First Time Speeding Ticket

It ain't the end of the world if you pay it, or fight it. Either way, you'll be fine. Just do better.

 

This was also my first thought when I first read this yesterday. I went through my entire career and never suffered any consequences of an occasional ticket other than paying the money needed to settle them. I will say this though. Every CDL holder needs to ALWAYS be aware of those tables in 383.51. Sometimes I wish the admins would make this warning a sticky topic at the top of this board.

 

Photos of the curve, roadway may help judge.
But.
Everyone is broke, because Covid.
Doesn’t matter the government gave out free money like candy, they are out squeezing the public for their benefit, di law officers still get $1/per ticket in their retirement fund, or did they raise that to like $5 by now?

 

I've used both. They charge about the same.

Both of them referred my case to a local lawyer.

Both times I got good representation, in my opinion.

First time the case essentially got thrown out.

Second time was a more complex case, even though I pled no contest, I was found guilty by the judge, but under a much less serious offense and fewer points.

I have no complaints about either service.


However, for local yokel "feed the bear" tickets, I just show up to court, get the points taken off and the offense reduced to a less serious charge. Don't accept "seat belt violation" as an alternative charge, that can potentially cause trouble for you down the road.

The town I used to live in used to reduce it to "parking on pavement".

 

What is this thing with road law and all of that?

this isn’t a cdl issue, it wasn’t in a truck and this was by the guys house.

This is the best reasonable answer is what cattleman said but I modified it, read it carefully.

you don’t need a lawyer.

I would go to court and just tell the judge...

"I was doing the speed limit, I had not entered the 25 zone yet. I live at (insert address) and this is my daily route. Every time I am approaching the curve, I take it seriously and drop my speed before the sign.” Then explain about the curve stuff with a map. Continue by saying “I have a clean record, I am careful with (insert here) years of safe driving and now I have earned a commercial drivers license and will apply the same safe attitude towards professional driving as I have in my driving life. I don’t think it would be right to have this violation when I wasn’t in the 25 mph zone”

as cattleman said, chances are the officer who issued the citation wont show up to court amd the judge may dismiss the ticket because of your record or at least change it to a lower violation which I would ask the judge for only a fine with no speeding violation,

One point of contention that can be important is your vehicle has a tolerance built into the speedometer, there is I think either 10% or 7% tolerance in the us so the speedometer isn’t all that accurate by law.

 

Let me PLEASE ground this go-to-court topic back to reality. Your first trip is NOT open court and in almost every instance the officer WILL NOT be there. You cop a plea and get a court date. The Judge is NOT interested in anything but your plea. In States like Georgia, you can also demand a Jury Trial (something I highly recommend in these types of cases). When you get a court date you can bet your paycheck that officer will also be there. The problem is in some states this type of case is considered an infraction and you lose some rights. With the average CDL holder, this means you are going to lose at a minimum 2 days of work to fight such a ticket. In my last few years, I considered a day's pay at around $200. For me, that's a built-in cost of $400 that I lose regardless of the outcome if I fight a case. Don't believe me? Then I challenge you to go sit in a court during arraignment day and watch what happens.

 

Let me also tell a story from my past! I can quote the day this happened. It happened the day Princess Diana died in 1997. I was driving through Gaston county NC and was ticketed by a State Trooper. I was charged with 15 over and not wearing my seatbelt. The trooper was NOT interested when I tried to explain to him I had just removed it so I could get to my wallet. Anyway, I was able to stop by the Gaston County Courthouse. I asked if I could go to some kind of driving school. I was told by the guy he could knock the charge down to 9 over, but only if I pled guilty to both charges. I hated doing it, but went ahead and did so. To this day neither of those charges have appeared on my DMV or my DAC. I did about a week later speak to my carrier's VP of Safety and he told me to not worry about it. This is why I try to stay out of these "court" topics because every state does it differently. Just know that if you decide to fight a ticket in OVER 90% of the cases you are going to lose two days of pay and if fighting this involves a long-distance trip you are going to have to do this two times.

 

I don't think the ticket is ''legal'' What color was the 25mph sign? Lets start with that.