $85 or $95 dollars.

(Generous cop wrote me up for 50 in a 35 which is 3 points and $85. If I fight the ticket and am found responsible for what he claims I was driving, that would be 53 in a 35 which is 4 points and $95. If you fight the ticket, they usually threaten you with going for “everything” they could write you up for … so you must be prepared to accept that risk.)

Now if you ever get pulled over, remember these essentials:

1. Memorize your surroundings. How many lanes? How many vehicles? Were there any vehicles around you? What lane were you in? What were you doing at the time you were allegedly speeding? Were you the only vehicle pulled over? Was anyone with you? What was on the radio? What was the weather like? Where was the cop? Where did he pull you over?

Remember every little detail … again, you’ll still lose if he shows up,

But you it’s good information to use in forming the basis of very legitimate questions …

So you can make the officer perjure themself a bit … something most cops do when they make up answers to questions they don’t know the answer to while under oath.

2.) Make sure you have your seat belt buckled, if not … buckle it stealthly as best you can before being pulled over. At least in my home state, that’s an easy money making ticket for them to write and it’s not cheap.

3.) Keep you hands in clear view … on top of the steering wheel is best. Even though cops have the gun, perception of authority and all that other krap … they are really pwussies … and if you move to get your license and registration before they get to the car, their overactive imaginations will make them worry you’re grabbing for a gun or something … which happens much less frequently than a cop beating the krap out of an innocent person … but that’s besides the point … keep your hands in clear view and just don’t make the officer nervous.

4.) Show respect at all times. Refer to the cop as Officer, Deputy, Trooper or whatever actually is his/her official designation … if you don’t know it, just go with Officer. It’s a compliment to them and strokes their ego. Now if it’s a bitter pill to swallow showing respect to them and calling them Officer … just tell yourself that Officer is code for something else. In this particular case … Officer was code for “donkey ball licker“.

5.) Don’t call attention to yourself. If you’re going to fight a ticket, your objective is to not be that memorable to the cop. They often will jot down a few notes about the stop when they get back to their car to remind them of you in case you do challenge the ticket. So if you do something to make yourself memorable, it’s all the more likely it will trigger their memory of the stop when you are in court. So just refrain from making any idol chit chat or funny jokes … no matter how obvious they are and fun they would be to say. Now it better go without saying … don’t argue with the cop. You’re not going to talk him out of anything. On the side of the road … a cop is always right. Accept it. It’s when in court, if you’ve done the right things, that the cop can sometimes be proven wrong.

6.) Name, rank and serial number only, answer no other questions. Inherently, cops are lazy people. Which really isn’t much different than most people doing a job. They’d prefer to do as little work as possible. And when it comes to cops … they are the worst … they’ll do anything to get you to admit to something. That way they don’t have to really do their job … find proof you did something they claim you did. Instead, they can just say you admitted to it … which is usually more than enough to sink you.

7.) Plead not responsible. Getting the ticket is only the beginning of the process, but most people assume that means that it is all over at that point. However, that’s not the case … unless you admit responsibility, they still have to go through the steps of proving you are responsible. This is where you get the advantage … it’s procedural, it’s mechanical, and you’re probably going to lose when they finish going through the motions … but by making them go through the motions, they have to have a clerk set a hearing date, set up a file for the matter, get the officer that pulled you over in court on the day of the hearing, depending on the procedure and stage of the game – have a city attorney or assistant prosecuting attorney there to handle the matter on behalf of the locality, have a judge or magistrate take the time to hear testimony, and then have the paperwork processed at the end of the hearing. All that “processing” takes time and resources of the locality … even if done just once, in person hours, you’ve cost them more than they’ll ever make from your speeding ticket. And if done a few times … it’ll cost them more than the ticket and much more than your insurance rates increase once your carrier gets wind of your violation. (Hint – Most insurance companies have internal policies that they will pull your driving record each year at renewal, at which point they would become aware of your ticket. However, some stock owned insurance companies only do it once every two years … I guess to save their costs. Also, if you file a claim after the ticket and before renewal, they’ll usually run a driving record on you to see if they can increase your rates or drop you for some reason. So if at all possible, try to stay low under your insurance company’s radar as long as possible after getting the ticket so they might not get wind of it.)

8.) Delay, delay, delay. Then delay some more. Drag out the process as long as phreaking possible. Usually if you’re timely in your request, you can almost always get the first adjournment of the ticket hearing simply by asking and tossing out pretty much any psuedo-legitimate excuse. Subsequent adjournments are a bit more challenging because they know exactly what you’re doing … so it’s just your call if you want to make a run at another adjournment or just go for the second hearing. Now remember, the purpose of delaying things is not in the hopes that the officer will forget about the stop … if he or she shows up, they’ll make up answers anyways … and actually, sometimes old cases just piss them off more because they know exactly what you’re doing and they’ve been inconvenienced because of it. However, each delay means more paperwork on their end … another letter to the officer informing him/her of the new date, city attorney or prosecuting attorney’s staff re-docketing the date … small stuff like that. And sometimes you might get lucky … the delay might actually lead the officer to just not show up (though don’t count on it).

9.) Know who is stopping you. If you’re stopped by a state trooper and at night … you’re blessed … that person obviously usually works the night shift so they’ll have to pay him or her the union minimum (usually 2 hours at overtime rate) to show up during the day if you contest your ticket and demand your rightful hearing. If you get stopped by a city cop during the day, well … the only real pleasure you can take out of it is knowing he can’t be writing others tickets while he’s at court with you.

10.) Play dumb. It is important that at no point when implementing any of the “make them pay for giving me a ticket” procedures … that you cop an attitude. As soon as attitude is sensed, then the cops and court staff will easily feel invited to give you twice as much attitude back. But if you’re nice and can convey innocently that you don’t know exactly what you need to be doing, quite often you can extract a lot of useful information out of the various court and police staffs you’ll be encountering.

Now keeping these rules in play …

Let’s look at what transpired when the Officer (remember, that’s code for something) pulled me over.

When he first got out of his car …

My hands were 10-2 on my steering wheel (Rule 3), and …

I was able to see him in my rear view mirror and immediately noted …

Holy Krap !!!

He looks just like Doc Brown !

I had to do a quick double-take to make sure he wasn’t driving a De Lorean.

Once he approached my car …

His first words were …

Do you know why I pulled you over ma’am?

Now it is critically important to remember the rules when having any interaction with a cop …

In answering this single question, rules 5 and 6 came directly into play.

First, I had to suppress the desire to use the Ellen DeGeneres line “Ahhh, because of the dead bodies in my trunk?” since that would call attention to myself; and then …

Secondly, since during the course of performing Rule 1 – memorizing the setting, I became aware that the name of the officer pulling me over was … Vuket, seriously, this was Officer Vuket, as in “phuck it” Vuket, that pulled me over … with me just being me, I had to resist the strong urge to say something mocking in his presence … like “Awww Vuket, you caught me” or “Better get a vuket, I’m going to throw up“, as both lines would call attention to myself (Rule 5); and …

Thirdly, I didn’t want to say anything smartass like “Because I was speeding” as that would be an admission. (Rule 6).

Now in answering the question …

The answer to give is simply “No jerk with a one inch penis Officer, I don’t.”

And for most people, that’s the truth. There’s no way you know exactly why he pulled you over. Anything you say would just be a guess … a very good, well-informed guess I might add … but a guess nonetheless … so do the Nancy and Just Say No.

Then in this case, he followed with the statement …

“You were going 53 in a 35 you assinine bitch ma’am.”

Well, this wasn’t a question, just as statement of his … and one meant to get a response from me. But I didn’t want to violate Rule 6, so I chose not to say anything to suggest I would agree I was exceeding the speed limit. Yuhp, that’s right … I, Amy-Wan Kenobi, was actually silent !! 🙂

It’s not as easy as it sounds. Sometimes when it’s quiet, even though no response is called for … you want to say something. Anything … and you might just blurt out … “Well, I agree I was going over the speed limit, but I wasn’t going 53“. Don’t do it … something like that would be an admission.

Getting someone to talk by saying nothing is a lawyer trick. We do it all the time in depositions and trials. We’ll just stare at a person and they’ll get uncomfortable and just start talking or adding on to something they already said … and we might get some useful information as a result.

Now when the officer tried it with me … I thought it was funny. I knew exactly what he was doing and could so outlast him in that little game. Which I did … as he finally asked me for my license, registration and proof of insurance.

Side-note: The other tactic cops like to try is to trick you with the questiooooon “Do you know how fast you were going?”

It’s sort of a Catch-22. If you say no, then they’ll use that against you as an admission that you didn’t know how fast you were going. However, if you say yes and admit to a number greater than the speed limit, they’ll obviously use that against you as an admission too. But if you say the speed limit or lower, you run a huge risk of looking like a liar to the Office and the Officer might find a way to use that against you down the line.

Personally, I think the best response is simply a “Yes officer, I do” and leave it at that. But some officers will push you for an answer and what I usually do in that situation is …

Ask them a question.

Don’t answer the question and try to change the topic. It’s obvious when you’re doing it, and the cop will know you’re doing it, but it’s still effective.

Now of course,

The best way to beat a speeding ticket is to avoid getting one in the first place …

So after the officer asked for my license, proof of insurance and registration …

I took the opportunity to inquire …

“Is there any possibility you’ll let me off with just a warning?”

It’s also a good question to ask if you’re trying to just change the topic.

And remember, as useless as you suspect it is to make the inquiry,

It doesn’t hurt to ask. 🙂

Now, it wasn’t successful in this case, as the Officer replied …

“I’m sorry, I can’t do that Marty.”

“Pardon?”

“Ma’am, I mean ma’am.”

I’m telling ya …. I really think I was pulled over by Doc Brown !! 🙂

Anyways …

After failing in that request,

I decided to just let him finish his task at hand and then do my job afterwards when I wanted to challenge the ticket.

I also chose not to mention to him that I was an attorney.

He didn’t seem like the sorts that would give me a break for it …

So I figured I’d save that information for later.

Anyways,

He did generate my ticket fairly expeditiously …

And told me that he wrote me up for 15 over instead of 18,

Which was a 3 point ticket instead of a 4 point ticket.

“Thank you officer” I said.

Though I really didn’t mean it.

It takes more for than a $10.00 savings and 1 point to give me incentive to just pay the ticket and move on with my life. (In this case, it’d take a $20.00 savings and 2 points ! :))

Then I added, “And thank you for getting me back on my way so quick. I really do appreciate it. Looks like it’s getting really cloudy, have a nice day and avoid the rain.”

The part thanking him for being quick … I actually meant.

The part making reference to the weather … that was a Jedi mind trick. It was sunny as hell out. Blue skies and not a cloud in the sky. But I figured I’d make a run at dropping in his mind at the last second that there were clouds accumulating and see if maybe I could get him to mention clouds in his notes about the stop. When it comes to the hearing, if he mentions clouds, I might be able to make him look a bit foolish with some weather information contradicting it. It wouldn’t be anywhere near enough to help beat the ticket, but it’d amuse me nonetheless.

And that was that as far as the traffic stop went.

Though the interaction seemed minimal …

And it was …

What did transpire was fairly significant.

I didn’t admit to anything, I made a run at getting just a warning instead of a ticket, I was respectful and cordial throughout, and I don’t think I left him with a bad impression of me.

Now,

I’ll let you know as this matter progresses what I do at each step to amuse myself …

But for now …

I have 10 days from the date of the ticket to respond and either admit responsibility, admit responsibility with explanation or deny responsibility.

I’m obviously going to do the latter,

But not until day 8,

As any earlier would be contary to Rule 8 ! 🙂