Beating a rolling stop ticket

Sounds like a legitimate arguement, what did the judge say, did you get out of it yet or are you going back?

 

"It's true I didn't come to a complete stop but I don't deserve a ticket because other people speed."

Doesn't really sound like much of an argument to me. I doubt another judge would overturn the decision on an appeal. It's not like this is a landmark case that the media will be following. It's a traffic ticket and you, in so many words, told the judge you were guilty. I know you're upset, but just pay the fine and forget about it.

 

Did you come to a stop, or not? It really is that simple.

 

Peter,

Since you were coming to meet me when you got this ticket (i think), can I add some points?

YOU RAN TWO STOP SIGNS!!!!!!



If this is not that ticket, then you can see that you have an issue with STOP signs!!

 

Stop means making a complete stop. You will never win in court!! So many people do this and really think that fully stopped. I have video of people rolling thru signs that come to court and plead not guilty because they honestly think they stopped---Then we go the tape and they see they did not stop fully.

 

Do you have to remain stopped for any period of time like 2 seconds or is a momentary stop 100% legal?

By the way, I recently got pulled over for approaching a stop sign too quickly. They wrote it up as a no front plate, but when the officer said "do you know why I stopped you?" I said "no." and his immediate reply was that I was approaching the stop sign too quickly like a "race track."

 

How is the judge handing it to you in the rear? You failed to come to a complete stop and you got a citation for it. It's not like your facing jail time here. To go in and argue with the judge about how people going 5-10 miles over the speed limit deserve to get tickets more than you is not a winning argument. Is this ticket worth your time, effort, frustration fighting for?

If "it is just the point of it" and you are not going to be able to sleep at night because of the injustice, then by all means fight it. But what happens when the next judge fails to reverse the decision? Is he handing it to you in the rear also?

I got a ticket once for going 10 mph over the speed limit. I was at the tail end of a line of cars going 10-15 mph over the speed limit. I tried to explain to the officer that all the cars were going 10 mph over the speed limit and he said, "Yes, I know. I can't stop them all, I can only stop one." I really had nothing to say to that, signed the ticket and paid the fine. I was in the wrong, just because other people are doing it doesn't make it right.

 

I looked up the Maine law and at a red light:
"The operator must stop and remain stationary until an indication to proceed is shown"
At a stop sign:
"an operator of a vehicle approaching a stop sign shall stop and:
A. Yield the right-of-way to a vehicle that has entered the intersection or that is approaching so closely as to constitute an immediate hazard; and
B. Having yielded, an operator may proceed. All other operators approaching the intersection shall yield the right-of-way to the vehicle so proceeding."

There is no length of time that you need to remain stopped. The key word is to "Stop" which I would interprete as causing the rotation of the tires to cease.

The term "rolling stop" is an oxymoron. You are either rolling or you are stopped.

 

I was in a similar situation years ago. In my case, the stop sign was in a location where you had to move significantly beyond it in order to see the other road. As a result I rolled through until I saw no incoming traffic and the proceeded. I got a ticket, went to court and lost.


PeterS,

If you do not claim you stopped, the law is clear. Even though I believe laws should be a general guide and not a suicide pact and I agree with you that you were obeying the 'spirit of the law' rather than 'the letter of the law' I do not think you have a case.

Good luck! If you decide to continue fighting, keep us posted.

Regards,

Art S.

 

I have several judges as patients, and I asked one who does time in traffic court how he defines a "stop". His answer "a complete cessation of motion". By his definition, if you had any foward velocity, regardless how little, your hosed.

I think the common sense answer is much, much different. Hopefully you'll get a friendlier judge.

 

Pete,

If'n I didn't love ya I wouldn't tell ya that you fell for the oldest trick in the cops ticket book!

YOU ADMITTED TO THE JUDGE THAT YOU CROSSED THE LIMIT LINE WITHOUT STOPPING!

...even if you were doing it slowly!

 

Watch out. I've appealed in the past and received the same judge. The argument against the premise of the law isn't exactly a solid one. In their point if view, you are critisizing the law, and it is the interpretation of "stop", which doesn't get any more cut and dry than "did you or did you not stop?"

 

The judge was black and white, how is that possible? Is it kinda like Halle Berry?

By the way i just received a ticket for a improper right turn, That I didnt think was improper, and cannot find in the transportation code that it was illiegal. The judge was like well you can plead not guilty and go to trial but that will take up most of a day, or pay $130 bucks and plead guilty and ask for probation for 90 days. I paid the 130. No need to waste more time.

 

No, The Spurs' Uniforms!

 

"and ask for probation"? Nah, this is part of their scam! Deferred adjudication - where you have a probationary period, which the court/judge determines. It could be 30 days, it could be 360 days. Typically 90 or 180, but in either case, you pay more (mo profit for them) and you don't get a ticket. But worth it? Nope, fight it. "Improper right turn"? Uhhh, yea, I'd like to sit up there with you and fight that one if the chance were there. It doesn't take the whole day - that's just the salesman in them to get you to buy now.

Traffic tickets are not the law, they are a revenue generating business. Traffic cops are not policemen, they are revenue assessors.

 

Peter's point really isn't "other people speed, so why only me" argument. It's a "margin of error" argument, "you give people 5-10 MPH to allow for their and the pace car's speedo errors, why shouldn't you define 'stop' as 0 MPH with a 1% margin (0.9 fps)?"

The only answer to that is they don't have to and they never have. The basis for that is that when a car is in motion, the measurement is by nature inexact, so allowing for some error is "fair". When a car is not supposed to be in motion, i.e. stopped, it can clearly seen to be not in motion; hence there is no reason to allow for errors. If you were arguing about the length of time you were stopped (0.1 sec vs 1-2 secs) you would have a real case; unfortunately you admitted you were in motion with your argument before the judge.

 

Unless you are innocent, please just accept the consequences of your actions. You didn't stop, few people do, that doesn't make it ok. Man up and accept it.

 

Fight to the death man! By fighting, you are reducing the system's profit margin and taking up resources. Bear in mind, you will eventually lose and the fight will cost you time and money as well.

Good Luck,

Art S.

PS. don't hire a lawyer for this one, i doubt they will get you out of it.

 

In the 90s, at the office, which was situated right off a 4-way stop, sometimes a cop would sit on the side of one of the buildings across the street. I'd keep an eye sometimes for a few minutes and see that way over HALF the people would roll through the stop at 2 or 3 mph, but the cop never budged. He must've been waiting for the lunatics who I would see blow through at 45+ mph every once in a while. No doubt, that after an hour of frustrating waiting, he'd leave, and soon after someone would cruise through the red sign without even lifting.

 

Actually I think it does make it right. Set the limit too low and we now have an instant source of revenue. Let's set some realistic speed limits and see what happens. When you are on the freeway now "racing" at 75 mph do you feel like your knocking at deaths door? I sure don't but thats what we were all told to expect if the limit went up from 55.

Every year since the 55 was dumped the fatality rate has gone down. When Montana reinstated the daytime speed limit the fatality rate shot way up.

I know some policemen. They know that they have become tax collectors and are sick of it. If they don't write tickets they get a "non-contributor letter" and.....

Their lazy coworkers sit on the safest roads ever constructed (interstate highways) becuase they have the most speeders. To hell with the intersections where most accidents occur. We should not measure a policeman's productivity in number of tickets written but in the rate of crime on their patrol. I'm sure that none of them would argue if we asked them to get back to police work and away from the "ticket tax".

ken

 

Peter, you're trying to play a crooked game by the rules.

I think what you MEANT to say was that, clearly in the videotape evidence provided we see a slowing untill frame 2354, and an acceleration after frame 2355.

What we do not see Your Honor, is the 33milliseconds of intervening time that exists BETWEEN each frame! It is not only possible but from what we can see from the propondence of Evidence here today given the motion vecotrs, Extremely Probable that I infact DID STOP, however the officer's camera failed to record the event of the stop, instead recording clear evidence that a stop was about to happen, and then in the next frame, has already happened.