The lawyer route is probably not cost effective if this is just one ticket…The lawyer route is usually the route folks take that have a plethora of tickets from which you are on the verge of getting your license revoked (frankly, if you’re that bad of a driver, your license should be yanked).
4 of 6 tickets that I contested for me or on behalf of a family member was dismissed in CA.
There are some tickets you sort of can’t contest.
Frankly, you might be out of luck.
I never contest these types of tickets:
1) Speeding
2) HOV lane violations
3) Most Camera tickets from which it is clearly you that is driving.
just because these tickets are far less gray area than others.
Yellow/Red light ticket and the CA rolling stop tickets usually can be contested, provided you didn’t blow through the intersection without any cessation of motion, imho. Most of the tickets that I contested for me or family members were tickets for which a ticket was issued for a red light violation from which the driver entered the intersection yellow and the traffic officer cited for a red light or tickets for which the officer cited for not stopping “long enough at the intersection”.
You have two choices basically:
1) Do a trial by declaration, plead not guilty, make the argument that you did stopped short in the intersection and moved forward after stopping short. Ask if your are still found guilty, if you could request a reduction in fine and remanded to traffic school. You should be able to do this all via mail, so you don’t need to waste time in court.
If your trial by declaration turns out to be guilty and you didn’t get a fine reduction, you can then choose to appear in court and ask the judge in person.
2) You could directly go to court and plea your case, see if the judge (seeing your spotless record) will cut you a break.
In all likelihood, you won’t get off completely free…because the state needs money (seriously, I’m not kidding you on this).Also, unlike tickets issued by an officer, there is not a “if the officer doesn’t respond to a trial by declaration/or show up in court” he said/she said scenario…Even though the camera might not have been accurate, the court loves to side with the side of the camera, unless you can prove the camera is inaccurate. Unfortunately, some of the traffic cameras are known to be inaccurate or misconfigured, and in some cases, people get totally screwed. Also, one should add, that most of the traffic camera are run by private companies, which get a percentage of fees collected on the ticket. There are people at these companies whose job is to locate you have a ticket issued to you.
Some cheap information is available from ticketassassin.com (this is not legal advice BTW).
Note: Some folks minimize getting ticketed by traffic cameras altogether by removing their front license plate and placing a “dust cover” on the rear license plate which reflects the flash of the traffic camera off…… Not that I’m suggesting you do that. It’s just that most police officers do not pull you over for either of these violations…..and if you do have bad luck, it is at worse a $15 fix it ticket (which doesn’t go on your driving record) and a trip to the DMV.In some cases, if initially you were pulled over for a traffic violation, sometimes if you have a cool attitude and the officer is acting cool, he’ll just find some other excuse to write you a lesser ticket, and these sorts of “fix it” tickets are prime candidates, particularly if you are a woman.
Just make sure you have these handy excuses available:
1) “I didn’t know I had a front license plate that came with the car”…This actually is a common mistake. If you ever purchased a new car, you’ll notice that sometimes the two plates are so sandwiched together that if you didn’t know better, you would have assumed it was just one plate.”
2) I didn’t know dust covers on the rear license plate aren’t allowed. I just wanted to keep the car and plate clean. Some people really don’t know that it’s illegal to have a cover over your license plate.
I never problem without a front license plate on my car permanently for the past 10 years, mainly because I don’t like having my front bumper drilled with the license plate holder. And there are plenty of auto enthusiast that don’t run a front license plate for the same reason.
Then again, I don’t look menacing. And yes, some of those traffic cameras are way off, and the court doesn’t give a crap because it brings in dollars.
