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Using Google Maps to Get Out of a Traffic Ticket
Michael Nguyen writes "Edwin uses Google Maps to prove to the judge his traffic ticket was wrongly issued, saving himself some cash and points on his license. During his testimony, Edwin whips out a notebook, loads up Google Maps and upstages the offending officer with some quick Google Map searches." I wonder if anyone's gotten out of a ticket by showing how inaccurate most speed-check methods can be.
A lawyer friend of mine who specializes in getting people off of speeding tickets does it all the time
The small stakes and mechanical nature of the process of traffic court work in your favor if you choose to be one of the fraction that actually bothers to show up and contest the charges. Everything is weighted in favor of the officer, obviously, but they have an incentive system similar to AOL's technical support -- if the matter can't be disposed of within 6 minutes get off the line, its a loss. So if you present anything which bears even a cursory resemblance to an adequate defense the judge is likely to say "OK, whatever, be careful in the future. NEXT." Or you can pay a lawyer for the privilege and he'll do the exact same thing, except you'll be out more money than the fine was worth (incentives work both ways).
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
This should be a lesson to everybody. Never admit fault to anything, even if you're in the right. Only answer direct questions about yourself and provide as much information as possible about the other person. It seem like a slimy thing to do, but the system is slimy and you'll get screwed unless you play by their (slimy) rules.
Or you can pay a lawyer for the privilege and he'll do the exact same thing, except you'll be out more money than the fine was worth (incentives work both ways).
Except that the fine is only a small part of the cost of a speeding ticket. The real cost can be thousands of dollars due to increased insurance premiums over the next 5-7 years. If your insurance only goes up by $50/quarter that is still $1,000 over the next 5 years. For a lot of people - young, male, single - it would not be unheard of to see your insurance rates increase by $100-$200/quarter. Auto insurance is legalized robbery.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
You can choose to contest it as a misdemeanor, and get all the requisite priveleges that go along with it
Rights. Not privileges, rights. It is my right as a citizen of a free country to be considered innocent until proven guilty, to be given a fair and speedy trial, and to not speak until I can talk to my attorney. I am indeed privileged to have these basic human rights (which, sadly, do not exist in some third world lands), but that does not change the fact that they are rights and not privileges. Some may think that I'm being too anal regarding the two words, but I disagree. I think that the moment we begin to think our basic rights "privileges," people's "privileges" will be taken away for this or that. That is not a road I wish to go down.
"Excuse me, did you say 'Trekker'? The word is 'Trekkie.' I should know; I created them." -- Gene Roddenberry
look, you can talk about loopholes.
you can talk about high priced lawyers.
but the american system of justice, when it works the right way, is that all people are innocent until proven guilty.
it comes down to one question. would you rather let a guilty person go free, or lock up an innocent person. in the usa, we have a system where we don't want to lock up the innocent.
look at what happened in illinois a couple years back. when the state did some dna testing on inmates, they found out they had over 100 people on death row who were innocent. these people got conivected because they had bad lawyers, the police needed to arrest someone, so they picked up a crack head or someone unemployed.
people should be free. we don't want the patriot act. we don't want people being arrested and held without being charged. we don't want the police going through reading lists, casting fishing nets, and without having any reason, looking for anyone to arrest. it is like a cop who decides to go by the local highschool, see who graduated in the bottom 10%, figuring the dumb ones are the troublemakers, and then following them around until he finds one of them in the woods smoking a joint.
then again, with cities like boston and chicago putting up 3000 cameras that can look inside of cars, that is the direction we are going.
i feel sorry for the people without any money. if they ever get charged with anything, they are fucked. look at the husband of the wife who dissapeared. the police started interviewing him, there were reports he was the #1 suspect. then one day, his wife shows up in las vegas. she got cold feet. if the police wanted to, they could have strung up that man and ruined him. there was a story about a man who worked for the usa, at a wepons lab, around the time the anthrax was mailed to the senate. he was the #1 suspect. the fbi tore apart his house, they tore open his mattress, they put holes in his walls, all looking for evidence. the fbi then went to his girlfriends house, and did the same thing. they could not find nothing, but they still call him the #1 suspect. he is free, but always followed. and the police keep threatening him, of more searches, of harrasing his friends.
i'll give one last example. look at monica lewinsky. people should read about what the fbi did to her. they grabbed her off the streat, forced her into a hotel room, and told her if she did not describe her relationship with the president (the blowjobs), they would arrest her and she would never be free again. one fbi agent told her, i think i should call your dad, to let him know what you did. talk to us or i'll call. and for the first 6 hours, when she asked for a lawyer, they would not give her one, and instead threatened to call her parents, friends, and to let the media know what she did. they put her through hell, and never charged her with anything.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
driving is a privilege not a right. there are certain things we trade to live in a free society, such as unlimited freedoms "I'll wherever, whenever, however" with basic safety. a traffic ticket is not a crime, it is a code violation, that's all. if you get X number of them, you can have your privilege revoked. rights are entirely different. let's take an altogether separate yet related example. (and one I know quite well, as it happened to a friend many years ago.) You own a dry cleaning business, you follow all the rules, laws, etc. A female employee gets pregnant. She can't work around the toxic cleaning solutions. Fine. OSHA comes in and orders the business closed until changes are made, fines them, and orders them to pay temporary lost wages. No crime was committed, they weren't hauled off to jail, nothing. Most environmental regs are such. So too workers' regs. Are we willing to eschew all those? Perhaps. perhaps not.
We(society) accept traffic cops and their patrolling of the streets to keep us safe. (This is not the same as "law enforcement though.) We must follow traffic laws or else we'll be unable to drive anywhere.
As for rights, I feel the major problem we have is that everyone feels everythign is a right. And no, aboriton, marriage, and welfare are not rights. That just highlights the problem. We have grown accustomed to thinking everything is a right. Rights are an entirely different idea. Being able to "just do something" is hardly a right. I just can't drive, I don't own the road, I don't own the traffic lights, and I don't follow the rules, I can endanger others.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Even citizens accused of civil citations (code violations, as you put it) deserve proper protection under the law.
Further, many traffic tickets are actaully crimes. In many states, speeding 20 MPH over the posted speed limit can be deemed reckless driving by the arresting officer...this is typically a misdemeanor. However, the evidence is still accepted as prima facie, and the driver is still preumed guilty until proven innocent. Sadly, this is widely abused across the country by many municipalities in order to enhance local revenue.
I sure don't accept many of their practices, including speed traps, DUI roadblocks, and red light cameras...particularly the latter, where the accused is not even given a chance to face their accusor.
FWIW, I agree that we live in a society where we seem to have a sense of entitlement. It's a bummer. However, I still think that much of our speed enforcement as well as the 'justice' system surrounding it is a freaking joke. Criminal justice of any kind should not be treated in the cavalier manner that it is in the traffic system.
-Turkey