95 in a 55? Hah.

[crschmidt]

Approximately 3.5 months ago (8/31/05) I was pulled over going north on route 3. I was driving the kids to Grandma's house, and was in the borrowed Diesel VW Beetle.

On this trip, I made a few mistakes:
* Thought speed limit was 65, rather than the actual 55. It's 65 on 93 north, the road I had been taking more commonly.
* Was being regularly passed on the right at 75mph, and eventually set the cruise to a reasonable 80 mph. (Again, I thought the speed limit was 65.)

A police car came up behind me. At first I didn't recognize it as such: I simply saw a car accelerating towards me at great speed, which then pulled up right on my tail. At that point, I realized it was a police car.

I moved to switch lanes to let him go by, at which point he flipped on his lights.

He told me I was going "95+". Now, this is a VW Beetle. A diesel one. It might be able to hit that top speed, if I had the pedal to the floor. And a wind behind me. And was going down hill.

He made both of the girls cry by telling me I should be put in jail, and that I had risked killing them.

I contested the ticket: even if I didn't win, with a $400 ticket, I didn't really have much to lose, and I knew full well that I wasn't going that fast. (These days, I'd be able to use GPS tracklogs to prove it, if it ever got to court. Although I have no idea if that would be acceptable as evidence. Would be interesting to see, although I'm not willing to get pulled over to try it.)

The hearing was today. I entered the magistrate's hearing room, the officer read the charge, and informed the magistrate that the officer had not delivered the citation.

I got off scot free, not having to answer any questions other than my name. Although I was told if I was ever in front of that magistrate again, I would not dodge the bullet he had been about to send to a very uncomfortable part of my body.

I got very lucky. Very lucky indeed.

Comments

[catyak]

Isn't it a valid defence to show that your car is not capable of the claimed speed? And that if the policeman measuring speed had got it so obviously wrong, how could you trust his judgement/measuring equipment at all? Of course, not having to even go into detail is even better.

D

[nostrademons.livejournal.com]

I've heard that this is fairly common: officers will often not show up for court dates or file the necessary paperwork, because it's too much of a pain with essentially zero in it for them. Thus, you often win by default. My friend's father contested 4 speeding tickets and won every single one of them. I also had a classmate in high school who contested and won.

[shahrizai.livejournal.com]

85 MPH?! Holy shit!

Man, we rarely do that much around here. Yeah, I'd be pissed like the officer if I saw someone going 85MPH, seeing as our zones don't go above 110KPH and that's still 20KPH less than you were going. We don't do that unless we are certain that the cops won't be out. Are there actually places in the States where going that fast is legal?

[squyd.livejournal.com]

O_o That's... you're are lucky.