And my question is basically whether I should bother showing up in court. I'm thinking no, unless there's any possibility of getting the violation completely thrown out. The violation: I was going all of 20 mph in a residential neighborhood this morning. Tired as hell because it was a long week and long night. In the middle of crossing the through portion of a T-intersection, I realize too late that there's a stop sign, and I end up stopping pretty much in the middle of the intersection (why the hell would there be a stop sign on the THROUGH portion of a T, anyway!?). No one is around except, of course, for the cop parked at the bottom of the T. 3-point violation, $80-some dollar fine. I could care less about the fine, I'm just livid about getting pulled over at all, because I get a big chunk off my insurance for never having been pulled over, ever. Ugh... F the police and their quotas.
You can fight it. Trial by jury. Probably get dismissed. But you do lose time in court. A law is only as black and white as you make it.
I'd pay it and take Defensive Driving. 80 bucks isn't bad. I took DD at IHOP. We ate pancakes and watched Johnny Carson.
I got pulled over for the first time back in 06 after 6 years clean. Speeding Ticket, took DD and got it cleared off my record.
You really think I could get it dismissed? How much time would it take, you think? It might be worth my while if that's the case.
You still have to pay court fees, which can be expensive. Then online DD is like another fee of like 35 bucks. You basically just have to complete 6 hours. You just sit there and watch boring safety movies and occasionally you have to take a quiz on what you just saw.
Yea i took this over the summer.. defensivedriving.com is what I used. Took me close to 6 hours. [it would have taken about 3 hours, but there is a time minimum that you have to spend on each lesson] worth it imo.
For online defensive driving, Don't read the wall o text. Skip it and get to the quiz. Open another browser and search for the answers if you don't know them. You can retake the quiz over and over again if you get it wrong! You can get it done in 2-3hrs. All they want is your 35 dollars for the course. The course itself is a joke.
the first time i got pulled over was right in front of my house. i parked in the entrance of the house. said i was speeding and $80 fine. so i just paid and avoid court time and **** like that. just be careful next time, points are off the book after 12 month.
So... F the police because you don't know how to drive, eh? Interesting deduction... I doubt you can find DaDakota other than in the GARM, but it's possible.
Take defensive driving or go to court and see if you can get 3 months deferred adjudication. The trial route probably isn't worth the time or the gamble seeing as you did violate the traffic code by blowing that stop sign.
Seriously though: have you ever seen a stop sign on the through portion of a T-intersection of a residential neighborhood? Ever? My big problem with this is that there's no good reason I can see whatsoever that that sign should be there in the first place. It would not surprise me at all if the city put that sign there solely for cops to fulfill quotas.
Something else to mention... on the same street, there are four intersections of exactly the same type. There is nothing, I repeat, NOTHING different about them... but none of the other 3 have stop signs.
There are plenty of them. I've seen places where there needs to be stop signs and there are none. My g/f was pulled for something similar, except her fine was $150. It was more of a Y intersection and she was busying watching the traffic. Needless to say, there were two stop signs on each side of the road with a smaller stop sign under each. The cop was not too thrilled when she had no clue why she was pulled. "What do you mean you didn't see the sign? There are FOUR of them!" Don't hate the cop, hate the game. Maybe the jury will understand your logic.
I took defensive driving course at home after renting the course for like 80 bucks at Blockbuster Video. Quite possibly the most boring 6 hours of my life.
