Speeding Ticket

[kuslamb]

I have never received a ticket in KC.  Someone please briefly explain ticket fixing.  Thanks.

[KC-wildcat]

I have never received a ticket in KC.  Someone please briefly explain ticket fixing.  Thanks.

Ticket Fixing:  a prosecutor has the authority to negotiate or change the citation that the cop gave you.  Thus, if you get pulled over for speeding, the prosecutor has the authority to change the citation to driving with a broken headlight.  Of course, the offender has to pay a higher fine to have this done. 

Why does ticket fixing occur?  Any violation that involves speeding will affect your insurance.  However, non-moving violations (broken turn signal, broken headlight, illegal parking, etc.) do not affect insurance.  Thus, you've got a vested interest in changing it to a non-moving violation.  Further, the court has an interest in receiving more fine money.  Hence, the solution:  ticket fixing.   

[Kerabatsos]

Don't forget, you need a lawyer to ticket-fix. Because lawyers like money, too.

[kigmee]

They have actuaries that are very skilled at making sure they don't get screwed.  You can be pretty sure that they have a very good idea of just how dangerous their drivers are and what their risk level is.  

They just socialize the risks among all drivers.  If they can't tell the risky ones because tickets are getting fixed, then everyone else pays more.

Here's an idea that's worked for me:  don't speed.  Speeding saves you almost no time, and increases the chances that you'll never get to your destination at all.  So you get home two minutes sooner.  You going to spend those extra two minutes doing something other than watching ads on TV?

[bahua]

you've got a vested interest in changing it to a non-moving violation.

But it's not like people in KC have figured something out in the fact that speeding tickets cost money. Everyone everywhere knows that a worse driving record equals higher insurance premiums. In most places, there's no recourse except contesting the ticket. That's why speeding tickets suck. In KC, this is not the case.

[LenexatoKCMO]

In most places, there's no recourse except contesting the ticket.

That is exactly what is happening here.  By hiring a lawyer, you have inicated that you are going to contest it and the prosecutor agrees to offer a lessor penalty for not having to contest the matter and risk loosing entirely.  As I mentioned - traffic cases are almost always very marginal on the evidence.  Does it really make more sense for the prosecutor and the court to sink tons of time preparing and hearing arguments in these cases with probably a ~50% success rate?  An attorney who knows what they are doing can beat these things outright if it comes to that.  Especially when you factor that the deterent effect is actually increased by the fact that the offender ultimately pays substantially more penalty.  If the insurance companies were really that concerned about it, perhaps they should fund all the resources it would take to try all these cases. 

[Beermo]

i like ticket fixing. it works well. i got 3 major tix at once in platte county and at the same time i got my .40 confiscated. i had to get bonded out and while i was doing the paperwork i figured that if anyone would know of a good lawyer in platte county a bondsman would,  so i asked her for a recommendation. she gave me a name and number of a guy. he was awesome. he also was a former platte county judge and knew everybody. i got off real easy for cheap. also the sheriffs wouldn't give my .40 back so he got me a letter from a PC judge that forced them to give it back. i couldn't of asked for a better lawyer and the only better deal was to get everything dropped. 

[HalcyonKC]

Here's an idea that's worked for me:  don't speed.  Speeding saves you almost no time, and increases the chances that you'll never get to your destination at all.  So you get home two minutes sooner.  You going to spend those extra two minutes doing something other than watching ads on TV?

It really isn't a question of saving time, at least for me.  The safest driver is the one that keeps up with the speed of traffic, but there are sections of road where the speed limit is set incorrectly (I-29 near the 635 merge is a good example).  So in these sections, the law-fearing driver is left with a bad choice between maintaining the speed limit and causing a dangerous traffic tie-up, or going the speed of traffic and risking a ticket if a speed trap is set up.  The speed traps produce easy revenue for the police, so there is no incentive to actually correct the speed limit.

The correct way to handle a true safety issue related to traffic speed is to alter the design of the roadway to encourage lower speeds (narrower lanes, rougher pavement texture, other tricks), but of course that actually costs money, and also represents the loss of the speed trap as a revenue source, so it never gets done.

"Correct" speed limits adhere to the 85th percentile rule-of-thumb from traffic engineering, which is the speed at which 85% of traffic would be in compliance when left to its own devices on a section of roadway.  (Under normal circumstances, the average driver really is a pretty good judge of what's safe and what's not).

[kigmee]

(Under normal circumstances, the average driver really is a pretty good judge of what's safe and what's not).

I agree.  Safety first.  But I think the average driver probably overestimates his skills and underestimates the effect of adverse road conditions.