OT - Got a ticket

[kevC]

I just got a ticket for rolling through a stop sign.

This is my first ticket in 5 years of driving and I don't know what would be the best course of action.

Should I just pay the ticket, take defensive driving, or show up to court and contest it? Anyone know how much a ticket cost for running through a stop sign?

[King Roosk]

Are you guilty? If you're guilty I would think it best to not contest it in court because that'd require lying under oath, right?

This sounds like a question that Ribalding should answer...

[Ribalding]

Well speak of the devil.

You have 2 realistic options:

Option A (The Honorable Guy Option) : Plead guilty. 1st, request deferred adjudication. If the judge allows it, all you have to do is not get stopped for 3-6 months and the ticket goes away after you pay a small fee. If the judge says no, then request defensive driving. They'll allow that and the ticket still won't go on your record or insurance once you've completed the course and given the court all the requisite paper work. The DD option is a little expensive (and time-consuming), though.

Option B (The Real World Option) : Go to your court date and plead not guilty. Go back a week before your trial date and have your court date re-scheduled. Go to your trial date and hope like hell the cop doesn't show up. If he/she doesn't, your case is dismissed. Done. If he/she does show up, be real nice to the city attorney, change your plea to 'guilty', and request defensive driving.

75% of the time, the cop doesn't show. (That number drops to 50% if you don't re-schedule the court date.)

[kevC]

Wait is Option A done in court or on the phone? I am guilty; I didn't see the stop sign. The cop was pretty nice and said if he were me he would go to court because the judge he assigned me was pretty lenient. I kind of don't want to deal with court though and take defensive driving. I've never heard of deferred adjudication though. How likely is that? Also, how much is DD going to run me?

[moofs]

I tried using option B once and ended up having to use my yearly defensive driving exception because I have awesome luck.

Usually I use option A, not for honesty but for convenience of not going to court any more than necessary, even though it costs roughly 2-3 times as much. Depending on where you get it, if you go deferred adjudication, in my experience, it has usually only applied to the city/county you got the ticket in, meaning if I were to get a different ticket in a different city/county/state, I could take another deferred, and that if they apply it to a wider range than just their city, I'm still fine because the other one was acquired beforehand and the law doesn't typically check for existing deferred offenses.

The reason I say "usually" is because of the several tickets I've gotten between Houston and Pasadena, most have not cared about anything other than that city. Unfortunately, the last one I got applied to anywhere, even out of state, meaning it was more like taking a defensive driving class that I could take again in 3 months instead of 12.

With gas prices, if you live far enough, and especially if you do any contracting, option A could end up being only slightly more expensive.

DD is something like $40-90 + court costs? Deferred is the cost of the ticket. The advantage to that is it that as long as you don't get another ticket that violates the deferment, it doesn't go on your record, so no massive insurance hikes and no strikes against you for DL suspension purposes. The judge can better explain the differences, costs and any other questions you have as well as the terms he's going to grant you.

p.s. Make sure everything that whatever you are granted by the court is written down by the clerk on a copy you get to keep. I've had them screw up before and it wasn't cheap. Same as everything else, always get it in writing.

[Amel]

dont contest it

you wont have a chance,

pay the ticket and take a 4 hour online course which will take off the points

[kevC]

So is DD cheaper or deferred? It seems like DD would be cheaper but more time consuming?

[moofs]

DD is cheaper, but you might want to keep it in your back pocket. Depends how many tickets you get, what judges you get sent to, and what city you're in/getting tickets in. It's a scheduling/risk thing, and I don't really remember how the system works best since it's been about 3-4 years since my last ticket.

Oddly enough, my problem with them stopped when i got my sports car instead of stupid extended cab gas-guzzling truck (the money I saved in gas damn near paid a third of my car note - 60k miles @ ~$3.10gal @ 22mpg vs. 10mpg = 18,600 vs. 8600. The car should sell for ~15k, so I've spent about 6k + maintenance to own it for 4 years, not too bad! Dodge sucks.)

[wadero]

You can post pone your court date up to 3 times. This is what most lawyers do. It doesnt cost anything but gas to go up there and change the date but do it a month in advance. Most Police officers wont go after the first or second one date is rescheldueld. This has worked for me on several instances.

[kevC]

DD is cheaper, but you might want to keep it in your back pocket. Depends how many tickets you get, what judges you get sent to, and what city you're in/getting tickets in. It's a scheduling/risk thing, and I don't really remember how the system works best since it's been about 3-4 years since my last ticket.

Oddly enough, my problem with them stopped when i got my sports car instead of stupid extended cab gas-guzzling truck (the money I saved in gas damn near paid a third of my car note - 60k miles @ ~$3.10gal @ 22mpg vs. 10mpg = 18,600 vs. 8600. The car should sell for ~15k, so I've spent about 6k + maintenance to own it for 4 years, not too bad! Dodge sucks.)

Well I don't get tickets really ever. Like I said on my OP it's the first time I'm getting a ticket in 5 years so I don't think I should be concerned about keeping it in my back pocket. I'm thinking just going for the defensive driving so I don't have to go to court.

[Amel]

DD is cheaper, but you might want to keep it in your back pocket. Depends how many tickets you get, what judges you get sent to, and what city you're in/getting tickets in. It's a scheduling/risk thing, and I don't really remember how the system works best since it's been about 3-4 years since my last ticket.

Oddly enough, my problem with them stopped when i got my sports car instead of stupid extended cab gas-guzzling truck (the money I saved in gas damn near paid a third of my car note - 60k miles @ ~$3.10gal @ 22mpg vs. 10mpg = 18,600 vs. 8600. The car should sell for ~15k, so I've spent about 6k + maintenance to own it for 4 years, not too bad! Dodge sucks.)

Well I don't get tickets really ever. Like I said on my OP it's the first time I'm getting a ticket in 5 years so I don't think I should be concerned about keeping it in my back pocket. I'm thinking just going for the defensive driving so I don't have to go to court.

thats would be the smartest thing

if you go to court, you will loose, in my area the cops always come to the court, they dont miss ****, ****

and then you gonna have to pay court fees, you will be find guilty, a bit of emberessment infront of everyone and pay your fee finally

[Ribalding]

(sic) and then you (sic) gonna have to pay court fees, you will be find (sic) guilty, a bit of emberessment (sic) infront (sic) of everyone and pay your fee (sic) finally

If the cop shows, you can still change your plea to guilty and get DD (or maybe even deferred adjudication).

Amel, your legal advice is as tortured as your grammar.

Trust me on this. In the past three years, I've had 22 tickets...myself. (I collect them - like baseball cards. I'm hoping to wallpaper my 1/2 bath with traffic tickets. Almost there.)

[Amel]

(sic) and then you (sic) gonna have to pay court fees, you will be find (sic) guilty, a bit of emberessment (sic) infront (sic) of everyone and pay your fee (sic) finally

If the cop shows, you can still change your plea to guilty and get DD (or maybe even deferred adjudication).

Amel, your legal advice is as tortured as your grammar.

Trust me on this. In the past three years, I've had 22 tickets...myself. (I collect them - like baseball cards. I'm hoping to wallpaper my 1/2 bath with traffic tickets. Almost there.)

I dont put much into my grammer and its not the best, but I've also been thru this kind of situation, so I'm speaking of what I have seen and done

[MaxRider]

what's up with cops these days?
2 cops on a same fr***king street in my neighborhood trying to give speeding ticket in 40mph zone
(one on each side of the road
i know this because my roommate got caught when we were going home
when my other roommate got back 20 min later
he saw both of them)
they are hiding to catch innocent people speeding instead of going out there trying to protect them
WTH?
why pay tax?
all american should go on strike and stop working
no work = no income
no income = no income tax + no security tax
no tax = no income for cops
we pay tax for the government to protect us
not for paying them to fine us

[kevC]

what's up with cops these days?
2 cops on a same fr***king street in my neighborhood trying to give speeding ticket in 40mph zone
(one on each side of the road
i know this because my roommate got caught when we were going home
when my other roommate got back 20 min later
he saw both of them)
they are hiding to catch innocent people speeding instead of going out there trying to protect them
WTH?
why pay tax?
all american should go on strike and stop working
no work = no income
no income = no income tax + no security tax
no tax = no income for cops
we pay tax for the government to protect us
not for paying them to fine us

Well, no income = no income. I'd rather pay $150 out of my $1000 or whatever pay check than get no paychecks at all . Yeah, it's pretty annoying though. Earlier in the day I got a warning for a parking in front of the building that I work at Rice campus for like 3 minutes.

[moofs]

Speed traps make sense in small towns. You don't have nearly as much money coming into the town if you take them away. I imagine the effect in large towns goes toward public works. I still hate them, but if they keep rural America up and running, more power to 'em.

[Ribalding]

Speed traps make sense in small towns. You don't have nearly as much money coming into the town if you take them away. I imagine the effect in large towns goes toward public works. I still hate them, but if they keep rural America up and running, more power to 'em.

In this instance - in a big town - we're seeing the results of traffic cameras.

With the institution of all these cameras over red lights, the city of Houston has seen a 30% drop in moving violations. That's serious money no longer flowing into the city coffers. (And everybody wonders why there are "all of a sudden" more cops giving out speeding tickets.)

Duh.

They need some way to off-set the loss in revenue caused by the red light cameras.

Welcome to capitalism, folks.

P.S. - Small towns can suck it, too. They're just as depraved as big towns - just not as subtle.

[moofs]

Haha nice, so rather than cut back the police force because people aren't breaking the law as often, they just start enforcing it more stringently? I love it.