Stupid Traffic Tickets and Stupid Policies
Yeah, I make money handling traffic tickets. But I can still say that they are often stupid. Still, I get it. The threat of the costs (immediate and ongoing) is often more compelling to drivers than fear of accidents, so it does make the roads somewhat safer.
But what really irks me are some of the stupid policies employed by the various DA’s offices in negotiating traffic tickets.
The dumbest by far is the contradiction of tickets arising out of accidents vs. those that aren’t.
For example, let’s say you run a stop sign on Day 1 and cause an accident. Then on Day 2 you run the same stop sign but don’t cause an accident. On each day you get a ticket for Failure to Stop at a Duly Erected Stop Sign. The first ticket will almost certainly be dismissed based on most DA’s policies as long as you show your insurance company is taking care of the damages. The second ticket, though, almost certainly won’t be dismissed. That’s right, if you cause an accident you’re more likely to get your ticket dismissed than if your infraction results in 0 harm to anyone else.
Granted, the facts underlying the policy do make some sense; you will have financial consequences in the form of insurance rate increases over the next three years because of the accident, so dismissing the ticket is more fair in that you’re already being punished, whereas the only financial consequences you’ll face on the second ticket will be from the ticket itself. If makes sense, but it still kinda doesn’t.
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