You may have to pay court costs in addition to your fine if you are found guilty.

That said, I fought a ticket once and won. My advice to you, if you decide to fight it, is to dress professionally on the day of you trial. Wear a conservative business suit if you have it. Bring your supporting evidence, if any, in a briefcase. Be polite at all times. The judge is always "your honor."

In my case, there were a whole lot of people there fighting tickets. The majority of them looked like slobs (hey, I'm a real casual guy too, but you have to pick the right moment) and were "uh-huh" and the like in dealing with the court officers. Came my turn, I was asked if I was ready to proceed, which I was, but then the assistant DA pulled me aside to tell me that the officer "didn't remember the details of the case" and they were going to drop the charge. Funny, the same officer remembered all the other cases. Maybe I just got lucky, but appearances DO matter and no less in a courtroom.

Good luck.

 

Maybe where you live but the last time I was in traffic court the judge opened the session with the following statement to all those waiting to be judged.

Hello folks you have two choices:

1) Plead guilty and pay the standard fine and no additional court costs and go away. Everyone pleading guilty will go to the head of the line and be handled first.

or

2) Plead NOT-guilty. You will wait until ALL the guilty pleas are processed and then you will come before me and plead your case. I some cases you might be found not guilty BUT if I do find you guilty you will then pay TWICE the standard fine PLUS $150 in court costs for your violation.

The choice is yours.

BTW. Not one person of the 30 or so in the court room pleaded NOT guilty after hearing the options.

So where I come from you have twice as much to loose if you actually plead NOT guilty and loose.

 

You need:
-Radar gun certification
-Radar gun calibration records
-Radar operator training certification
-And the receipt from the certified letter that you sent to request this information.

I think you should fight it because a BS ticket is a BS ticket. I've seen some cops do less than honest things first-hand and, at the very least, it's worth it to try. (That's not the norm, but it shouldn't happen at all when there are so many legitimate speeders running around!) Unfortunately it's nearly impossible to beat these thing head-on. You need to build doubt, and that is not easy! In most places the officer's word that he simply saw you speeding is more important than the radar or lidar evidence. So the **best** case scenario is to show up in court and find that he didn't show, in which case the whole thing gets tossed.

Go to www.radardetector.net and start reading. There's a forum specifically dedicated to helping people fight tickets, and that's where you want to go. (The rest of the site can be a little...juvenile. But there is good info on tickets if you dig.)

 

I was about to reference the same website. Stein, if you think there is any chance at all that you were doing even 1 MPH over 30, just pay. If you KNOW you were not doing over 30, then fight it.

The reason I word it this way is simple... if the judge asks you if there was any possibility at all that you were going over 30 MPH and you say anything but "No, sir", you're done, case closed, please pay the lady on the way out. Even if you say "No sir" be prepared to hand over a document certifying that your speedometer is currently accurate. In fact, a document showing that it reads 2 - 3 MPH high (as is the norm with the TCH) would boost your case by a fair margin.

The other issue that you can bring up is cosine error associated with RADAR. I could not adequately derive or explain the math, but the gist of it is this... RADAR, in the police application of it, only works from the front or the rear. Any angular deviation of more than a degree or two, will throw the reading off significantly. Now, I should be careful to note this... the cosine error actually gives the RADAR a slower reading than what the target vehicle is actually doing.

I have many more ideas on this topic and it will help if we talk on the phone, I'll PM you.

Larry

 

It is not me, to roll over and play dead. I will share the outcome with you after the court date.
For now I need some help findoing those formulas...

 

Here's one that might help;
http://golenengineservice.com/calc/calc60mp.htm

 

My advice to you is to take pictures of the "crime scene". Position your car where your were pulled over. Get a picture showing your car and the distance from the stop sign. Did the cop tell you you were speeding as you left the stop sign or before you stopped?

I had an incident where I went straight through in a right-only lane, but at that time of day, the sun shining on the pavement showed the "straight arrow" was very visible. The cop didn't want to hear my story. I took a few pictures at that location the same time the next day. When I showed the judge, he asked me if the photo was taken at the same time as the day of my ticket. When I said, "yes, your honor", he proceeded to apologize to me on behalf of the county and the cop! He said I never should have been ticketed.

Anyway, without the photos, I was sunk. The cop testified that she saw me go straight through in a lane "clearly marked" as right turn only.

Another time, I was issued a speeding ticket for 62 in a 50, which I think is 4 points here. When it came my time to plea, I asked the judge how I should plea if I knew I was speeding, but I did not believe I was going as fast as the officer indicated. He asked me how fast I believed I was going. I told him 57. He told me he'd change the charge to 57 if I plead guilty, which I did. So, I still got the ticket, but it was 3 points and it never showed up with my insurance company.

Definitely dress well and be sure to "yes, your honor" or "yes, sir". Refer to the cop as "the officer" as well.

Good luck!

 

This is just a first-order approximation...

I think in metric, so just let me do a few conversions to start:
45 mph = 72.4 km/h = 20.1 m/s
70 feet = 21.3 m

The TCH goes 0 to 100 km/h [27.8 m/s] in 8.6 seconds; if we assume that's a constant acceleration, that gives us a = 3.23 m/s/s [source: Canadian Driver http://www.canadiandriver.com/testdrives/07camryhy.htm]

Let's use the equation:

V[1]^2 = V[0]^2 +2*a*d
V[0] = 0 (starting from rest)
so V[1] = 11.7 m/s (or 26.1 mph or 42.1 km/h).

So for this first order approximation, it looks like your car can't possibly have gone that fast. However, there are three obvious sources of error to account for.

The first is the idea of constant acceleration: your car probably accelerates faster from 0 to 70 km/h than it does from 70 km/h to 100 km/h, but all of those are averaged out in the 0 to 100 figure I have. If your car can accelerate twice as fast at those lower speed ranges, you could easily get beyond 30 mph.

The second is the starting speed. Did you count the distance from where you were at a complete stop, or from the turn? Presumably you made the turn at some non-zero speed... if you were taking the turn at 11 mph (5 m/s), then your final speed would be 12.8 m/s or 28.5 mph. This alone isn't a huge factor (unless you were zipping through that turn), but could put one of the other two over the top...

The third, and perhaps hardest to verify is the distance. Are you sure it was 70 feet? Not 70 yards? How can you be sure exactly when the officer got you with the radar? (assuming he got you and not somebody zipping by you and just pulled over the wrong car) How do you know the radar reading was from the 70 feet you made after the turn, and not the unknown distance/speed before the stop, and the officer only pulled you over after you turned?

I wish you luck in trying to fight it, because I think you're going to need it if you try this approach to your defense...

 

Or you could hire a lawyer. I've heard they have a better chance of getting the ticket dropped. I haven't a clue how much this would cost but it's always an option. I've had one speeding ticket in my life (just lucky). I paid the ticket at went to traffic school because I knew I was speeding...

 

I would just hire a lawyer. Right or wrong does not matter in our legal system (USA). He who has a good attorney will prevail.

When I was in college, I was driving way to fast one day. I was pulled over and given a ticket for going 85 in a 50 zone (good thing the officer did not see me earlier as I was doing about 120). I hired my tipical attorney, and he got the ticket dismissed because the ststute speedlimit was 55 and the signs were 50. Eventhough I was guilty as sin, I never was convicted due to technical errors. This is how 90% of all tickets are dismissed.

I have no tickets on my record because I take defensive driving when avilable, take deffered ajudication if offered or just have a lawyer get it thrown out all together.

There is no reason to pay a traffic fine. Now granted my attorney costs more than the fine is, but I would rather give it to an attorney than the court system.

Also, does the ticket say how many feet from a certain point your speed was obtained? Does the ticket state you were starting from a dead stop? I doubt you can prove you were starting from a stop or even where the speed was obtained. So getting technical about wheter or not the car can accelerate that fast is a mute point. The officer will just say that you acceleated long enought o get to 45 MPH.