Any ticket is worth fighting.
Often the operators claim to be competent but are not, the person on the receiving end just assumes that the officer knows what they are doing and think it's just not worth the effort in the long run.
As someone already said here, it's not the fine... it's what the insurance company will do to you when they find out.
At the very least you should order the disclosure to find out what the officer's evidence will be against you.
Maybe I can make this a little clearer....
This week I had a discussion about a radar unit in one of our cars, the "Bee III" is an excellent in-car unit that is very capable of obtaining accurate readings when being operated by a competent officer, twice over the past few days I have noticed that the unit has been left on by the guy who acts as the enforcement officer at my station.
The "enforcement officer" traditionally only writes tickets all day and does not respond to radio calls, you may think it's not so odd for him to leave the unit on... in reality it is.
In order to use the unit the operator needs to be trained and supervised in the operation by an instructor, interestingly enough I am the divisional trainer for this particular device and have not trained this individual on the operation of this unit.
I had always suspected this person of being incompetent and I have subsequently have launched an internal complaint regarding my recent observations, so unless he magically obtained training elsewhere, my assumption is that he will have been issuing tickets to members of the public while never being trained on the device that will assist in their conviction.
Obviously this is an extreme example... most officers are honest, trustworthy and well trained, it only highlights the importance of ensuring that you take all steps to ensure the person who had the interaction with you is as well.
I agree, any ticket is worth fighting, given the right circumstances.
In this case, Terrie was riding approx. 150' behind me. He was approaching from the opposite direction and the lights came on long before he got to me. As he passed, he pulled on to the shoulder to make a u-turn. The road was a narrow two lane with not much of a sholder to pull off safely so I turned left into a small parking lot with total visability. Terrie stopped on the right edge of the traffic lane.
I circled back to the other entrance of the parking lot and stopped as I approaced the entrance back on to the street. The office still hadn't gotten out of his car and I thought that odd. I sit there for a minute longer and then pulled back out on to the highway. I approached his car (and Terrie, who was standing beside her bike and had already removed her helmet). I cruised by at about 25 mph, expecting his door to fly open with him coming out to signal me over to the side. It didn't happen and I continued on.
I stopped at the lodge about a mile or so down the road and went in. As I came out about 20 min. later, I got on my bike and fired it up. As I started to head towards the highway, I saw Terrie coming, I quickly turned (staying in the parking lot) and headed for the restaurant at the back side of the lodge (where we were originally headed before this all happened). As I parked, I realized that Terrie wasn't behind me and I walked back towards the front of the lodge where I saw her walking towards me. She said "he told me if I didn't bring him to you that he was going to take me to jail". At that time, I looked up to see his SUV headed towards us.
He pulled up beside me and said "I'll need your lic. ins. and reg.". I didn't make any comment other than, "it's in my bike" and headed back towards my bike. He followed me and told me "I clocked you two doing 55 in a 40 zone". I didn't reply.
After I got the ticket, and read the part about the fine, I looked back at the ticket. He wrote it for 56mph. The fine is more for somebody going 16mph to 25 mph than for somebody going 5 to 15 mph.
So two tickets on one radar.....the two vehicles about 150 feet apart. Tickets wrote approx. half hour apart and a mile or so apart and two different things wrote on the two tickets. He never offered to show either of us the radar unit, like they do here in Calif.
The fact of the matter is I was speeding. But the reason Terrie wasn't right behind me is because the speed limit had just turned from 35mph to 40 mph and I twisted the throttle and accelerator away from her. He told her that he'd seen us riding together earlier in the park (Bryce Canyon) but this was just half mile outside the park. He just decided because he'd seen us earlier in the morning together, that we were both going the same speed.
Since then, I did a search for a traffic citation attorney in that county. None! Then I did a search for a defense attorney in that county.....found a few however, none of them are interested in taking this traffic case. I did find an attorney about 80 miles away but the receptionist said that he wants $1,000 retainer just to join the case. I can see the travel time back and forth to the court, etc. adding up real fast.
While Utah has traffic school in some counties, that county does not. We could care less about the fine amount (although Terrie's is set at one price and mine is more because he wrote me or 16 mph over).......it's the points on our driving record......our insurance rates that I'm concerned about. Not sure how two of us getting a point at the same time on the same policy will affect us. I'd rather not find out.
I was the one speeding and right now I have safe driver discount.....I'll take the ticket but I'd really like to get rid of Terrie's ticket. Just not sure what to do at this point.
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Topic: Can radar pick up a motorcycle? (Read 7649 times)