Once got a ticket for running a red light late at night. I was on a motorcycle, stopped for the light, and then the light stayed red for over 3 minutes. In our state, a non-responsive traffic signal can be treated as a stop sign after 2 minutes. This I did, and proceeded thru the intersection safely -- and got pulled. Went to the Magistrate the next morning, where, as I began to explain myself, she said, "Wait. Was this Officer Jones, and was it at the corner of Wilson and the Bypass? Okay, case dismissed. Sorry for your inconvenience."
@@MonkeyJedi99 it's common for the sensors the lights use to detect waiting traffic to not see motorcycles. It's because the sensors are looking for a shift in a magnetic field and motorcycles aren't enough metal to cause that shift.
@@ARockRaider I suppose if the light is on sensors instead of timers, or the sensors are not the better tech, that could easily happen. I've seen good sensors detect a bicycle rider (if the frame was metal instead of carbon fiber), but I've not seen any fail to detect a running ICE motorcycle. - Now I'm wondering how they react to electric bicycles...
i call bs on this story. what you will usually get from a judge is: "Was this Officer Jones?" (judge's son in law) "was it at the corner of Wilson and the Bypass?" (in front of judge's mother in law house) "guilty, plus court costs" and "additional fine for running loud motorcycle at night, plus court costs"
Years ago my father got a ticket for running a red light dismissed, representing himself. He presented evidence the yellow light was timed incorrectly, causing anyone entering the intersection at the exact time the light turned yellow to run the light when it was red. It helped that he was a civil engineer with the county highway department and therefor was his own expert witness.
Technically, if you cross the limit line at an intersection when a traffic light turns yellow, even though the light may turn red while you are still traveling through that intersection, you have not run a red light. This is why so many people speed up when the light turns yellow, even though they may just have to stop at the very next intersection. Just an ingrained habit, I guess.
Working in city engineering dept. I was told that timed lights were timed to 2/3 of the speed limit. One town reduced it's speed from 35 to 25 and didn't retime the lights so 22 mph gets through all the lights on that avenue.
@@bryanjackson8917 Accelerating at an intersection does not have the effect most people think. It shaves MAYBE a hundredth of a second off of the time it takes to enter the intersection. But when you exit the intersection, now you are speeding, and primed for two offenses.
@@bryanjackson8917 might be legal but those places with traffic cams. if you are still in the intersection when it turns to red, you will get your photo taken and ticket issued.. and those are pretty hard to fight
My boss got a ticket for not having a front license plate. He won in court by showing more than ten police cruisers in the courthouse parking lot had no front plate. The traffic court judge sided with my boss and threw out the ticket, after ordering the cruisers be brought up to compliance.
If the judge had checked the police parking lot, he would probably have found multiple personal cars that belonged to the officers without tags on the front.
In the city of Amarillo, TX the traffic cameras were ruled to be unenforceable. There were articles in the city paper telling residents that if you received one of the automated tickets to simply not pay it and that there was nothing the city could do about it. Eventually the contract for them was up and all cameras were removed. These were red light cameras.
In Dayton Ohio area, they were ruled that in order to ticket someone for speeding, an officer must be present to observe the car speeding. They removed them before long!
What years was this? We had the same thing in my SoCal town I work in. They lasted only about 1.5yrs from around 2007 to 2009, installed about 2-3yrs after DC started installing theirs. These cameras were massively hated. But while towns were getting rid of theirs it appears DC ramped them up. Glad I moved.
Your point about finding joy in fighting a ticket is so true. Years ago, I received a ticket for doing 45 in a 35. I told the officer that the speed limit on the stretch of road is 45. He said I could fight the ticket but I should know that he isn't one of those officers who will fail to show up in court. I went back to the road in question and there was a posted speed limit of 35 mph but both lanes of the road had huge 45's painted on them. I took a picture of the scene and even captured the officer who wrote the ticket pointing a radar gun in my direction. In court they called my name first and said my case had been dismissed.
I wonder if the cops put up that "35 mph" sign but failed to notify the city or county streets/roads department. Yeah, inconsistent signage would be a strong argument to dismiss a speeding ticket. Likely the city would realize they'd been "caught" in their speed trap.
I've done it once before. I was nervous in front of the magistrate. My explanation held water and got the ticket dismissed. It wasn't for the money, I just felt it was not deserving of it. I felt so good after, I thought I was 10 feet tall. On another occasion, the cop did not show up in court. Judge said it was as if the ticket never existed.
In traffic tickets, if they are handles by a civil court, you can ask for them to share discovery and failure for them to send you anything is a discovery violation. (So you have to make 2 filings)
I had one dismissed. Told the judge, I had no where I had to be, and no food at home. I can use 3 hots, and a cot. He threw me out. LOL I find these judges are bored out of their minds, you give them a new twist they work with you.
I've beat a couple tickets when the officer didn't show up. I almost always fight them just in case I get lucky! They also reduce the fine if you show up to try to contest it; I guess they figure you need the money or you would have just paid it!!
The town where I grew up had a road where the speed limit went from 35 to 25 but the 25 speed limit sign had been placed behind a small boulevard tree that over time branched out and completely obscured the sign. I don't think the city ever used that to trap anyone though. It wasn't a busy street and the police had better locations for speed traps that tended to catch more tourists than locals. Town's opinion being tourists were fair game ... and then they wondered why they had a reputation as being unfriendly.
I can think of three different signs that I pass on a regular basis that are covered. One behind tree branches, one being engulfed by the horrible kudzu problem that my state refuses to do anything about (we call it footanight because it grows a foot a night, they'd have to trim it daily to clear the sign) and the last one is just simple stupidity, a speed limit sign that has another state road sign (list of street names) right in front of it. I drove by it almost every day for 6 months and only noticed it the other day.
While waiting around for small claims, I watched a traffic court judge dismiss a ticket, because a stop sign was obscured by construction. And this was even after the driver admitted that he drove that street many times, and knew that there had always been a stop sign there in the past.
Signs can and do change from time to time. Usually there's a sign proclaiming that there's been a revision, but those are usually temporary signs and if the road crew forgets to put one up, it wouldn't change the status of the change. I'm guessing that has something to do why admitting that you probably should have known is insufficient to have the ticket stand.
My dad in the early to mid 80s got a ticket for a stop sign he never saw. With the technology available back then he took a picture, took it to a Walmart or equivalent to get it developed. Went to court and could actually cite the exact law in the Illinois Vehicle Code (625 ILCS) that says the stop sign must be visible. The judge looked at my dad's pictures, the citation, then asked the officer "this is what you wrote a ticket for?" My dad won. He saw the stop sign fixed the next time he drove by.
During construction, often the rules of an intersection can change in order to better accomodste the construction. Happens a lot around me. So they can often shut down traffic going one way nullifying a stop sign. Or adding more if a lane of traffic is used by workers. So it makes sense to me. Good judge either way. The sign needed to be posted.
I live north where it snows a lot. The DOT snowplows very often speed down a road to plow the snow and throw it as far as possible. This also causes it to stick to the signs. So now you have the DOT determining what the speed limit should be in an area and then covering it up themselves.
My car has automatic speed limit detection capability based on signage (there are newer models that use route based location info, but mine doesn't have it). The car saved me a ton of money while on vacation in Europe following our two week tour after delivery from the factory. Much of the time we were driving the highways in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, etc. with the feature turned on and suddenly out of nowhere the car would slow down with us never having seen the sign. The car's cameras are amazing at picking up the signs and popping up the change in the heads up display and adjusting the speed when cruise control is turned on. Back in the US the car does a great job on US signs too. Would be interesting to drive a car with this capability through DC and how it does on their signs.
My BMW has the same. They all do I think. That would be an interesting argument to bring up in this appeal somehow. If you rely on the cars technology to tell you the speed limit and the sign is obscured........
I use to work in the Signs & Markings Dept. in the City of Woodland, CA. I started during the spring time and worked there for about a year before being transferred to the Street Dept. The first thing I learned is that we had to load up tree trimming tools and drive the streets, all of them, and looked for blocked signs and clear them. This also included signs that were vandalized by gang tags and random stickers. We did this so that the Police Dept. could issue "valid" tickets because the signs were obscured. The Police Dept. was pretty good at not issuing tickets when the signs were blocked even if the person was 60 years old and a life long resident and knew what the speed limit or even no parking signs were. We could always count on having a few work orders waiting for us generated by them to clear or clean signs. It wasn't bad because we stayed on top of that. Sorry for just rambling on like that.
That was a good ramble! And that was an important job. Sure, long-time residents may know how the signs are laid out, but visitors rely on signs to provide vital information for directions, safety, and safe vehicle operation.
you can be a lifelong resident, and then on your lucky day, that sign was changed by your signs & markings dept. and yes that has happened to me with no parking sign
@@gavnonadoroge3092 That is why it was so important for us to keep our signs cleared, clean and replaced when they got below a certain level of reflectivity. Every year we did what we called a night time reflectivity test on all of the stop and yield signs mainly for safety. I was impressed how the majority of officers in our town during that time would not issue a citation if a sign was not up to standard and issue a verbal warning. It was also nice that when things were slow for them that if they saw any questionable signs that they would report them so that we could inspect them and then clean or replace them as needed.
As a practicing traffic engineer, I applaud the ticket getting tossed because of an obscured sign. Getting vegetation cleared to make signs visible has been a constant battle, and it does my heart good to see an agency forced to expend funds to do what they should be doing in the first place.
I remember living in NC about 20 years ago going to court for a speeding ticket. I went behind this young lady who was accompanied by her attorney. He said your honor, my client has a clean driving record, and wasn't aware of the speed limit and feel sorry for speeding and blah, blah, blah. The the judge took a second or two looking over the ticket then dismissed the case. I came up next and said the same thing as the lawyer before me and the judge said GUILTY! I fig they were golfing buddies.
All local lawyers are buddy buddy with the DA, courts, and even your adversary’s attorney. Best to get an out of town lawyer. My lawyer was local, and did nothing to help my case really. He should have immediately asked for dismissal. He was too busy chatting it up with my wife’s attorney. Fired him.
Long ago, I was driving in a suburb of Philadelphia and blew through a stop sign that was obscured by shrubbery. There was a town cop directly behind me, so I just pulled over before he could even reach a switch for his lights. The cop, curious, pulled in behind me and asked what I was doing. I told him, holding out my license and registration, that I had just blown through the stop sign that was impossible to see. He nodded and said he was going to call it in to the DPW and told me to have a nice day. - A year later I was driving the same road and sure enough, that shrubbery had been aggressively pruned back to a stump.
At least that town corrected a defect in a timely manner, and that cop was reasonable. As much as we lambaste arrogant, "bad" cops, we should give "kudos" to the GOOD ones.
A buddy of mine beat a parking ticket because the time posted on the no parking sign was covered by a local radio station’s bumper sticker. He took a picture of the sign as proof when he went to court.
In Albuquerque, they did a study after it put up red light cameras. They found that the cameras caused more accidents because of panic breaking. All of the cameras were removed. The state of Arizona took down all of their photo radar as well.
On the 'highways' in Arizona that's true. There are still red light and speed cameras at certain intersections, and Scottsdale still has their portable speed camera vans on city streets. Each town decides it's own speed enforcement rules.
@@GoToPhx Yes, I was aware that towns can put up their own cameras and did know about Scottsdale that is why I wrote the State of Arizona. Just east of Payson there is a little town ( I think it's Star Valley), that had speed cameras, but it's been 3 years since I passed through. Don't know if the town still has them. Tucson may have them as well.
@@8000RPM. Especially when, as Steve has covered on other videos, they shorten the yellow light so they can issue more camera tickets. I also remember a few years ago that in Colorado, camera tickets were being issued to people who stopped just over the line. I'm not sure if there was any resolution to that, but I haven't heard of it lately.
@@cashstore1Yep, Star Valley still had them as of last year. Wouldn’t know right now as we had to skip passing through due to the fires. Our entire family hates them. Phoenix still has red light and speed cameras and vans as far as I know.
I had a parking ticket for a "winter parking ordinance" in November. I pled guilty-because I was in violation of the law. But I wrote two pages about how I was a contractor from out of town and had no way of knowing the local winter ordinance. It wasn't posted. A month later after paying my $20 there were signs clearly stating it. If I had the time to go to court I would have fought it.
The Speed limit sign is important as it's kind of the official copy of the actual speed law for that street. The official limit being whatever the actual sign says; not what some internal government records state.
It's kind of screwed up that around here the city can declare a citywide default speed limit that's lower than the one that the state uses. They justify it by putting signs on the arterials coming into the city, but it does seem kind of ridiculous to allow a city to lower the speed limit on it's own. This is especially the case because nobody, including cops, actually abides by the new speed limit which is simply too low to be workable. It's the city's way of punishing motorists for jaywalkers being too stupid to not jaywalk in front of cars.
I personally know someone who made a similar argument on a speeding ticket. It was for a section of the main road through town. Her husband worked for the city, so she knew of several ways the sign violated code. It was the wrong height. The font was the wrong size. And it was partly obscured by trees. After she made her arguments, the judge said, “What?!? The speed limit is ONLY 25 their?” Looked directly at the representative of the city and said “Fix the sign!” And dismissed the case. We all just assumed the judge must of ‘speeded’ down that piece of road enough times that he was not going to enforce it on someone else. Lol.
I was in a reck in Savannah Georgia were I was at fault. While coming around a curve, trees obscured a red light/intersection. It was my first time traveling this road. I ran a red light and hit a city bus. I took pictures of the trees blocking the view to court and the judge threw out the tickets.
Around here a bunch of tickets had to be cancelled because there were too many letters on some of the signs warning of the speed camera. (The limit exists because we're driving machines that weigh thousands of pounds and require attention be paid to the road to avoid killing anybody)
I got a speeding ticket from a camera on DC-295 in Washington DC (66 in a 55). The funny thing is, I knew I wasn't speeding, because I knew there were cameras on that stretch of road and that they were very ticket happy. So I inspected the ticket carefully. I looked up the location of the camera that gave me the ticket and went to Google Maps Street View. I noticed the background of the picture of my car was a wide grass median and a wooded area on the other side of the highway. But where the location of the camera was supposed to be had a jersey barrier for a median and an industrial area on either side. The camera written on the ticket was not the camera that had taken the picture of my car. So I wrote up a whole spiel, got the official documents on traffic camera policy from the interwebs, as well as documents about where the camera was supposed to be located. I said "You can't prove the vehicle in the picture is speeding because the camera written on there isn't wear its supposed to be, and there is no way to tell what the speed limit of the road it is on is. Here's all the proof of how wrong you are." They never sent me back anything, but I looked up the ticket like a month later and it was magically "adjudicated." I was proud of myself for that one.
Bro got a parking ticket throw out due to that. He saw a parking spot, parked there, checked around, no no-parking sign visible anywhere. When he came back he had a ticket. He checked more and, yup, trees were hiding the sign. He took pictures. Few days later, he happened to pass there and surprise surprise, the trees got cut and now the sign is visible. He challenged the ticket, mounted a case. At court date, he gave the folder with the photo to an attendant there. He came back a few minutes later: ticket dismissed. He did not had to go in front of the judge. The court is overloaded, so they take a quick look at the cases first, and they dismiss the tickets that are sure to be won. Only the less clear cases go in front of the judge. Bro was in a way pissed off that his ticket was dismissed without seeing a judge, because he was so prepared to do it. Yet he was so happy that it was cleared that easilly.
I got pulled over in a 55 on my birthday in 2007, in my opinion, The most insulting thing to happen on a persons birthday. The terrible part was another vehicle was passing me as the hwy patrol was going the opposite direction. He said I was going 64 and also stated he didn’t see the other vehicle passing me. If I had a dashcam, I have no doubt I could have had the ticket dismissed.
I had a small fleet of taxi cabs in the 70s. I had a discount rate with a local ticket lawyer. I learned the mechanics of delay, and setting cases for trial. When he retired, I started doing what I saw him doing. This worked great until prosecutors began to see someone, like me, representing themselves pro se, as an easy win. I remember the first time I realized, "this is actually going to trial, right now". Fortunately, there was 3 other pro se cases before me. After watching everyone lose, I decided I better split the two cops, who wrote me for racing, with a lot of foundational questions. Amazing after examining the first cop for 45 minutes, and the other for 30, I caught them in perjuring each other. I learned a lot that day, and have never lost my own traffic ticket case...or any my wife got, as well. I had sold my cabs and became a high producing salesman. That gave me a set of persuasion skills, that most folks don't. If you haven't done it, you're are way better off hiring a real attorney. On the other hand, if you're willing to lose, and want to learn a new skill, Steve's right! Fighting a ticket is very exhilarating. For the cost of a ticket you can actually get an education in a court case, and have the satisfaction that you have an extra layer of protection against tickets. Here's another trip that works close to 50% of the time. Even after not standing out, and being helpful, if the cop is still going to write a ticket, there's one line that's gotten me out of half my traffic encounters without a ticket. I ask the cop, "may I can ask you a question?" When he asks what, I ask, "would it be okay if you didn't write this ticket today?" Timing is everything. I've had many cops at that point, look up, fold their ticket book, and say alright. Then I thank them with as much gratitude in my voice as I can reasonably muster. It never hurts to ask. This works better when there's only one cop. Even before you get to that point, you should be "grooming" the cop to want to give you a break. Another thing I learned with age, is to drive smoothly. You can carry a lot more speed, safely, and unless you're around other traffic, you won't look like you're going fast. The same is true at the track. Smooth us fast, and really fast laps, with a good driver, look slow. The mark of a fast driver is looking slow while going fast. Cops are looking at vehicles that are pitching of moving in ways that denote speed. Go to s race track and get some training for racing. It will make you a smooth driver. Although being old helps, cause I haven't been pulled over for over a decade. Hopefully this trend will last, for me as it has been the easiest way to not get a ticket. I guess I could also slow down, but where's the fun in that?
Yes the old saying. In slow, out fast applies to all forms of racing. If you don't give a cop a reason to pull you over, you don't have to worry about beating a ticket.
If it's not legible then it's not posted. It should be common sense, but it does require that the people that put up those signs actually ensure that there isn't any tree or bush likely to grow in front of it and to go around and verify that it's still the case before performing appropriate actions.
Recent local case where they said the guy blew through a stop sign T-boning a bus and causing it to crash. The local news went to the scene and showed the stop sign was not visible as you approached due to tree branches. How long does it take for tree branches to grow to the point they could block a stop sign???
I was on a bus once that got cut off by a commercial van pulling out onto the road when he didn't rationally have time. Bus driver immediately slammed on the brakes. Were it not for the divider behind the driver, I'd've been the new driver, the brakes worked so well. We had a passenger on crutches. He almost wound up on the floor. Even he approved of the bus driver's action.
Obscured signs can be deadly. A high school team mate of mine move to the west coast from the east coast a few years after I did. He lived in the L.A. area and I was living in the San Diego area. He came down to visit one weekend and while he was down here he decided to visit some of his parents friends who lived in a rural area. He was completely unfamiliar with the local roads. He was on a motorcycle when he came upon a severe, almost 90 degree right turn in the road way. He was going the speed limit as he knew it to be but it was way to fast to make the turn and crashed into the side of a pickup. He nearly died and at one point his heart had stopped on the side of the road as the paramedic were working on him. There was a sign lowering the speed limit and warning of the severe turn. It was obscured by a tree and he never saw it. It's been nearly 30 years and he's been fully recovered for a long time.
In 2004 I received a $90.00 camera ticket in a state too far to go back to to look for blocked signs. I paid it and then sent a letter to the chamber of commerce, mayor's office, paper of record and 10 businesses/hotels in that small vacation town. I told them that they pulled their final $90.00 out of me. - If we all did this the business community would pressure town hall to take them down.
My first wife got pulled over in Chicopee Air Force Base housing for speeding way back in the late 80s. I took a picture of the speed limit sign, developed it at a one hour place, then went to challenge it. The base security didn't want to toss the ticket until I showed them a picture of the speed limit sign with a tape measure that showed it was OVER TEN FEET OFF THE GROUND AND HIDDEN IN TREE BRANCHES AND LEAVES! They tossed the ticket...but never fixed the sign or trimmed the tree. I'm pretty sure this was a known, if not deliberately engineered, issue.
@@MrThisIsMeToo My apologies! You are correct! I was in the Navy attached to the S1C Nuclear Power Training Unit in Windsor, CT. We lived in base housing at Westover AFB...all I could think of when I posted my comment was the location, which is Chicopee Massachusetts! Thanks for the correction!
@@glennmoss3285 Should have put the money in the reactor, and handed them some radioactive cash. At least that will stop the next generation of crooks.
They'd have been hugely embarrassed if you asked the military arbitrator to refer the matter to the local Federal magistrate, with THAT evidence. Most Federal judges would be highly ANNOYED that the base civil engineer and security police were that sloppy, and if that came to their court, a "nasty gram" would be on its way to the Air Force JA.
About 30 years ago, almost to the day, I got a red light ticket dismissed because I bothered to ask the cop 2 questions in court after I learned that there was a 3.5 second delay between the start of the yellow light and the start of the red light. My questions? "What did you observe me doing?" and "How fast would you estimate I was going?". The cop said he saw my front wheels cross the stop bar when the light turned yellow, that I was in the middle of the intersection when it turned red, and then that I was going 35-40mph, and was quick to add that he knew how fast I was going thanks to his training and then threw in a "but I'm not here to say you were speeding". Do YOU see why it was dismissed from those 2 questions? The cop sure didn't. I'm of the mind that most of them don't understand physics well enough to know how those questions disproved such testimony. He was truly dumbfounded why I was found not guilty.
If you crossed the line when the light was yellow, how did you run a red light? Surely the line is the point that counts, or is that different in the US?
@@Yotanido I think he means it is physically impossible for a car to stop in 3.5 seconds when going 35-40mph or that going. or going 35mpg is 51 feet per second and that means he went 175 feet in 3.5 seconds and could not possible have been in the middle of the intersection at that time. but here in Illinois you can enter the intersection on a yellow. You just have to exit it on a red. So as long as the light was yellow when you crossed the line you are not in violation.
I worked in a Texas town where somebody challenged a speeding ticket and won because Texas law at the time required that signs be "lawfully posted." This didn't just mean that signs went up and were visible; the signs had to have been posted in accordance with a traffic safety engineering speed study. Turns out this sign, and possibly most of the signs in town, had just been set by the city council on recommendation of the engineers without actual studies backing them. The prosecutor flipped out about this, and we ended up running studies on just about every street in town and had the council (who weren't the ones who originally passed the speed limits) re-set everything in accordance with those studies. It did some good, raising the limits in places where it was artificially too low for the flow of traffic, but I just thought it was funny. Unfortunately, this also resulted in the prosecutor's office having a big binder with a speed study for every street in town, so anybody thinking they might pull that trick again would've been in for a rude awakening when the prosecutor slammed that thing down on the table and called in the city's chief traffic engineer. Don't think anybody even knew that was an option except the person who initially caused the whole mess by challenging the ticket. Not saying you'd get away with that, by the way; I don't know if Texas law has changed, and there's a good chance a speed limit on a street WAS set in accordance with a traffic study, but I thought that was an interesting angle of attack. Yes, the sign was posted. Yes, the sign was posted in accordance with the law. But it wasn't "lawfully posted!"
We have a guy in our town that got his ticket dismissed because he proved to the courts that the speed limit was too low for the width and shoulder requirements and the limit should be 10 mph higher. They agreed and the speed limit was changed from 20mph to 30mph. One traffic light in the middle of town and you may not make it through it if you were going 20mph. He is still living here and is a hero. He’s known as “Swifty” by the locals.
Cop never reviewed his dash cam footage before testifying. I went through my copy of it frame by frame. Chewed the officer up and spit him out. Actually asked the Judge who was telling the truth; the officer or his dash cam. Officers now show the video and give step by step narration when they testify to what you were pulled over for. I found this out when a friend went to court over a citation. I had helped him plan his defense and this was just a minor set back in the big picture. Radar is not perfect and neither are the operators.
That sounds like the guy who got his parking ticket dismissed because he found that the city council hadn't followed the correct procedure to declare the space either time-limited or no-parking. By default, parking is allowed in all public places. It got to the point that every time the judge saw him in court, dismissing his fine became almost routine. He had a huge list of all of the places where limited parking had not been legally declared and he had the proof. I would assume that by now, the city council has corrected that oversight.
I got a ticket once for rolling through a stop sign/no complete stop until past the sign. It was because a cop in her car was parked in the street blocking my view to the right so I went further to get a view. Gave it to a lawyer and he won and I didn't even have to show up in court.
No, you're supposed to come to full and complete stop at the limit line and then move forward to see around any obstacles. Your lawyer must have gotten the ticket thrown out on a technicality.
@TheBooban well I'm only familiar with VA laws, not gonna look up all 50 states, so here you go: 46.2-821 highways shall stop or yield right-of-way. The driver of a vehicle approaching an intersection on a highway controlled by a stop sign shall, immediately before entering such intersection, stop at a clearly marked stop line, or, in the absence of a stop line, stop before entering the crosswalk on the near side of the intersection, or, in the absence of a marked crosswalk, stop at the point nearest the intersecting roadway where the driver has a view of approaching traffic on the intersecting roadway. Before proceeding, he shall yield the right-of-way to the driver of any vehicle approaching on such other highway from either direction. So there you are. You clearly have to stop at the line. The word stop has a meaning you know.
@@bryanjackson8917 I think the technicality is "common sense". Judges drive cars, too. And in some communities the judges are not all part of a giant money-sucking machine trying to pull every extra dollar they can from the citizens. So it's not all that rare to find an old guy sitting on the bench who simply asks "did this create a hazard, and was this reasonable under the conditions?"
In 2021, Washington D.C. traffic cameras, issued 1,477,167 tickets worth $187 million in fines. I go to D.C. frequently, the cameras are everywhere. My daughter has an app that tells her when she is coming up on photo radar, so she never gets tickets, but if you are a visitor you are photo camera fodder. The cameras can be disguised as a news stand or some other inert object along the road.
I wish Steve would make an entire episode on what he's saying at 5:40'ish and that is "But when you're representing yourself, you loose that, that little edge you might have." I believe this is one of the underlying issues on why the system is rigged and based on if you have or don't have money to spend on going to court.
It's because two people solving a problem can supplement each other and think of things together that neither one alone might come up with. Money is an edge.
Yes and no. The system Is rigged and money Is important. But even if you have money you would still lose that edge if you represent yourself according to Lehto. Your attorney is like a filter for your legal action to the jury and courts. So if you have no lawyer you are Totally Unfiltered!😝🤪😜
@@JohnDoe-qz1ql DUUUUUUDE! Not bad,,,not bad at all. Side bar here, I had a very passive attorney getting a parenting plan in place. She seemingly wanted me to have the boiler plate special i.e. every other weekend and a Tuesday after school visit while paying $1,200/month. I suggested we play many many crazy voicemails from her and she said "Let's not go there. We need to take the higher road.". Long story less long, I fired her, went Pro Se and got 50/50 and support went to $125/month PLUS she can now only contact me via email or text and only for logistical support for our son. That was probably the best part of the win.
Wow a victory for common sense , we should all salute this guy for making a small dent in the wall of stupidity. On a similar note I think I’ve seen videos where the cops have actually laid in wait at a particular spot to catch motorists where they KNEW a traffic sign WAS obscured in order to unfairly ticket people .
There used to be a traffic light with an extremely short yellow where I live. Cops would sit at the intersection lying in wait for an unsuspecting target for a red light ticket. It ended up in the newspaper and was fixed, and the cops went to harass motorists elsewhere instead of doing something about real crime like the thousands of hit and run drivers every day.
I received a red light camera ticket a few years ago in Virginia. Fortunately, I was oversees at the time. I presented them with copies of my travel itinerary, invoice from the hotel, and stamps in my passport showing when I arrived in France and when I returned to the US. They agreed that I was not the driver, then told me that in order for them to dismiss the ticket, I needed to tell them who was driving my car. After explaining that I didn't know, as several family members often drive my car, or they could have lend it to someone else, they asked me to find out who it was. I simply reminded them that I was there to prove my innocence, which I did. It's their job to find evidence of guilt. They then dropped the ticket.
I'd have charged them $200 an hour as a consultant to investigate. I think I can find who did it in a few days. Will really suck for them It was the wife and I can't testify against her as well. LOL
@@robertsmith2956 LOL. I actually though about that, but was afraid there might be some law requiring a license or permit to do private investigations and they'd fine me for offering.
@@ptrinch Which is why you CONSULT. I guess they don't have cameras here because the law is different from all the other states. you can't ENTER an intersection on red, you can be in it when red, so a picture would do no good..
@@robertsmith2956 Next time, I'll try it. ;-) And regarding pictures, the ticket had two pictures, on showing the car before the intersection as well as the red light, a second picture with the car in the intersections, and then stats such as duration of the yellow light, duration of the right light prior to entering the intersection, speed of the car, etc. Basically, everything you can ever image needing to secure a ticket, except for a picture of the driver.
A fellow I knew spent a month recuperating because the stop sign he ran was obscured by a tree, and it wasn't an all-way stop. Failure to properly maintain signage is a safety issue for which official dereliction cannot be tolerated. So stop them from getting their money and they'll fall into line.
"More hassle to fight it than to just pay it." That is what they count on. I've noticed since I started driving 25 years ago, fines are significantly less which reduces the motivation to fight them.
Yup. I had a ticket that was bogus in New Orleans. Had to show up 4 times just to get it dismissed. They count on the fact that most folks can't just miss 4 days of work to get it corrected. Drag the shit out as long as possible and hope that you give up and pay.
Yep, Had to take a day off to spend 15 minutes in the courtroom to plead not guilty. Had to take another day off to weeks later for my hearing. Plead guilt and the Judge fines you and puts you on 90 to 180 days probation. If you do not get another ticket within the time line the ticket is dismissed and does not go on your driving record. Of course they keep the money as a "Civil Penalty".
@@BigBrotherIsTooBig It's actually about keeping traffic flowing as smoothly as possible at as safe a speed as possible. Just think about what the situation would be like on say a busy afternoon if there were no traffic lights regulating the flow of traffic. It would be nothing but mass chaos and accidents galore! Then everyone would be crying about how we need traffic lights to regulate traffic and the need to enforce the observation of them by the motoring public by issuing tickets if they break those regulations.
My favorite speed cam trap idiocy was when a van with a camera obscured the speed limit sign to a varying degree, depending on how much you moved over to get around the van.
I drive in DC on a regular basis. The City is notorious for speed cameras in the most unlikely places with a ridiculously low speed limit , for instance a speed limit of 35 or 40 MPH on a 3 lane highway. It's a way for them to generate lots of money because of out of state drivers will simply pay the ticket when it shows up in the mail
One of my drivers received a ticket earlier this year. The officer stated that he didn't slow down when he went through town. My driver had no idea what town the officer was talking about. We have cameras in our trucks. There was a "town" that consisted ov about 10 houses closer together than normal in farm areas. There was also a speed limit sign 3/4 obstructed by a tree. Driver took the video into court and the judge agreed with him that he couldn't have known. I think these cops want those signs obscured. They want to give tickets to strangers.
Guaranteed... James Freeman just posted a video of Tribal police department in Arizona writing tickets on the interstate which is running through the reservation. Federal case law says tribal police do not have jurisdiction for non tribe members. Yet the officers are writing hundreds of thousands a year in traffic tickets. While ignoring all the real crime on the reservation. The tribe council does not want any of them arresting or writing tribe members. Just generating revenue from the travelers through the area even though it's illegal. The tribe court can't even hear a case from a nontribe member, just hope people send money. Not paying yields nothing since they have NO power/authority
many, many years ago a family friend, sports car lover ... always had something fast, liked Jags.....and criminal defense attorney got a speeding ticket. He showed up at court, plunked down a stack of books and paperwork and the judge took one look at that and knowing the guy he simply said....I don't have time for this...Case Dismissed...Howard, get out of my courtroom....
Here in Tennessee we have a small town that was infamous as a speed trap. The state highway running through the town has a speed limit of 55 mph but approximately half a mile before the town the speed limit dropped to 30 miles an hour and both in and out of town were steep grades. The local police usually sat about 20 ft from those speed limit signs so they could catch people trying to decelerate without killing themselves coming down the hill. They were finally enough complaints that the state had to give them a bit of an attitude adjustment. It probably hurt them badly since there aren't really any businesses in that town.
No, it didn't "hurt" them, they didn't deserve it in the First place! I understand it can be hard in small towns, but there are moral forms of generating income
In San Bernardino, California the officials removed all traffic cameras because commercial trucks and cars would not make a right hand turn against a red light and just sit there until the light turned green. This caused such a traffic jam in the whole city the cameras were removed and have never came back. That's how you fight photo intersections for everyone forever.
There was a T intersection near my house. The city turned it from two stop signs to an all way stop. The problem was, they installed it behind a maple tree. I nearly had an accident the day they installed it as I thought I was the No Stop Street. I avoided the accident and saw the sign in my rear view mirror. A spirited phone call to the Street department got the crew back out to trim the tree. Ben is between book 3 and book 4 of the Oxford English Dictionary.
The city in Ohio where I grew up had a stop sign obscured by overhanging tree foliage. The police knew this and would stake out the intersection, usually right after 4:00 pm when workers from a local factory would be getting off work. It was an easy "kill" for the cops and a great source of revenue for the city.
The town North of us is on a long straight stretch of State highway. Somehow the "Speed Zone Ahead" kept coming up missing, and the local PD got a LOT of people where the speed limit drops to 30 (way farther from "town" than you'd expect.) Something must have happened, because it has been up for a while.
The last ticket I got was for turning left. There was a sign saying no left turns between 8am and 6pm except Sundays. I argued that the road I was turning off of was 45mph, the road I was turning left on to was less than 100ft from the road I turned off of and the signs were only 30 feet from that road. Basically giving me all of 2 seconds (assuming I turned at 15 mph) to read the sign and realize I couldn't make that turn.
That bothers me in stores too. They slap ads all over the entryway doors, and then I'm also supposed to notice some store policy like "we're closing early this week" which is printed on a half-sheet of paper, and also read that sign while blocking other people.
I forget all the details but MN made automated tickets from red light/speed cameras illegal to ticket the vehicle owner. They converted the systems to alert LEO and let them watch in real time so they can pull over the driver to get their info.
I love the corner traffic lights totally blocked by parked or idling busses in Washington, DC. And driving through a red light you cannot see, getting narrowly missed by other automobiles excessively driving over the posted speed limit. I no longer drive in DC. And I don't encourage others to do so. I've turned down a few plum jobs because it's just not worth it. I don't need the job and have no more room to put other feathers in my cap. I'm glad to know someone has one something of consequence from that court system without passing money under the table.
I went to a Santa Barbra Court to fight a ticket it was the most entertaining thing I have ever done. The Judge was having fun too. I watched other UCSB students give the most silly reasons of why it was ok to pee on someone`s yard at 3am walking home from a frat party to "I broke up with my boy friend and he had my ticket in his glovebox because I was driving his car ,but now we broke up and I could not get the ticket" . The Judge was just laughing and saying "dismissed ! 10 dollars court cost pay the lady on the way out"
This is always a matter of basic fairness. Our town goes through a lot of effort to keep signs clear of vegetation. We also follow all MUTCD requirements on sign posting as to how far from the edge of the road, and the height that the sign is posted and how far apart the signs are from each other. If a driver cannot see signs and is allowed to ticket away, then the city has an incentive to leave them obscured to collect more ticket revenue. There is no good reason to put a sign up in any location for any purpose if it can not be seen.
I was 19 and driving through Parchment many years ago. The speed limit was 45. I turned left onto a side street and just beyond the tracks was a police car parked on a side street parallel to the tracks and watched me go over the tracks at about 45. The police office turned on his lights and pulled me over. The office asked me if I could read signs, my education and if I knew how fast I was going. I told him yes, I can read signs I graduated high school, I was going 45. He told me the speed limit was 35. I told him there were no signs indicating the speed limit changed. He told me it's common law, everyone knew that if there's no speed limit sign posted then the speed limit is 35. I said I was sorry, from now on I said I'll drive 35. He let me go. That was in Kalamazoo county Michigan. Really nice officer.
I lived in the DC/MD/VA area for 31 years. 12 of them at what is now called Joint base Andrews. And I seem to remember seeing a traffic sign stating that "Unless otherwise posted, speed is 25 MPH" as you entered the base. I have seen this at other bases also. Now, IMHO, unless DC has signs posted on every road entering the District stating the default speed, that's a problem. I bet even most residents of DC are unaware of that limit of 25 MPH. Another issue is that this particular sign was posted at a higher level than usual. Making it easier to cause the sign to be missed by most drivers. To me, that shows intent on the part of DC. All traffic signs need to have a standard set for height and location and clearly visible to drivers. For instance, you come around a sharp turn, and immediately the speed limit is lowered from say 35 to 25 and a radar camera or radar officer is less than a 1/4 mile past the changed posted speed limit sign, and before the driver can react and slow down, they get a hit on the radar and a photo is taken. When I lived in that area, even DC Metro PD officers, who used lights and sirens to get through a stop light would have their photos taken, and had to provide proof that they were dispatched on an emergency call, to avoid being charged with speeding and running a light.
As you come out of either tunnel into NJ or across the GWB, there is a sign that tells you the rural limit is 50 and the urban limit is 25, unless otherwise posted. The definition of rural and urban are probably up for grabs.
If you got resources to set up a speed camera, you have resources to make sure the signs are readable! Visible signs are just part of Camera maintenance.
Oddly enough, it often costs nothing for a city to set up a speed camera. The companies that make them contract with cities to install them and operate them and often even send out the tickets/fines. They operate on a contingency, meaning they get a cut of the fines paid. There have been a lot of lawsuits around these practices because the companies are operating in the interest of money instead of road safety. They've been documented to have shortened yellow lights, miscalibrated the speed sensors, all sorts of things. Additionally, you don't have the right to face your accuser in court.
I got stopped a few years go for speeding 10 over the limit but the cop had to let me go. He was hiding behind a grove of trees with his radar and there was no way he could capture a correct speed reading through those trees. He asked for my documents which I gave to him. My wife asked if I was getting a ticket and I said no. Soon he returned to my car with his ticket book in his hand. Then I asked him, "How fast were those trees going when I went past your location" He was dumb founded and had no answer. The walk of shame back to his cruiser was beautiful. There is more to this story and it seems that traffic cops are the same everywhere, They cheat and lie.
I got a ticket for running a stop sign that was obscured by overgrown trees on a road I never traveled on, but I had no ability to dispute it as I was struggling as a newly divorced young woman with a child. The money was hard to come by, but my greatest concern was the danger the obscured sign put me and others in. The cop was hidden and waiting to catch offenders at the intersection which was a two-way stop my way; the other direction wasn't required to stop. So I could have gotten T-boned by a driver on the road that didn't have to stop! I went back a month later to try to see what I missed and found the very obscured sign. I called the jurisdiction to report it, then went back again another month later to see if something had been done. It was still obscured. I gave up and wasted no more of my time. The worst part was that law enforcement was taking advantage of the obscured sign to easily catch offenders by hiding out at that intersection that was so dangerous due to the "missing" sign. That's when I began losing faith in government and authority.
Forget the channel but think it is/was "Blind Justice". Legally blind individual that walked around town filing complaints about low hanging branches over sidewalks and other ADA violations by the city and county.
In my experience, the default speed limits vary by state. So it is possible that the default limits for the same type of street and neighborhood are different in DC and in Maryland. I live in rural Maryland, and I drive into DC only if I MUST - because of the traffic. I greatly prefer to take the subway or bus system than drive. And actually, this story has prompted me that I need to refresh my memory on Maryland traffic law, becaue I was away from that state for over 40 years before coming back.
As a Maryland resident I applaud his efforts. I got nailed by one of the District’s speed camera’s a few years ago. The camera is placed at the end of a small off ramp on DC295, a 6 lane divided highway. The speed limit on the adjoining road is 35. If you do not immediately decelerate, you get a ticket in the mail. This is essentially a $100 toll. Being from MD there are no repercussions from not paying. Every 6 months or so I get a letter from DC offering to settle the ticket for $360.00. It promptly goes in the trash.
We had a case in Australia some years back when a driver represented himself against two speed camera tickets and won. He admitted that he was speeding, but claimed he should not have received two tickets. He was captured speeding by two cameras located only 200M apart, and he successfully argued that this was one incident of speeding, not two, meaning he should only have to pay for one ticket
I thought this story would be one that Steve could use. I live in Maryland and so far I've managed to avoid being gotten by camera traps. Both in D.C. and in certain Maryland counties which are very camera happy.
I live in Maryland too and I've been bit by them a couple of times. Each time the automated reader and officer verifying the ticket misread my license plate when the photographed plate was from another vehicle and didn't match mine. Maryland makes it a royal pain to fight but I did and won.
I work in DC and most times when I go to the office I take the train. However on occasion I will drive into work especially if we’re having a hearing. Having lived here a little over 10 years & driven in DC enough the main question I have is how in the hell did he speed in the first place. It must’ve been so late at night that absolutely nobody was out because anyone that had driven in & around DC knows this is probably the worse traffic in the country.
We were traveling through Michigan once headed toward the UP on a two lane highway when I realized there hadn’t been a speed limit sign for about twenty miles. I ask my husband if he had seen one he said no. We were just discussing if we were going too fast when a police car pulled off a side road with lights and sirens. It turned out we were going ten miles over the limit but we didn’t get a ticket because it started pouring rain and the officer didn’t want to stand in it.😂 A mile further on we saw a speed limit sign. We were from out of state and didn’t know the basic speed limit and couldn’t look it up. No cell service. Yes it was our responsibility to know but it didn’t occur to us that there might be a highway with signage.
I beat my last ticket by taking pictures of the sign that was covered by tall weeds. The previous sign was 25 and that's what I was doing. The covered sign was 15mph.
My home town doesn't have posted speed limits. Apparently they tried but people kept ripping them down and they gave up. We joke that we have become ungovernable, but to a certain degree, we are so rural that it's kind of true. My poor friend got one of those plug in insurance devices that gives you discounts for driving "safely" and obeying the speed limit. That thing about got her run over multiple times, forcing her to go 25 on a road that people typically go 50 on. She called to try to fix the issue, but when they asked what the correct speed limit was, all she could do was shrug and say "There isn't one."
Used to work on the sign crew for a DOT. This one business owner did NOT like the "No Parking" signs near his business. The signs kept getting pulled up and disappearing. So we got creative- we made "barbs" for the ends of the sign posts, so that once we put the new posts in the holes in the concrete, they were NOT coming out. And we greased the posts for good measure. Yep- the signs got driven over instead. Had to use a jackhammer to get the bent posts out.
There was a pro athlete who was traded from the Phoenix team to the Philadelphia team. He ran through a PA Turnpike toll booth without paying. This was captured on film. At that time, the Arizona license plate looked like the Pennsylvania one. The person with the same PA tag number as his AZ one got a violation notice. Eventually, this was straightened out.
As soon as I heard the call letters WTOP, I thought it was going to be about suburban Montgomery County, MD. I got a speeding ticket notice in the mail this past August. Apparently, the county is flooded with speed cameras. Visitors like me had no idea these existed. We entered the county on a back road from Frederick County, not on the Beltway, I-270, that new toll road that parallels the Beltway, or one of the state namesake avenues from DC. Maybe those roads have signs warning entering motorists of the cameras. "Ignorance of the law" shouldn't apply here! In my case, my 50+ year record of never getting a traffic ticket is somewhat intact. It turned out that someone else was driving the car registered in my name, with me in the passenger seat. He went online and paid the ticket. These Montgomery County tickets are considered civil offenses and don't go on one's driving record or get reported to insurance companies. Here in Pennsylvania, intersections with cameras have signs saying that the cameras are there. They're used for traffic light violations. Philadelphia and suburban Abington were the first to use them. I don't know how widespread they are now. Incidentally, I lived in Montgomery County, MD, many years ago, which is how I knew right away that WTOP is a DC area radio station - 1500 AM, on the "top" of an old radio dial. CBS-9, WUSA the last time I checked and before that WDVM, was once a sister station also known as WTOP. And I was always aware that DC's default speed limit was 25. That was hard to observe then; 20 is going to be tougher. AAA used to publish default speed limits for all the states plus DC. I don't know if such a listing exists now.
@@jamesmcdonald6969 Who else?🤔 If you want the back story watch Steve's episode " The Last $100 Bill UPDATE?! Ep. 7.122 ". It started long before this video and still continues as a reminder for those Sov'n Cit'ns and not just a fun hunt.
My son parked at HS with his rear bumper hanging over the line transgressing into a handicapped space by a few inches. The handicap parking sign read $50.00 fine. I went to pay it and was told at the window that it had been raised to $250.00 three months earlier. I instead fought it and the judge dismissed for lack of proper warning.
I live in a rural area and there is a speed limit sign that is probably only visible for no more than 30-50 feet. The road is straight for 3 miles before the sign. The limit approaching the sign is 55 MPH with the sign being 65 MPH. The next 13 miles there is no signage.
I have beaten several speeding tickets in my lifetime. The 1st time was in the 60s when radar guns first came out. Police officers in HOUSTON were required to take a course on how to operate the speed gun and would receive a certificate for passing the course. I went to court and asked if the office had taken the course and he said no he hadn't but was shown how to work it by another officer. The ticket was dismissed by the judge since the officer didn't have the certificate to operate it. Another time a police officer wrote the wrong street name on the ticket. He wrote down I was speeding on Walker Ave when the name of the street was Walker Drive ....... I brought a street map to court and showed the judge the difference and I could honestly swear I was not speeding on the street I was written for and because of the mistake he dismissed the ticket. THE 3TH time I went to court on a ticket received in Pasadena Texas and the officer did not show up (turned out he was on vacation) and the judge dismissed the ticket because of him not being there (vacation or not he was suppose to be there). ALL THREE WERE MINOR SPEEDING TICKETS OF LESS THAN 10 MILES OVER THE LIMIT and the judges deceided to rule for me so I'm 3 for 3 in beating tickets in 50 years of driving.
The town I live in opened a new public beach highlighting what it looked like in the 1930's and mementos and photos of it being a film location for the Blues Brothers movie. They installed flashing lights for a cross walk but those lights were completely blocked by 2 trees. Trim them, nope, they cut them down, the trees not the lights.
I just checked the Google Street View for this speed camera, and yes, back in July of 2019 the 25 MPH sign just before the speed camera is very high on a pole and obscured by trees. Now in Sept 2022 the sign is still mounted too high and there is still part of a tree blocking the sign. The speed cameras aren't there to make the roads safer. They're there to make money. The city brings in more revenue and the private contractor that owns and maintains the speed cameras gets a cut. If you look at where this speed camera is placed you'll know that what they're trying to do is catch people speeding at the bottom of hills, where cars naturally pick up a little speed. As soon as DC got these, suburban MD got them because they're a cash cow. I read an article where in Ohio there was a municipality that installed speed cameras and shortly after somebody(s) was always shooting them with paintballs. As soon as the cameras were serviced and cleaned off, someone would paintball it and spatter the lens. Eventually the cameras were permanently removed. Not by the municipality, but by the camera contractor company. They removed them because there was no money in it for them.
In Seattle, trees alongside major streets are trimmed at 14 feet (that is buses and large trucks are "triming" the trees). Seattle cops camp out at hidden Stop signs to meet their ticket quota. Cops should be reporting signage problems, getting out and manually controlling the intersection if the light is out.
For some reason we have government officials that believe their job is to maximize revenue at any cost to citizens. Speed cameras are just a way to pull in more revenue without making cops do their job. If we take away their power to fine people, we would end most of the incentive to waste people's time with tickets like this.
I got cited by the city for parking in front of my own driveway here in SF, despite an explicit city ordinance that allows for such blockages. The city claimed that a "valid complaint" had been filed and therefore my appeal was not granted THREE TIMES (administrative, Secondary, and Official review). I was forced to go to court where it was summarily dismissed upon review by the judge. Of course the city keeps a record of every complainant and every reporting phone number and knew that the driveway complaint had not been called by me or anyone else associated with my address. The citation agencies will do anything to enforce a ticket, even when it is plainly obvious that the citation is spurious.
That will only change when they will have to reimburse the victims of spurious citations, standard reimbursement being double the citation and more possible if the victim can prove having spent more on fighting the spurious citation.
in PA the state law on speed limits is 65 or 70 on freeways, 55 on highways, 35 on highways in towns and 25 on local highways. The funny thing alleyways, highways and freeways are all under the definition of cartage ways. Now the law for electronic speed recording and stop watches says 10 miles per hour over. Then there is a process to determine any other speed limit device, but that has to have the documentation. I know one guy that has got many tickets on this one road with a 40 mph speed limit and decades later still the state has not presented the documentation for lowering the speed limit on a highway between towns. Now in our borough we have one law with each street speed limit, and all stop signs. We do have two one-way streets, and each is covered by a study and an individual law. The big thing is where we have to place speed limit signs and periodic upkeep and inspections by law. One is checking reflectivity of the signs, that can be done by machine or driving around with a senior citizen at night. So, if the signs have not been inspected or placed too high, too low or not placed in the correct place those tickets get washed away and do.
... They have to abide by the default whenever it's not covered by another sign? Okay, that law is straight-up braindead. At what point do you mark the change from a posted limit to the default? If there is no notification that things have changed, there is no way for a driver to know they should be following the default. If they turn onto a road, then following the default makes sense... But how utterly _stupid_ do you have to be to think that people should magically know where the speed limit drops to the default if you don't mark it? _That's the entire reason why the signs are there in the first place!_ If they fail to legibly notify drivers of the speed limit, then they have not notified them of the speed limit. If you don't alert them to the speed limit, you cannot punishing them for not following the restriction that they were never given the ability to be aware of.
The city should be forced to refund all of his costs for this. It's so rare to see the little guy win against city hall. The real point of these things isn't public safety, it's a cash grab.
The "speed limit defaults to 20 mph when you can't see a posted speed limit" rule is impossible to comply with. It's impossible to know when a speed limit sign is obscured because by definition, if the sign is obscured, then you cannot see it and therefore cannot know that you missed an obscured sign. And so cannot know you're supposed to slow to the default 20 mph limit. Speed limit signs are not posted at regular intervals so there is no way to know that you missed a sign. If you have not seen a speed limit sign for a while, you will just assume the last speed limit sign you saw is still in force. Which gets to the real crux of the matter. If the last visible sign was 45 mph, and the sign lowering it to 25 mph is obscured, there is no reasonable way to expect drivers to know the speed limit has dropped (to 25 mph or 20 mph). They will glibly continue at 45 mph. The argument put forth by the city makes no sense.
I had a ticket for impeding the flow of traffic, told the judge I was going the speed limit officer said I was doing 20 under, judge side with the officer, ask for an appeal, file the motion for Discovery and got the dash cam footage ticket was thrown out
Germany has a bunch of rules for obscured traffic signs, mostly based on reasonableness. If a traffic sign is obscured by snow or leaves, then you don't have to abide by it. However, if you can still make out parts of the sign, for example the general shape, such as on the octagonal stop sign or a triangular warning sign, you are supposed to still abide by what you can interpret from it. The stop sign for example is the only octagonal sign, so even if the actual "stop" is covered in snow, you can still assume it to be a stop sign because of the shape, and so you must abide by it. For a triangular warning sign, there exist several possible variants for it, so if that is covered, you can't be punished for not keeping to the specific sign, but it can be assumed that you might have seen that there is a warning sign, so you should drive carefully there, even if you don't know for exactly what reason. Furthermore, being able to ignore a covered sign only works for those who don't live near that area. If you live there, then it cannot be reasonably assumed that you didn't know what the sign says. You should know, if the sign stood there for years already, so you must abide by it, even if it is covered. But in any case, you must prove that the sign was illegible if you got caught speeding for example. Since that would be a way too easy excuse I assume. And finally, the owner of the land that a traffic sign is on is responsible for keeping it readable, especially with plants. So that is either the state or a private owner that needs to cut back plants, because not being able to see a sign could cause a danger for traffic.
There are many ways to defend yourself from citation. Not only failure to cut weeds in highway, the size, the height and the color. Since the car is registered to a company, a ticket can not be issued to a company. This is way a person with a company, all vehicle should be registered in company name. Since the machine can not name a person as owner or driver. ( as explained to me in Florida). I had a speeding ticket removed due the sign the wrong color. (Florida) Also, a person received a large settlement due to county did not maintain the height of the weeds.
Some years ago a major road near me was repaved. After that, new speed limit signs were put up (the old ones were taken down during the work). The new signs just said "SPEED LIMIT" with no number; they were blank.
@@bergmanoswell879 however, there may be a popcorn moment in town if you avoid being caught, and sign the back with "totally not done by Banksy, bro..."
Twice when I got tickets the cop did not appear and it was immediately dismissed. Always go to court if you can people. At worse, you can request that ticket be reduced to a non-moving violation so you don’t get points (make sure you use that wording specifically, judges will stonewall you and say they can’t do anything if you only talk about wanting to avoid points)
I beat a red light photo ticket in del Mar California by proving it was impossible for any vehicle or driver to stop within the time allotted by the yellow. I brought a professional drag racer to court to testify that had my reaction time been good enough to stop I would be a championship level drag racer. .034 of a second. The speed limit was 50 mph had I slammed on the brakes I would have skidded through the entire intersection. The proof was in the photo timing and speed registered by the camera. Case dismissed.. I wonder how many just paid their del Mar camera tickets.?
There was a Matlock episode where Ben got a ticket for not seeing a traffic sign and 1/2 of the episode was spent defending a murder charge and the other 1/2 beating the ticket.
Matlock reference indicates the typical age of Steve's audience. The fact that I know of the show, and when he played the Sheriff of Mayberry, also indicates my age bracket.
I got off similar...cop was down the road, past the sign with a hand held radar...speed reduced by 20kph ...but I didn't see sign as was hidden by roadside foliage... I took photos immediately, went in personally and got off..... 2 weeks later all the foliage and obstruction had been cleared ..... Just seemed like a trap and cop knew... I wonder how many people paid..
I'm lucky. The little southern California town I live in has pretty chill cops. We do have crime and it's a college town so there are DUI checkpoints sometimes. And I Iber drive sometimes so I've taken home people caught drunk driving. Sending them home in Ubers is really good instead if hauled off to jail. So glad we never got cameras. A nearby county got cameras in their capital city but they only lasted 1.5yrs. People weren't having it
In the UK, we have a “Restricted Road” description, wherein the limit is 30mph. It is any road with a series of street lights (3 or more, sub defined with a maximum spacing). Now, we Do have lower limits, but I’ve not heard of those being enforced directly.
This at least aligns incentives. As it was, DC had the incentive to poorly maintain signage. The worse it was, the more revenue they could generate on BS tickets. A 20MPH base speed unreasonable for modern roadways...not that DC is the greatest example of "modern" roadways. It certainly feels like such a low limit is vindictively established against motorists to (in large part) to be able to run up fines. Things like this is why half the population hates most parts of government, and the other half hates the other parts.
Well the judge is right. In the EU townships, cities, or whatever are obligeted to make signs visible. There are even ifficial guidelines that stipulates from how far away a sign must be visible. That why you see hagues strangely cut with a niche in order to see the sign.
Once got a ticket for running a red light late at night. I was on a motorcycle, stopped for the light, and then the light stayed red for over 3 minutes. In our state, a non-responsive traffic signal can be treated as a stop sign after 2 minutes. This I did, and proceeded thru the intersection safely -- and got pulled. Went to the Magistrate the next morning, where, as I began to explain myself, she said, "Wait. Was this Officer Jones, and was it at the corner of Wilson and the Bypass? Okay, case dismissed. Sorry for your inconvenience."
Sounds like they have had issues with that particular officer before.
I wonder if Officer Jones had a way to tamper with that light's timing...
@@MonkeyJedi99 it's common for the sensors the lights use to detect waiting traffic to not see motorcycles.
It's because the sensors are looking for a shift in a magnetic field and motorcycles aren't enough metal to cause that shift.
@@ARockRaider I suppose if the light is on sensors instead of timers, or the sensors are not the better tech, that could easily happen.
I've seen good sensors detect a bicycle rider (if the frame was metal instead of carbon fiber), but I've not seen any fail to detect a running ICE motorcycle.
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Now I'm wondering how they react to electric bicycles...
i call bs on this story. what you will usually get from a judge is: "Was this Officer Jones?" (judge's son in law) "was it at the corner of Wilson and the Bypass?" (in front of judge's mother in law house) "guilty, plus court costs" and "additional fine for running loud motorcycle at night, plus court costs"
Years ago my father got a ticket for running a red light dismissed, representing himself. He presented evidence the yellow light was timed incorrectly, causing anyone entering the intersection at the exact time the light turned yellow to run the light when it was red. It helped that he was a civil engineer with the county highway department and therefor was his own expert witness.
Technically, if you cross the limit line at an intersection when a traffic light turns yellow, even though the light may turn red while you are still traveling through that intersection, you have not run a red light.
This is why so many people speed up when the light turns yellow, even though they may just have to stop at the very next intersection.
Just an ingrained habit, I guess.
Working in city engineering dept. I was told that timed lights were timed to 2/3 of the speed limit. One town reduced it's speed from 35 to 25 and didn't retime the lights so 22 mph gets through all the lights on that avenue.
@@bryanjackson8917 Accelerating at an intersection does not have the effect most people think. It shaves MAYBE a hundredth of a second off of the time it takes to enter the intersection. But when you exit the intersection, now you are speeding, and primed for two offenses.
@@KameraShy That fact was documented in our local paper. The intersection with the camera had a shorter yellow cycle than any other on the same road.
@@bryanjackson8917 might be legal but those places with traffic cams. if you are still in the intersection when it turns to red, you will get your photo taken and ticket issued.. and those are pretty hard to fight
My boss got a ticket for not having a front license plate. He won in court by showing more than ten police cruisers in the courthouse parking lot had no front plate. The traffic court judge sided with my boss and threw out the ticket, after ordering the cruisers be brought up to compliance.
If the judge had checked the police parking lot, he would probably have found multiple personal cars that belonged to the officers without tags on the front.
How typical hypocritical of the cops.
I'm surprised. The fact that the police are breaking the law doesn't mean that others can get away with it.
This would never happen in Pennsylvania because we don't have front license plates. (I wish we did.)
@@rslitman why the hell do you want front plates
In the city of Amarillo, TX the traffic cameras were ruled to be unenforceable. There were articles in the city paper telling residents that if you received one of the automated tickets to simply not pay it and that there was nothing the city could do about it. Eventually the contract for them was up and all cameras were removed. These were red light cameras.
In Dayton Ohio area, they were ruled that in order to ticket someone for speeding, an officer must be present to observe the car speeding. They removed them before long!
The same in fort worth. It was a state-wide ban but some cities just decided to leave them up anyway.
What years was this? We had the same thing in my SoCal town I work in. They lasted only about 1.5yrs from around 2007 to 2009, installed about 2-3yrs after DC started installing theirs. These cameras were massively hated. But while towns were getting rid of theirs it appears DC ramped them up. Glad I moved.
That's because the Govt in Austin bad it use within the state.
Also, it was wealth transfer to s private entity...your leaders sold you out
@The Huguenot. Your elected city leaders are preying on the ignorance of it's people
Your point about finding joy in fighting a ticket is so true. Years ago, I received a ticket for doing 45 in a 35. I told the officer that the speed limit on the stretch of road is 45. He said I could fight the ticket but I should know that he isn't one of those officers who will fail to show up in court.
I went back to the road in question and there was a posted speed limit of 35 mph but both lanes of the road had huge 45's painted on them. I took a picture of the scene and even captured the officer who wrote the ticket pointing a radar gun in my direction.
In court they called my name first and said my case had been dismissed.
I wonder if the cops put up that "35 mph" sign but failed to notify the city or county streets/roads department. Yeah, inconsistent signage would be a strong argument to dismiss a speeding ticket. Likely the city would realize they'd been "caught" in their speed trap.
I've done it once before. I was nervous in front of the magistrate. My explanation held water and got the ticket dismissed. It wasn't for the money, I just felt it was not deserving of it. I felt so good after, I thought I was 10 feet tall. On another occasion, the cop did not show up in court. Judge said it was as if the ticket never existed.
nice
In traffic tickets, if they are handles by a civil court, you can ask for them to share discovery and failure for them to send you anything is a discovery violation. (So you have to make 2 filings)
I had one dismissed. Told the judge, I had no where I had to be, and no food at home. I can use 3 hots, and a cot. He threw me out. LOL
I find these judges are bored out of their minds, you give them a new twist they work with you.
I've beat a couple tickets when the officer didn't show up. I almost always fight them just in case I get lucky! They also reduce the fine if you show up to try to contest it; I guess they figure you need the money or you would have just paid it!!
The town where I grew up had a road where the speed limit went from 35 to 25 but the 25 speed limit sign had been placed behind a small boulevard tree that over time branched out and completely obscured the sign. I don't think the city ever used that to trap anyone though. It wasn't a busy street and the police had better locations for speed traps that tended to catch more tourists than locals. Town's opinion being tourists were fair game ... and then they wondered why they had a reputation as being unfriendly.
I can think of three different signs that I pass on a regular basis that are covered. One behind tree branches, one being engulfed by the horrible kudzu problem that my state refuses to do anything about (we call it footanight because it grows a foot a night, they'd have to trim it daily to clear the sign) and the last one is just simple stupidity, a speed limit sign that has another state road sign (list of street names) right in front of it. I drove by it almost every day for 6 months and only noticed it the other day.
most speed traps catch the tourists, the locals know the cops sitting there
I can think of HMB going northbound the 40 sign is obscured
While waiting around for small claims, I watched a traffic court judge dismiss a ticket, because a stop sign was obscured by construction. And this was even after the driver admitted that he drove that street many times, and knew that there had always been a stop sign there in the past.
Signs can and do change from time to time. Usually there's a sign proclaiming that there's been a revision, but those are usually temporary signs and if the road crew forgets to put one up, it wouldn't change the status of the change. I'm guessing that has something to do why admitting that you probably should have known is insufficient to have the ticket stand.
Because laws require the signs to be unobscured
My dad in the early to mid 80s got a ticket for a stop sign he never saw. With the technology available back then he took a picture, took it to a Walmart or equivalent to get it developed. Went to court and could actually cite the exact law in the Illinois Vehicle Code (625 ILCS) that says the stop sign must be visible. The judge looked at my dad's pictures, the citation, then asked the officer "this is what you wrote a ticket for?" My dad won. He saw the stop sign fixed the next time he drove by.
During construction, often the rules of an intersection can change in order to better accomodste the construction. Happens a lot around me. So they can often shut down traffic going one way nullifying a stop sign. Or adding more if a lane of traffic is used by workers. So it makes sense to me. Good judge either way. The sign needed to be posted.
Knowledge doesn't waive the requirements of the law.
I live north where it snows a lot. The DOT snowplows very often speed down a road to plow the snow and throw it as far as possible. This also causes it to stick to the signs. So now you have the DOT determining what the speed limit should be in an area and then covering it up themselves.
My car has automatic speed limit detection capability based on signage (there are newer models that use route based location info, but mine doesn't have it). The car saved me a ton of money while on vacation in Europe following our two week tour after delivery from the factory. Much of the time we were driving the highways in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, etc. with the feature turned on and suddenly out of nowhere the car would slow down with us never having seen the sign. The car's cameras are amazing at picking up the signs and popping up the change in the heads up display and adjusting the speed when cruise control is turned on.
Back in the US the car does a great job on US signs too. Would be interesting to drive a car with this capability through DC and how it does on their signs.
My BMW has the same. They all do I think. That would be an interesting argument to bring up in this appeal somehow. If you rely on the cars technology to tell you the speed limit and the sign is obscured........
I use to work in the Signs & Markings Dept. in the City of Woodland, CA. I started during the spring time and worked there for about a year before being transferred to the Street Dept. The first thing I learned is that we had to load up tree trimming tools and drive the streets, all of them, and looked for blocked signs and clear them. This also included signs that were vandalized by gang tags and random stickers. We did this so that the Police Dept. could issue "valid" tickets because the signs were obscured. The Police Dept. was pretty good at not issuing tickets when the signs were blocked even if the person was 60 years old and a life long resident and knew what the speed limit or even no parking signs were. We could always count on having a few work orders waiting for us generated by them to clear or clean signs. It wasn't bad because we stayed on top of that. Sorry for just rambling on like that.
That was a good ramble!
And that was an important job.
Sure, long-time residents may know how the signs are laid out, but visitors rely on signs to provide vital information for directions, safety, and safe vehicle operation.
D.C. was just lazy. Plain and simple.
you can be a lifelong resident, and then on your lucky day, that sign was changed by your signs & markings dept. and yes that has happened to me with no parking sign
@@gavnonadoroge3092 That is why it was so important for us to keep our signs cleared, clean and replaced when they got below a certain level of reflectivity. Every year we did what we called a night time reflectivity test on all of the stop and yield signs mainly for safety. I was impressed how the majority of officers in our town during that time would not issue a citation if a sign was not up to standard and issue a verbal warning. It was also nice that when things were slow for them that if they saw any questionable signs that they would report them so that we could inspect them and then clean or replace them as needed.
@@kylekyle7386 And making money, by being lazy.
As a practicing traffic engineer, I applaud the ticket getting tossed because of an obscured sign. Getting vegetation cleared to make signs visible has been a constant battle, and it does my heart good to see an agency forced to expend funds to do what they should be doing in the first place.
I remember living in NC about 20 years ago going to court for a speeding ticket. I went behind this young lady who was accompanied by her attorney. He said your honor, my client has a clean driving record, and wasn't aware of the speed limit and feel sorry for speeding and blah, blah, blah. The the judge took a second or two looking over the ticket then dismissed the case. I came up next and said the same thing as the lawyer before me and the judge said GUILTY! I fig they were golfing buddies.
.... daughter of a golfing buddy!
Ask the judge to reconsider on 14th amendment grounds - unequal enforcement of a law, despite identical circumstances, is unconstitutional.
@@bergmanoswell879 Thanks for teaching me something "new" today. (i.e. the 14th amendment)
All local lawyers are buddy buddy with the DA, courts, and even your adversary’s attorney. Best to get an out of town lawyer. My lawyer was local, and did nothing to help my case really. He should have immediately asked for dismissal. He was too busy chatting it up with my wife’s attorney. Fired him.
@@bergmanoswell879 happens thousands of times a day. Law is not equal, and lady justice isn’t blind.
Long ago, I was driving in a suburb of Philadelphia and blew through a stop sign that was obscured by shrubbery.
There was a town cop directly behind me, so I just pulled over before he could even reach a switch for his lights.
The cop, curious, pulled in behind me and asked what I was doing.
I told him, holding out my license and registration, that I had just blown through the stop sign that was impossible to see.
He nodded and said he was going to call it in to the DPW and told me to have a nice day.
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A year later I was driving the same road and sure enough, that shrubbery had been aggressively pruned back to a stump.
At least that town corrected a defect in a timely manner, and that cop was reasonable. As much as we lambaste arrogant, "bad" cops, we should give "kudos" to the GOOD ones.
A buddy of mine beat a parking ticket because the time posted on the no parking sign was covered by a local radio station’s bumper sticker. He took a picture of the sign as proof when he went to court.
In Albuquerque, they did a study after it put up red light cameras. They found that the cameras caused more accidents because of panic breaking. All of the cameras were removed. The state of Arizona took down all of their photo radar as well.
On the 'highways' in Arizona that's true. There are still red light and speed cameras at certain intersections, and Scottsdale still has their portable speed camera vans on city streets. Each town decides it's own speed enforcement rules.
@@GoToPhx Yes, I was aware that towns can put up their own cameras and did know about Scottsdale that is why I wrote the State of Arizona. Just east of Payson there is a little town ( I think it's Star Valley), that had speed cameras, but it's been 3 years since I passed through. Don't know if the town still has them. Tucson may have them as well.
Red light cameras are not for "safety", they are for revenue.
@@8000RPM. Especially when, as Steve has covered on other videos, they shorten the yellow light so they can issue more camera tickets.
I also remember a few years ago that in Colorado, camera tickets were being issued to people who stopped just over the line. I'm not sure if there was any resolution to that, but I haven't heard of it lately.
@@cashstore1Yep, Star Valley still had them as of last year. Wouldn’t know right now as we had to skip passing through due to the fires. Our entire family hates them.
Phoenix still has red light and speed cameras and vans as far as I know.
I had a parking ticket for a "winter parking ordinance" in November. I pled guilty-because I was in violation of the law. But I wrote two pages about how I was a contractor from out of town and had no way of knowing the local winter ordinance. It wasn't posted. A month later after paying my $20 there were signs clearly stating it. If I had the time to go to court I would have fought it.
Never heard of such a thing as a winter parking ordinance. What is the reasoning behind such a law?
🤔 Thank you for your service to your community!
You should be allowed to deduct the $20 from your local/state taxes due. 🧐🙂
Winter parking ordnance in November? Do they enforce the ordinance during fall?
@@unsearchablethings8167 Keeping streets clear of parked cars for snow removal and snowplows.
@@thomasszilagyi7445 Thanks…where I live we rarely have snow.
The Speed limit sign is important as it's kind of the official copy of the actual speed law for that street.
The official limit being whatever the actual sign says; not what some internal government records state.
It's kind of screwed up that around here the city can declare a citywide default speed limit that's lower than the one that the state uses. They justify it by putting signs on the arterials coming into the city, but it does seem kind of ridiculous to allow a city to lower the speed limit on it's own. This is especially the case because nobody, including cops, actually abides by the new speed limit which is simply too low to be workable. It's the city's way of punishing motorists for jaywalkers being too stupid to not jaywalk in front of cars.
I personally know someone who made a similar argument on a speeding ticket. It was for a section of the main road through town. Her husband worked for the city, so she knew of several ways the sign violated code. It was the wrong height. The font was the wrong size. And it was partly obscured by trees. After she made her arguments, the judge said, “What?!? The speed limit is ONLY 25 their?” Looked directly at the representative of the city and said “Fix the sign!” And dismissed the case. We all just assumed the judge must of ‘speeded’ down that piece of road enough times that he was not going to enforce it on someone else. Lol.
Just more evidence that gov reps should have to live where they rule
GOOD judge. He wasn't going to take monies for fines that could apply to him as well, and the posted sign wasn't IAW code.
I was in a reck in Savannah Georgia were I was at fault. While coming around a curve, trees obscured a red light/intersection. It was my first time traveling this road. I ran a red light and hit a city bus. I took pictures of the trees blocking the view to court and the judge threw out the tickets.
In the eternal contest of man vs. automated traffic ticket, it’s always nice to see the human prevail …
Around here a bunch of tickets had to be cancelled because there were too many letters on some of the signs warning of the speed camera. (The limit exists because we're driving machines that weigh thousands of pounds and require attention be paid to the road to avoid killing anybody)
Not even that all the courts and people that denied his reasonable claim is astounding.
Classic tale of man vs. machine
more like man vs. the vulture
I got a speeding ticket from a camera on DC-295 in Washington DC (66 in a 55). The funny thing is, I knew I wasn't speeding, because I knew there were cameras on that stretch of road and that they were very ticket happy. So I inspected the ticket carefully. I looked up the location of the camera that gave me the ticket and went to Google Maps Street View. I noticed the background of the picture of my car was a wide grass median and a wooded area on the other side of the highway. But where the location of the camera was supposed to be had a jersey barrier for a median and an industrial area on either side. The camera written on the ticket was not the camera that had taken the picture of my car. So I wrote up a whole spiel, got the official documents on traffic camera policy from the interwebs, as well as documents about where the camera was supposed to be located. I said "You can't prove the vehicle in the picture is speeding because the camera written on there isn't wear its supposed to be, and there is no way to tell what the speed limit of the road it is on is. Here's all the proof of how wrong you are." They never sent me back anything, but I looked up the ticket like a month later and it was magically "adjudicated." I was proud of myself for that one.
Well done, sir!
Bro got a parking ticket throw out due to that.
He saw a parking spot, parked there, checked around, no no-parking sign visible anywhere. When he came back he had a ticket. He checked more and, yup, trees were hiding the sign. He took pictures. Few days later, he happened to pass there and surprise surprise, the trees got cut and now the sign is visible.
He challenged the ticket, mounted a case. At court date, he gave the folder with the photo to an attendant there. He came back a few minutes later: ticket dismissed. He did not had to go in front of the judge.
The court is overloaded, so they take a quick look at the cases first, and they dismiss the tickets that are sure to be won. Only the less clear cases go in front of the judge.
Bro was in a way pissed off that his ticket was dismissed without seeing a judge, because he was so prepared to do it. Yet he was so happy that it was cleared that easilly.
I got pulled over in a 55 on my birthday in 2007, in my opinion, The most insulting thing to happen on a persons birthday. The terrible part was another vehicle was passing me as the hwy patrol was going the opposite direction. He said I was going 64 and also stated he didn’t see the other vehicle passing me. If I had a dashcam, I have no doubt I could have had the ticket dismissed.
I had a small fleet of taxi cabs in the 70s. I had a discount rate with a local ticket lawyer. I learned the mechanics of delay, and setting cases for trial. When he retired, I started doing what I saw him doing. This worked great until prosecutors began to see someone, like me, representing themselves pro se, as an easy win. I remember the first time I realized, "this is actually going to trial, right now". Fortunately, there was 3 other pro se cases before me. After watching everyone lose, I decided I better split the two cops, who wrote me for racing, with a lot of foundational questions. Amazing after examining the first cop for 45 minutes, and the other for 30, I caught them in perjuring each other. I learned a lot that day, and have never lost my own traffic ticket case...or any my wife got, as well. I had sold my cabs and became a high producing salesman. That gave me a set of persuasion skills, that most folks don't. If you haven't done it, you're are way better off hiring a real attorney. On the other hand, if you're willing to lose, and want to learn a new skill, Steve's right! Fighting a ticket is very exhilarating. For the cost of a ticket you can actually get an education in a court case, and have the satisfaction that you have an extra layer of protection against tickets. Here's another trip that works close to 50% of the time. Even after not standing out, and being helpful, if the cop is still going to write a ticket, there's one line that's gotten me out of half my traffic encounters without a ticket. I ask the cop, "may I can ask you a question?" When he asks what, I ask, "would it be okay if you didn't write this ticket today?" Timing is everything. I've had many cops at that point, look up, fold their ticket book, and say alright. Then I thank them with as much gratitude in my voice as I can reasonably muster. It never hurts to ask. This works better when there's only one cop. Even before you get to that point, you should be "grooming" the cop to want to give you a break. Another thing I learned with age, is to drive smoothly. You can carry a lot more speed, safely, and unless you're around other traffic, you won't look like you're going fast. The same is true at the track. Smooth us fast, and really fast laps, with a good driver, look slow. The mark of a fast driver is looking slow while going fast. Cops are looking at vehicles that are pitching of moving in ways that denote speed. Go to s race track and get some training for racing. It will make you a smooth driver. Although being old helps, cause I haven't been pulled over for over a decade. Hopefully this trend will last, for me as it has been the easiest way to not get a ticket. I guess I could also slow down, but where's the fun in that?
I hope you drive better than you use whitespace, but I suspect that's why you have so much experience fighting tickets.
Yes the old saying. In slow, out fast applies to all forms of racing.
If you don't give a cop a reason to pull you over, you don't have to worry about beating a ticket.
That was a well worded and reasonable ruling. If the speed is posted, it has to be legible.
If it's not legible then it's not posted. It should be common sense, but it does require that the people that put up those signs actually ensure that there isn't any tree or bush likely to grow in front of it and to go around and verify that it's still the case before performing appropriate actions.
Recent local case where they said the guy blew through a stop sign T-boning a bus and causing it to crash. The local news went to the scene and showed the stop sign was not visible as you approached due to tree branches. How long does it take for tree branches to grow to the point they could block a stop sign???
I was on a bus once that got cut off by a commercial van pulling out onto the road when he didn't rationally have time. Bus driver immediately slammed on the brakes. Were it not for the divider behind the driver, I'd've been the new driver, the brakes worked so well.
We had a passenger on crutches. He almost wound up on the floor. Even he approved of the bus driver's action.
Obscured signs can be deadly. A high school team mate of mine move to the west coast from the east coast a few years after I did. He lived in the L.A. area and I was living in the San Diego area. He came down to visit one weekend and while he was down here he decided to visit some of his parents friends who lived in a rural area. He was completely unfamiliar with the local roads. He was on a motorcycle when he came upon a severe, almost 90 degree right turn in the road way. He was going the speed limit as he knew it to be but it was way to fast to make the turn and crashed into the side of a pickup. He nearly died and at one point his heart had stopped on the side of the road as the paramedic were working on him. There was a sign lowering the speed limit and warning of the severe turn. It was obscured by a tree and he never saw it. It's been nearly 30 years and he's been fully recovered for a long time.
In 2004 I received a $90.00 camera ticket in a state too far to go back to to look for blocked signs.
I paid it and then sent a letter to the chamber of commerce, mayor's office, paper of record and 10 businesses/hotels in that small vacation town. I told them that they pulled their final $90.00 out of me. - If we all did this the business community would pressure town hall to take them down.
The "I'll NEVER do business in your town" seldom holds sway, unless you're someone well-known and the reason for the ticketing was bogus.
My first wife got pulled over in Chicopee Air Force Base housing for speeding way back in the late 80s. I took a picture of the speed limit sign, developed it at a one hour place, then went to challenge it.
The base security didn't want to toss the ticket until I showed them a picture of the speed limit sign with a tape measure that showed it was OVER TEN FEET OFF THE GROUND AND HIDDEN IN TREE BRANCHES AND LEAVES!
They tossed the ticket...but never fixed the sign or trimmed the tree.
I'm pretty sure this was a known, if not deliberately engineered, issue.
Westover Air Force Base. You confused me for a second. :)
@@MrThisIsMeToo My apologies! You are correct!
I was in the Navy attached to the S1C Nuclear Power Training Unit in Windsor, CT. We lived in base housing at Westover AFB...all I could think of when I posted my comment was the location, which is Chicopee Massachusetts!
Thanks for the correction!
@@glennmoss3285 No problem. Knew what you meant.
@@glennmoss3285 Should have put the money in the reactor, and handed them some radioactive cash. At least that will stop the next generation of crooks.
They'd have been hugely embarrassed if you asked the military arbitrator to refer the matter to the local Federal magistrate, with THAT evidence. Most Federal judges would be highly ANNOYED that the base civil engineer and security police were that sloppy, and if that came to their court, a "nasty gram" would be on its way to the Air Force JA.
About 30 years ago, almost to the day, I got a red light ticket dismissed because I bothered to ask the cop 2 questions in court after I learned that there was a 3.5 second delay between the start of the yellow light and the start of the red light. My questions? "What did you observe me doing?" and "How fast would you estimate I was going?". The cop said he saw my front wheels cross the stop bar when the light turned yellow, that I was in the middle of the intersection when it turned red, and then that I was going 35-40mph, and was quick to add that he knew how fast I was going thanks to his training and then threw in a "but I'm not here to say you were speeding". Do YOU see why it was dismissed from those 2 questions? The cop sure didn't. I'm of the mind that most of them don't understand physics well enough to know how those questions disproved such testimony. He was truly dumbfounded why I was found not guilty.
The IQ bar is set very low to be in law encrachment . FTP .
If you crossed the line when the light was yellow, how did you run a red light? Surely the line is the point that counts, or is that different in the US?
@@Yotanido I think he means it is physically impossible for a car to stop in 3.5 seconds when going 35-40mph or that going. or going 35mpg is 51 feet per second and that means he went 175 feet in 3.5 seconds and could not possible have been in the middle of the intersection at that time.
but here in Illinois you can enter the intersection on a yellow. You just have to exit it on a red. So as long as the light was yellow when you crossed the line you are not in violation.
I worked in a Texas town where somebody challenged a speeding ticket and won because Texas law at the time required that signs be "lawfully posted." This didn't just mean that signs went up and were visible; the signs had to have been posted in accordance with a traffic safety engineering speed study. Turns out this sign, and possibly most of the signs in town, had just been set by the city council on recommendation of the engineers without actual studies backing them. The prosecutor flipped out about this, and we ended up running studies on just about every street in town and had the council (who weren't the ones who originally passed the speed limits) re-set everything in accordance with those studies. It did some good, raising the limits in places where it was artificially too low for the flow of traffic, but I just thought it was funny.
Unfortunately, this also resulted in the prosecutor's office having a big binder with a speed study for every street in town, so anybody thinking they might pull that trick again would've been in for a rude awakening when the prosecutor slammed that thing down on the table and called in the city's chief traffic engineer. Don't think anybody even knew that was an option except the person who initially caused the whole mess by challenging the ticket. Not saying you'd get away with that, by the way; I don't know if Texas law has changed, and there's a good chance a speed limit on a street WAS set in accordance with a traffic study, but I thought that was an interesting angle of attack. Yes, the sign was posted. Yes, the sign was posted in accordance with the law. But it wasn't "lawfully posted!"
They saved a lot of people from bogus tickets though.
We have a guy in our town that got his ticket dismissed because he proved to the courts that the speed limit was too low for the width and shoulder requirements and the limit should be 10 mph higher. They agreed and the speed limit was changed from 20mph to 30mph. One traffic light in the middle of town and you may not make it through it if you were going 20mph. He is still living here and is a hero. He’s known as “Swifty” by the locals.
Cop never reviewed his dash cam footage before testifying. I went through my copy of it frame by frame. Chewed the officer up and spit him out. Actually asked the Judge who was telling the truth; the officer or his dash cam. Officers now show the video and give step by step narration when they testify to what you were pulled over for. I found this out when a friend went to court over a citation. I had helped him plan his defense and this was just a minor set back in the big picture. Radar is not perfect and neither are the operators.
The signs also have to follow specific dimensions and placement.
That sounds like the guy who got his parking ticket dismissed because he found that the city council hadn't followed the correct procedure to declare the space either time-limited or no-parking. By default, parking is allowed in all public places.
It got to the point that every time the judge saw him in court, dismissing his fine became almost routine. He had a huge list of all of the places where limited parking had not been legally declared and he had the proof.
I would assume that by now, the city council has corrected that oversight.
I got a ticket once for rolling through a stop sign/no complete stop until past the sign. It was because a cop in her car was parked in the street blocking my view to the right so I went further to get a view. Gave it to a lawyer and he won and I didn't even have to show up in court.
No, you're supposed to come to full and complete stop at the limit line and then move forward to see around any obstacles.
Your lawyer must have gotten the ticket thrown out on a technicality.
@@TheBoobanit does say that, go fucking read it from the actual state website and not facebook
@@herculesbrofister265 That is how that regulation reads in my state.
@TheBooban well I'm only familiar with VA laws, not gonna look up all 50 states, so here you go:
46.2-821 highways shall stop or yield right-of-way.
The driver of a vehicle approaching an intersection on a highway controlled by a stop sign shall, immediately before entering such intersection, stop at a clearly marked stop line, or, in the absence of a stop line, stop before entering the crosswalk on the near side of the intersection, or, in the absence of a marked crosswalk, stop at the point nearest the intersecting roadway where the driver has a view of approaching traffic on the intersecting roadway. Before proceeding, he shall yield the right-of-way to the driver of any vehicle approaching on such other highway from either direction.
So there you are. You clearly have to stop at the line. The word stop has a meaning you know.
@@bryanjackson8917 I think the technicality is "common sense". Judges drive cars, too. And in some communities the judges are not all part of a giant money-sucking machine trying to pull every extra dollar they can from the citizens. So it's not all that rare to find an old guy sitting on the bench who simply asks "did this create a hazard, and was this reasonable under the conditions?"
In 2021, Washington D.C. traffic cameras, issued 1,477,167 tickets worth $187 million in fines. I go to D.C. frequently, the cameras are everywhere. My daughter has an app that tells her when she is coming up on photo radar, so she never gets tickets, but if you are a visitor you are photo camera fodder. The cameras can be disguised as a news stand or some other inert object along the road.
Red light cameras are not for "safety", they are for revenue.
@@8000RPM. I mean unless they ignore right-turning traffic
I wish Steve would make an entire episode on what he's saying at 5:40'ish and that is "But when you're representing yourself, you loose that, that little edge you might have." I believe this is one of the underlying issues on why the system is rigged and based on if you have or don't have money to spend on going to court.
Agree
It's because two people solving a problem can supplement each other and think of things together that neither one alone might come up with. Money is an edge.
Yes and no. The system Is rigged and money Is important. But even if you have money you would still lose that edge if you represent yourself according to Lehto. Your attorney is like a filter for your legal action to the jury and courts. So if you have no lawyer you are Totally Unfiltered!😝🤪😜
@@BlackJesus8463 I'll take one lawyer over 3 idiots. More isn't always better.
@@JohnDoe-qz1ql DUUUUUUDE! Not bad,,,not bad at all. Side bar here, I had a very passive attorney getting a parenting plan in place. She seemingly wanted me to have the boiler plate special i.e. every other weekend and a Tuesday after school visit while paying $1,200/month. I suggested we play many many crazy voicemails from her and she said "Let's not go there. We need to take the higher road.". Long story less long, I fired her, went Pro Se and got 50/50 and support went to $125/month PLUS she can now only contact me via email or text and only for logistical support for our son. That was probably the best part of the win.
Wow a victory for common sense , we should all salute this guy for making a small dent in the wall of stupidity. On a similar note I think I’ve seen videos where the cops have actually laid in wait at a particular spot to catch motorists where they KNEW a traffic sign WAS obscured in order to unfairly ticket people .
There used to be a traffic light with an extremely short yellow where I live. Cops would sit at the intersection lying in wait for an unsuspecting target for a red light ticket. It ended up in the newspaper and was fixed, and the cops went to harass motorists elsewhere instead of doing something about real crime like the thousands of hit and run drivers every day.
I received a red light camera ticket a few years ago in Virginia. Fortunately, I was oversees at the time. I presented them with copies of my travel itinerary, invoice from the hotel, and stamps in my passport showing when I arrived in France and when I returned to the US.
They agreed that I was not the driver, then told me that in order for them to dismiss the ticket, I needed to tell them who was driving my car. After explaining that I didn't know, as several family members often drive my car, or they could have lend it to someone else, they asked me to find out who it was. I simply reminded them that I was there to prove my innocence, which I did. It's their job to find evidence of guilt. They then dropped the ticket.
Red light cameras go to the car owner, not the driver. Simply because they have no way of knowing who the driver is.
I'd have charged them $200 an hour as a consultant to investigate. I think I can find who did it in a few days. Will really suck for them It was the wife and I can't testify against her as well. LOL
@@robertsmith2956 LOL. I actually though about that, but was afraid there might be some law requiring a license or permit to do private investigations and they'd fine me for offering.
@@ptrinch Which is why you CONSULT.
I guess they don't have cameras here because the law is different from all the other states. you can't ENTER an intersection on red, you can be in it when red, so a picture would do no good..
@@robertsmith2956 Next time, I'll try it. ;-)
And regarding pictures, the ticket had two pictures, on showing the car before the intersection as well as the red light, a second picture with the car in the intersections, and then stats such as duration of the yellow light, duration of the right light prior to entering the intersection, speed of the car, etc. Basically, everything you can ever image needing to secure a ticket, except for a picture of the driver.
A fellow I knew spent a month recuperating because the stop sign he ran was obscured by a tree, and it wasn't an all-way stop. Failure to properly maintain signage is a safety issue for which official dereliction cannot be tolerated. So stop them from getting their money and they'll fall into line.
"More hassle to fight it than to just pay it." That is what they count on. I've noticed since I started driving 25 years ago, fines are significantly less which reduces the motivation to fight them.
Yup. I had a ticket that was bogus in New Orleans. Had to show up 4 times just to get it dismissed. They count on the fact that most folks can't just miss 4 days of work to get it corrected. Drag the shit out as long as possible and hope that you give up and pay.
So are you saying that the amount of traffic fines should be increased in order to make them worth fighting?
Yep, Had to take a day off to spend 15 minutes in the courtroom to plead not guilty. Had to take another day off to weeks later for my hearing. Plead guilt and the Judge fines you and puts you on 90 to 180 days probation. If you do not get another ticket within the time line the ticket is dismissed and does not go on your driving record. Of course they keep the money as a "Civil Penalty".
@@bryanjackson8917 No, I'm saying they lower it so people don't fight them as much because it's not about safety, it's about revenue.
@@BigBrotherIsTooBig It's actually about keeping traffic flowing as smoothly as possible at as safe a speed as possible.
Just think about what the situation would be like on say a busy afternoon if there were no traffic lights regulating the flow of traffic.
It would be nothing but mass chaos and accidents galore!
Then everyone would be crying about how we need traffic lights to regulate traffic and the need to enforce the observation of them by the motoring public by issuing tickets if they break those regulations.
My favorite speed cam trap idiocy was when a van with a camera obscured the speed limit sign to a varying degree, depending on how much you moved over to get around the van.
I drive in DC on a regular basis. The City is notorious for speed cameras in the most unlikely places with a ridiculously low speed limit , for instance a speed limit of 35 or 40 MPH on a 3 lane highway. It's a way for them to generate lots of money because of out of state drivers will simply pay the ticket when it shows up in the mail
One of my drivers received a ticket earlier this year. The officer stated that he didn't slow down when he went through town. My driver had no idea what town the officer was talking about. We have cameras in our trucks. There was a "town" that consisted ov about 10 houses closer together than normal in farm areas. There was also a speed limit sign 3/4 obstructed by a tree. Driver took the video into court and the judge agreed with him that he couldn't have known. I think these cops want those signs obscured. They want to give tickets to strangers.
Guaranteed... James Freeman just posted a video of Tribal police department in Arizona writing tickets on the interstate which is running through the reservation. Federal case law says tribal police do not have jurisdiction for non tribe members. Yet the officers are writing hundreds of thousands a year in traffic tickets. While ignoring all the real crime on the reservation. The tribe council does not want any of them arresting or writing tribe members. Just generating revenue from the travelers through the area even though it's illegal. The tribe court can't even hear a case from a nontribe member, just hope people send money. Not paying yields nothing since they have NO power/authority
Solution: district/council has to maintain the visibility of all road signs as a duty of care!?
Not hard really 🙄
Yep, one would think that'd be a fundamental DOT duty.
many, many years ago a family friend, sports car lover ... always had something fast, liked Jags.....and criminal defense attorney got a speeding ticket. He showed up at court, plunked down a stack of books and paperwork and the judge took one look at that and knowing the guy he simply said....I don't have time for this...Case Dismissed...Howard, get out of my courtroom....
Here in Tennessee we have a small town that was infamous as a speed trap. The state highway running through the town has a speed limit of 55 mph but approximately half a mile before the town the speed limit dropped to 30 miles an hour and both in and out of town were steep grades. The local police usually sat about 20 ft from those speed limit signs so they could catch people trying to decelerate without killing themselves coming down the hill. They were finally enough complaints that the state had to give them a bit of an attitude adjustment. It probably hurt them badly since there aren't really any businesses in that town.
No, it didn't "hurt" them, they didn't deserve it in the First place! I understand it can be hard in small towns, but there are moral forms of generating income
Dyersburg?
Something like that in Oklahoma. State stepped in and forbade city police from writing tickets on the highway.
In San Bernardino, California the officials removed all traffic cameras because commercial trucks and cars would not make a right hand turn against a red light and just sit there until the light turned green. This caused such a traffic jam in the whole city the cameras were removed and have never came back. That's how you fight photo intersections for everyone forever.
There was a T intersection near my house. The city turned it from two stop signs to an all way stop. The problem was, they installed it behind a maple tree.
I nearly had an accident the day they installed it as I thought I was the No Stop
Street.
I avoided the accident and saw the sign in my rear view mirror.
A spirited phone call to the Street department got the crew back out to trim the tree.
Ben is between book 3 and book 4 of the Oxford English Dictionary.
The city in Ohio where I grew up had a stop sign obscured by overhanging tree foliage. The police knew this and would stake out the intersection, usually right after 4:00 pm when workers from a local factory would be getting off work. It was an easy "kill" for the cops and a great source of revenue for the city.
The town North of us is on a long straight stretch of State highway. Somehow the "Speed Zone Ahead" kept coming up missing, and the local PD got a LOT of people where the speed limit drops to 30 (way farther from "town" than you'd expect.) Something must have happened, because it has been up for a while.
The last ticket I got was for turning left. There was a sign saying no left turns between 8am and 6pm except Sundays.
I argued that the road I was turning off of was 45mph, the road I was turning left on to was less than 100ft from the road I turned off of and the signs were only 30 feet from that road.
Basically giving me all of 2 seconds (assuming I turned at 15 mph) to read the sign and realize I couldn't make that turn.
That bothers me in stores too. They slap ads all over the entryway doors, and then I'm also supposed to notice some store policy like "we're closing early this week" which is printed on a half-sheet of paper, and also read that sign while blocking other people.
I forget all the details but MN made automated tickets from red light/speed cameras illegal to ticket the vehicle owner. They converted the systems to alert LEO and let them watch in real time so they can pull over the driver to get their info.
My friend got off a speeding ticket when his Tachograph proved he wasn’t speeding
I love the corner traffic lights totally blocked by parked or idling busses in Washington, DC. And driving through a red light you cannot see, getting narrowly missed by other automobiles excessively driving over the posted speed limit. I no longer drive in DC. And I don't encourage others to do so. I've turned down a few plum jobs because it's just not worth it. I don't need the job and have no more room to put other feathers in my cap. I'm glad to know someone has one something of consequence from that court system without passing money under the table.
I went to a Santa Barbra Court to fight a ticket it was the most entertaining thing I have ever done. The Judge was having fun too. I watched other UCSB students give the most silly reasons of why it was ok to pee on someone`s yard at 3am walking home from a frat party to "I broke up with my boy friend and he had my ticket in his glovebox because I was driving his car ,but now we broke up and I could not get the ticket" . The Judge was just laughing and saying "dismissed ! 10 dollars court cost pay the lady on the way out"
😂 The speed limit sign was obscured but the money-making camera was not. Pure coincidence, i’m sure. 😄
This is always a matter of basic fairness. Our town goes through a lot of effort to keep signs clear of vegetation. We also follow all MUTCD requirements on sign posting as to how far from the edge of the road, and the height that the sign is posted and how far apart the signs are from each other. If a driver cannot see signs and is allowed to ticket away, then the city has an incentive to leave them obscured to collect more ticket revenue. There is no good reason to put a sign up in any location for any purpose if it can not be seen.
I was 19 and driving through Parchment many years ago. The speed limit was 45. I turned left onto a side street and just beyond the tracks was a police car parked on a side street parallel to the tracks and watched me go over the tracks at about 45. The police office turned on his lights and pulled me over. The office asked me if I could read signs, my education and if I knew how fast I was going. I told him yes, I can read signs I graduated high school, I was going 45. He told me the speed limit was 35. I told him there were no signs indicating the speed limit changed. He told me it's common law, everyone knew that if there's no speed limit sign posted then the speed limit is 35. I said I was sorry, from now on I said I'll drive 35. He let me go. That was in Kalamazoo county Michigan. Really nice officer.
I lived in the DC/MD/VA area for 31 years. 12 of them at what is now called Joint base Andrews. And I seem to remember seeing a traffic sign stating that "Unless otherwise posted, speed is 25 MPH" as you entered the base. I have seen this at other bases also. Now, IMHO, unless DC has signs posted on every road entering the District stating the default speed, that's a problem. I bet even most residents of DC are unaware of that limit of 25 MPH. Another issue is that this particular sign was posted at a higher level than usual. Making it easier to cause the sign to be missed by most drivers. To me, that shows intent on the part of DC. All traffic signs need to have a standard set for height and location and clearly visible to drivers. For instance, you come around a sharp turn, and immediately the speed limit is lowered from say 35 to 25 and a radar camera or radar officer is less than a 1/4 mile past the changed posted speed limit sign, and before the driver can react and slow down, they get a hit on the radar and a photo is taken. When I lived in that area, even DC Metro PD officers, who used lights and sirens to get through a stop light would have their photos taken, and had to provide proof that they were dispatched on an emergency call, to avoid being charged with speeding and running a light.
As you come out of either tunnel into NJ or across the GWB, there is a sign that tells you the rural limit is 50 and the urban limit is 25, unless otherwise posted. The definition of rural and urban are probably up for grabs.
If you got resources to set up a speed camera, you have resources to make sure the signs are readable! Visible signs are just part of Camera maintenance.
No, they're not. But the ARE part of a radar survey.
Oddly enough, it often costs nothing for a city to set up a speed camera. The companies that make them contract with cities to install them and operate them and often even send out the tickets/fines. They operate on a contingency, meaning they get a cut of the fines paid. There have been a lot of lawsuits around these practices because the companies are operating in the interest of money instead of road safety. They've been documented to have shortened yellow lights, miscalibrated the speed sensors, all sorts of things. Additionally, you don't have the right to face your accuser in court.
I got stopped a few years go for speeding 10 over the limit but the cop had to let me go. He was hiding behind a grove of trees with his radar and there was no way he could capture a correct speed reading through those trees. He asked for my documents which I gave to him. My wife asked if I was getting a ticket and I said no. Soon he returned to my car with his ticket book in his hand. Then I asked him, "How fast were those trees going when I went past your location" He was dumb founded and had no answer. The walk of shame back to his cruiser was beautiful. There is more to this story and it seems that traffic cops are the same everywhere, They cheat and lie.
I got a ticket for running a stop sign that was obscured by overgrown trees on a road I never traveled on, but I had no ability to dispute it as I was struggling as a newly divorced young woman with a child. The money was hard to come by, but my greatest concern was the danger the obscured sign put me and others in. The cop was hidden and waiting to catch offenders at the intersection which was a two-way stop my way; the other direction wasn't required to stop. So I could have gotten T-boned by a driver on the road that didn't have to stop! I went back a month later to try to see what I missed and found the very obscured sign. I called the jurisdiction to report it, then went back again another month later to see if something had been done. It was still obscured. I gave up and wasted no more of my time. The worst part was that law enforcement was taking advantage of the obscured sign to easily catch offenders by hiding out at that intersection that was so dangerous due to the "missing" sign. That's when I began losing faith in government and authority.
Forget the channel but think it is/was "Blind Justice". Legally blind individual that walked around town filing complaints about low hanging branches over sidewalks and other ADA violations by the city and county.
@@jerrymyrtle1944 Apparently, you are responding to the wrong comment or TH-cam has messed up.
@@virginiamoss7045 Just talking about how municipalities ignore the law/legal requirements until they are forced to.
In my experience, the default speed limits vary by state. So it is possible that the default limits for the same type of street and neighborhood are different in DC and in Maryland. I live in rural Maryland, and I drive into DC only if I MUST - because of the traffic. I greatly prefer to take the subway or bus system than drive. And actually, this story has prompted me that I need to refresh my memory on Maryland traffic law, becaue I was away from that state for over 40 years before coming back.
Ben between Vol III and IV of the OED's.
As a Maryland resident I applaud his efforts. I got nailed by one of the District’s speed camera’s a few years ago. The camera is placed at the end of a small off ramp on DC295, a 6 lane divided highway. The speed limit on the adjoining road is 35. If you do not immediately decelerate, you get a ticket in the mail. This is essentially a $100 toll. Being from MD there are no repercussions from not paying. Every 6 months or so I get a letter from DC offering to settle the ticket for $360.00. It promptly goes in the trash.
We had a case in Australia some years back when a driver represented himself against two speed camera tickets and won.
He admitted that he was speeding, but claimed he should not have received two tickets.
He was captured speeding by two cameras located only 200M apart, and he successfully argued that this was one incident of speeding, not two, meaning he should only have to pay for one ticket
I thought this story would be one that Steve could use. I live in Maryland and so far I've managed to avoid being gotten by camera traps. Both in D.C. and in certain Maryland counties which are very camera happy.
I live in Maryland too and I've been bit by them a couple of times. Each time the automated reader and officer verifying the ticket misread my license plate when the photographed plate was from another vehicle and didn't match mine. Maryland makes it a royal pain to fight but I did and won.
I just posted about my experience with such a camera in Montgomery County.
I work in DC and most times when I go to the office I take the train. However on occasion I will drive into work especially if we’re having a hearing. Having lived here a little over 10 years & driven in DC enough the main question I have is how in the hell did he speed in the first place. It must’ve been so late at night that absolutely nobody was out because anyone that had driven in & around DC knows this is probably the worse traffic in the country.
We were traveling through Michigan once headed toward the UP on a two lane highway when I realized there hadn’t been a speed limit sign for about twenty miles. I ask my husband if he had seen one he said no. We were just discussing if we were going too fast when a police car pulled off a side road with lights and sirens. It turned out we were going ten miles over the limit but we didn’t get a ticket because it started pouring rain and the officer didn’t want to stand in it.😂 A mile further on we saw a speed limit sign. We were from out of state and didn’t know the basic speed limit and couldn’t look it up. No cell service. Yes it was our responsibility to know but it didn’t occur to us that there might be a highway with signage.
I beat my last ticket by taking pictures of the sign that was covered by tall weeds. The previous sign was 25 and that's what I was doing. The covered sign was 15mph.
My home town doesn't have posted speed limits. Apparently they tried but people kept ripping them down and they gave up. We joke that we have become ungovernable, but to a certain degree, we are so rural that it's kind of true.
My poor friend got one of those plug in insurance devices that gives you discounts for driving "safely" and obeying the speed limit. That thing about got her run over multiple times, forcing her to go 25 on a road that people typically go 50 on. She called to try to fix the issue, but when they asked what the correct speed limit was, all she could do was shrug and say "There isn't one."
Used to work on the sign crew for a DOT. This one business owner did NOT like the "No Parking" signs near his business. The signs kept getting pulled up and disappearing. So we got creative- we made "barbs" for the ends of the sign posts, so that once we put the new posts in the holes in the concrete, they were NOT coming out. And we greased the posts for good measure. Yep- the signs got driven over instead. Had to use a jackhammer to get the bent posts out.
A lot of jurisdictions have default speed limits for unposted streets and roads.
If I had one of those my insurance would be canceled.
There was a pro athlete who was traded from the Phoenix team to the Philadelphia team. He ran through a PA Turnpike toll booth without paying. This was captured on film. At that time, the Arizona license plate looked like the Pennsylvania one. The person with the same PA tag number as his AZ one got a violation notice. Eventually, this was straightened out.
As soon as I heard the call letters WTOP, I thought it was going to be about suburban Montgomery County, MD. I got a speeding ticket notice in the mail this past August. Apparently, the county is flooded with speed cameras. Visitors like me had no idea these existed. We entered the county on a back road from Frederick County, not on the Beltway, I-270, that new toll road that parallels the Beltway, or one of the state namesake avenues from DC. Maybe those roads have signs warning entering motorists of the cameras. "Ignorance of the law" shouldn't apply here!
In my case, my 50+ year record of never getting a traffic ticket is somewhat intact. It turned out that someone else was driving the car registered in my name, with me in the passenger seat. He went online and paid the ticket. These Montgomery County tickets are considered civil offenses and don't go on one's driving record or get reported to insurance companies.
Here in Pennsylvania, intersections with cameras have signs saying that the cameras are there. They're used for traffic light violations. Philadelphia and suburban Abington were the first to use them. I don't know how widespread they are now.
Incidentally, I lived in Montgomery County, MD, many years ago, which is how I knew right away that WTOP is a DC area radio station - 1500 AM, on the "top" of an old radio dial. CBS-9, WUSA the last time I checked and before that WDVM, was once a sister station also known as WTOP.
And I was always aware that DC's default speed limit was 25. That was hard to observe then; 20 is going to be tougher.
AAA used to publish default speed limits for all the states plus DC. I don't know if such a listing exists now.
Ben looking up the word "corruption" got stuck between OED Vols III & IV, Steve's RHS
I have asked Steve before what is the reason and when did it start. Wonder if he moves it around himself.
@@jamesmcdonald6969 Who else?🤔
If you want the back story watch
Steve's episode " The Last $100 Bill UPDATE?! Ep. 7.122 ".
It started long before this video and still continues as a reminder for those Sov'n Cit'ns and not just a fun hunt.
My son parked at HS with his rear bumper hanging over the line transgressing into a handicapped space by a few inches. The handicap parking sign read $50.00 fine. I went to pay it and was told at the window that it had been raised to $250.00 three months earlier. I instead fought it and the judge dismissed for lack of proper warning.
I live in a rural area and there is a speed limit sign that is probably only visible for no more than 30-50 feet. The road is straight for 3 miles before the sign. The limit approaching the sign is 55 MPH with the sign being 65 MPH. The next 13 miles there is no signage.
I have beaten several speeding tickets in my lifetime. The 1st time was in the 60s when radar guns first came out. Police officers in HOUSTON were required to take a course on how to operate the speed gun and would receive a certificate for passing the course. I went to court and asked if the office had taken the course and he said no he hadn't but was shown how to work it by another officer. The ticket was dismissed by the judge since the officer didn't have the certificate to operate it. Another time a police officer wrote the wrong street name on the ticket. He wrote down I was speeding on Walker Ave when the name of the street was Walker Drive ....... I brought a street map to court and showed the judge the difference and I could honestly swear I was not speeding on the street I was written for and because of the mistake he dismissed the ticket. THE 3TH time I went to court on a ticket received in Pasadena Texas and the officer did not show up (turned out he was on vacation) and the judge dismissed the ticket because of him not being there (vacation or not he was suppose to be there). ALL THREE WERE MINOR SPEEDING TICKETS OF LESS THAN 10 MILES OVER THE LIMIT and the judges deceided to rule for me so I'm 3 for 3 in beating tickets in 50 years of driving.
The town I live in opened a new public beach highlighting what it looked like in the 1930's and mementos and photos of it being a film location for the Blues Brothers movie. They installed flashing lights for a cross walk but those lights were completely blocked by 2 trees. Trim them, nope, they cut them down, the trees not the lights.
I just checked the Google Street View for this speed camera, and yes, back in July of 2019 the 25 MPH sign just before the speed camera is very high on a pole and obscured by trees. Now in Sept 2022 the sign is still mounted too high and there is still part of a tree blocking the sign.
The speed cameras aren't there to make the roads safer. They're there to make money. The city brings in more revenue and the private contractor that owns and maintains the speed cameras gets a cut. If you look at where this speed camera is placed you'll know that what they're trying to do is catch people speeding at the bottom of hills, where cars naturally pick up a little speed. As soon as DC got these, suburban MD got them because they're a cash cow. I read an article where in Ohio there was a municipality that installed speed cameras and shortly after somebody(s) was always shooting them with paintballs. As soon as the cameras were serviced and cleaned off, someone would paintball it and spatter the lens. Eventually the cameras were permanently removed. Not by the municipality, but by the camera contractor company. They removed them because there was no money in it for them.
The Notification issue is interesting because now all the roads Entering places such as Myrtle Beach have city wide speed limits posted
In Seattle, trees alongside major streets are trimmed at 14 feet (that is buses and large trucks are "triming" the trees). Seattle cops camp out at hidden Stop signs to meet their ticket quota. Cops should be reporting signage problems, getting out and manually controlling the intersection if the light is out.
All those taxes and they can't put up signs? Lower the judges and municipal directors salaries to pay for the speed limit signs.
For some reason we have government officials that believe their job is to maximize revenue at any cost to citizens. Speed cameras are just a way to pull in more revenue without making cops do their job. If we take away their power to fine people, we would end most of the incentive to waste people's time with tickets like this.
I got cited by the city for parking in front of my own driveway here in SF, despite an explicit city ordinance that allows for such blockages. The city claimed that a "valid complaint" had been filed and therefore my appeal was not granted THREE TIMES (administrative, Secondary, and Official review). I was forced to go to court where it was summarily dismissed upon review by the judge. Of course the city keeps a record of every complainant and every reporting phone number and knew that the driveway complaint had not been called by me or anyone else associated with my address.
The citation agencies will do anything to enforce a ticket, even when it is plainly obvious that the citation is spurious.
That will only change when they will have to reimburse the victims of spurious citations, standard reimbursement being double the citation and more possible if the victim can prove having spent more on fighting the spurious citation.
in PA the state law on speed limits is 65 or 70 on freeways, 55 on highways, 35 on highways in towns and 25 on local highways. The funny thing alleyways, highways and freeways are all under the definition of cartage ways. Now the law for electronic speed recording and stop watches says 10 miles per hour over. Then there is a process to determine any other speed limit device, but that has to have the documentation. I know one guy that has got many tickets on this one road with a 40 mph speed limit and decades later still the state has not presented the documentation for lowering the speed limit on a highway between towns. Now in our borough we have one law with each street speed limit, and all stop signs. We do have two one-way streets, and each is covered by a study and an individual law. The big thing is where we have to place speed limit signs and periodic upkeep and inspections by law. One is checking reflectivity of the signs, that can be done by machine or driving around with a senior citizen at night. So, if the signs have not been inspected or placed too high, too low or not placed in the correct place those tickets get washed away and do.
... They have to abide by the default whenever it's not covered by another sign?
Okay, that law is straight-up braindead. At what point do you mark the change from a posted limit to the default? If there is no notification that things have changed, there is no way for a driver to know they should be following the default. If they turn onto a road, then following the default makes sense... But how utterly _stupid_ do you have to be to think that people should magically know where the speed limit drops to the default if you don't mark it? _That's the entire reason why the signs are there in the first place!_ If they fail to legibly notify drivers of the speed limit, then they have not notified them of the speed limit. If you don't alert them to the speed limit, you cannot punishing them for not following the restriction that they were never given the ability to be aware of.
The city should be forced to refund all of his costs for this. It's so rare to see the little guy win against city hall. The real point of these things isn't public safety, it's a cash grab.
The "speed limit defaults to 20 mph when you can't see a posted speed limit" rule is impossible to comply with. It's impossible to know when a speed limit sign is obscured because by definition, if the sign is obscured, then you cannot see it and therefore cannot know that you missed an obscured sign. And so cannot know you're supposed to slow to the default 20 mph limit.
Speed limit signs are not posted at regular intervals so there is no way to know that you missed a sign. If you have not seen a speed limit sign for a while, you will just assume the last speed limit sign you saw is still in force. Which gets to the real crux of the matter. If the last visible sign was 45 mph, and the sign lowering it to 25 mph is obscured, there is no reasonable way to expect drivers to know the speed limit has dropped (to 25 mph or 20 mph). They will glibly continue at 45 mph. The argument put forth by the city makes no sense.
I had a ticket for impeding the flow of traffic, told the judge I was going the speed limit officer said I was doing 20 under, judge side with the officer, ask for an appeal, file the motion for Discovery and got the dash cam footage ticket was thrown out
Germany has a bunch of rules for obscured traffic signs, mostly based on reasonableness.
If a traffic sign is obscured by snow or leaves, then you don't have to abide by it. However, if you can still make out parts of the sign, for example the general shape, such as on the octagonal stop sign or a triangular warning sign, you are supposed to still abide by what you can interpret from it. The stop sign for example is the only octagonal sign, so even if the actual "stop" is covered in snow, you can still assume it to be a stop sign because of the shape, and so you must abide by it. For a triangular warning sign, there exist several possible variants for it, so if that is covered, you can't be punished for not keeping to the specific sign, but it can be assumed that you might have seen that there is a warning sign, so you should drive carefully there, even if you don't know for exactly what reason.
Furthermore, being able to ignore a covered sign only works for those who don't live near that area. If you live there, then it cannot be reasonably assumed that you didn't know what the sign says. You should know, if the sign stood there for years already, so you must abide by it, even if it is covered.
But in any case, you must prove that the sign was illegible if you got caught speeding for example. Since that would be a way too easy excuse I assume.
And finally, the owner of the land that a traffic sign is on is responsible for keeping it readable, especially with plants. So that is either the state or a private owner that needs to cut back plants, because not being able to see a sign could cause a danger for traffic.
There are many ways to defend yourself from citation. Not only failure to cut weeds in highway, the size, the height and the color. Since the car is registered to a company, a ticket can not be issued to a company. This is way a person with a company, all vehicle should be registered in company name. Since the machine can not name a person as owner or driver. ( as explained to me in Florida). I had a speeding ticket removed due the sign the wrong color. (Florida) Also, a person received a large settlement due to county did not maintain the height of the weeds.
Some years ago a major road near me was repaved. After that, new speed limit signs were put up (the old ones were taken down during the work). The new signs just said "SPEED LIMIT" with no number; they were blank.
In other words, no limits.
Spray paint an infinity symbol, with a "minimum speed c" immediately beneath it...
@@bergmanoswell879 That's what I would have argued.
@@andrewamann2821 *snerk* Unfortunately, defacing a road sign is a crime in many places, and I suspect filling in your own numbers would count.
@@bergmanoswell879 however, there may be a popcorn moment in town if you avoid being caught, and sign the back with "totally not done by Banksy, bro..."
Twice when I got tickets the cop did not appear and it was immediately dismissed. Always go to court if you can people. At worse, you can request that ticket be reduced to a non-moving violation so you don’t get points (make sure you use that wording specifically, judges will stonewall you and say they can’t do anything if you only talk about wanting to avoid points)
I beat a red light photo ticket in del Mar California by proving it was impossible for any vehicle or driver to stop within the time allotted by the yellow. I brought a professional drag racer to court to testify that had my reaction time been good enough to stop I would be a championship level drag racer. .034 of a second. The speed limit was 50 mph had I slammed on the brakes I would have skidded through the entire intersection. The proof was in the photo timing and speed registered by the camera. Case dismissed..
I wonder how many just paid their del Mar camera tickets.?
There was a Matlock episode where Ben got a ticket for not seeing a traffic sign and 1/2 of the episode was spent defending a murder charge and the other 1/2 beating the ticket.
Matlock reference indicates the typical age of Steve's audience. The fact that I know of the show, and when he played the Sheriff of Mayberry, also indicates my age bracket.
Knowing that Griffith starred in Ira Levin's one-hour teleplay, No Time for Sergeants (March 1955) shows my age. 😂
I got off similar...cop was down the road, past the sign with a hand held radar...speed reduced by 20kph ...but I didn't see sign as was hidden by roadside foliage... I took photos immediately, went in personally and got off..... 2 weeks later all the foliage and obstruction had been cleared ..... Just seemed like a trap and cop knew... I wonder how many people paid..
Part of me is chuckling because DC was usually so traffic clogged it was impossible to speed.
A city Council claiming, I am the law again…. Of course there in no conflict of interest in running a money making machine.
I'm lucky. The little southern California town I live in has pretty chill cops. We do have crime and it's a college town so there are DUI checkpoints sometimes. And I Iber drive sometimes so I've taken home people caught drunk driving. Sending them home in Ubers is really good instead if hauled off to jail.
So glad we never got cameras. A nearby county got cameras in their capital city but they only lasted 1.5yrs. People weren't having it
In the UK, we have a “Restricted Road” description, wherein the limit is 30mph. It is any road with a series of street lights (3 or more, sub defined with a maximum spacing).
Now, we Do have lower limits, but I’ve not heard of those being enforced directly.
This at least aligns incentives. As it was, DC had the incentive to poorly maintain signage. The worse it was, the more revenue they could generate on BS tickets.
A 20MPH base speed unreasonable for modern roadways...not that DC is the greatest example of "modern" roadways. It certainly feels like such a low limit is vindictively established against motorists to (in large part) to be able to run up fines. Things like this is why half the population hates most parts of government, and the other half hates the other parts.
Well the judge is right. In the EU townships, cities, or whatever are obligeted to make signs visible. There are even ifficial guidelines that stipulates from how far away a sign must be visible.
That why you see hagues strangely cut with a niche in order to see the sign.