How to Get Out of a Speeding Ticket
How to Deal With Speeding Tickets
There’s a lot of stuff that can take a bite out of your wallet, but a speeding ticket can be resolved, and often in your favor. This blog will suggest three ways to deal with speeding tickets, and while there’s no magic bullet, I assert that you’re not completely helpless. When you get pulled over for a speeding ticket, you’re likely to see an increase in your monthly insurance payments, you’ll have to pay the ticket cost, and you’ve got a mark on your driver’s record for a stretch.
So, How Do You Avoid Speeding Tickets?
While this sounds so point-of-law, many people face these questions every day, and there are answers:
- Observe the Rules of the Road
- Talk the cop-out of issuing you a ticket.
- Fight the ticket in court.
Observe the Rules of the Road
Today’s cars look aggressive, feel aggressive behind the wheel, and are sold as aggressive vehicles. It doesn’t matter if you’re driving a Toyota Corolla or a Chevy Corvette. They’re all marketed as vehicles that go like bats out of Hell: How fast is the car off the mark? What’s the top speed, and how’s the handling on a hairpin turn? Does your personal car have any faults? It has a dog engine, or it’s slow off the mark?
Many nuances go into engineering in a car, but power often means you’ll drive an aggressive car. Needless to say, it’s not the car manufacturer that incentivizes you to speed. The driver makes that decision. The assumption is that people want to drive in a way considered illegal by law enforcement.
Is Avoiding a Speeding Ticket Uncool?
Firstly, you can lower your insurance payments by staying away from racing stripes. Truly, a racing stripe communicates that you’re a little heavy on the pedal. Not only is road racing expensive, but it’s not the only game on the road. For example, road rallies demand contestants obey every law along the racecourse. If contestants speed and arrive early, they’re eliminated.
Observing the law with today’s cars works better because pre-programmed cars observe the law for you. Check the safety package on your car. The artificial intelligence that operates your car can also keep you safe.
So, turn on those features, like road awareness, distance awareness, signage awareness, etc. If you’re driving an old bomb with no nice features, maybe the cruise control knob works. Just set your cruise to the highway sign and forget about doing the footwork.
In addition, get your car serviced and repaired routinely. If you’ve got a chip in your windshield, a cop may pull you over, and who knows where that will go? If you simply got the chip on your windshield repaired, the cop would never have pulled you over in the first place.
Talk the Cop Down from a Speeding Ticket
When I drove in a fleet, the company trained us to talk our way out of tickets. There’s no guarantee of success in this endeavor, but I can tell you from my own experience that I didn’t have a moving violation all the time I drove fleet. And over the course of my life, I’ve had only three tickets. Here are the steps fleet drivers use:
- Hold your driver’s license up to the passenger window when pulled over. It saves the cop the step of asking for your license.
- Ask the cop what you did, and plead ignorance. This is not acting insolent. Forget the truth about your intent behind the wheel. If you deliberately drove over the speed limit, play ignorant. Convince the cop you had no idea you broke the law. Ask the cop what law you broke.
- Next, plead stupidity. That’s what cops believe criminals are: Stupid. You’ve broken the law with your high-speed driving, so plead how dumb you feel. Lament how you missed the speed limit sign and blame your own stupidity for it. Say, “I’ve never felt so stupid!”
That’s it! That’s all the training we received driving the fleet, and it was remarkable how well it worked.
Why Plead Stupidity?
Pleading stupidity makes the incident correctable. The system loves correcting stupidity. Criminals are sent to correctional facilities. Since you’ve solved all the problems you presented with your behavior right there on the spot, at the location of the violation, you may well get off. It’s making the cop judge and juror, but it works. I’ve rarely had a cop issue me a ticket. Only cops with their ticket books in hand are for sure going to give you a ticket. I got off with a warning from one cop in a community known for strict policing, which I considered a “no ticket”.
One cop asked me where I learned such techniques after he let me off. I believe I told him I’d had fleet training.
Fight a Speeding Ticket in Court
Many people can’t plead stupidity. They just don’t believe they’re stupid. Moreover, they don’t believe that breaking the law is stupid. Often they say they’re sorry because breaking the law is like sinning. The system will not let you off if you say you’re sorry. The thing about church people and sinning is that a sinner seeks redemption on Sunday and then sins again on Monday. The system knows this to be accurate and never lets you off for saying, “I’m sorry!” You may want to call a lawyer if you’re stuck with a ticket.
They get drivers off with everything from illegal left turns to violations like DUIs. People get out of tickets when they hire a lawyer. Depending on your community, it may be the best route after getting stuck with a ticket. Lawyers are expensive, but many specialize in traffic violations and can get your case tried quickly and efficiently.
High Insurance Premiums
If you’re stuck with a DUI, a lawyer can find stuff like the breathalyzer test was wrongly administered, the cop had no probable cause to pull you over, etc. In the case of a speeding ticket, you may pay your lawyer as much and even a little more as you would pay the ticket’s cost, but the violation is off your driving record, so the insurance company can’t raise your premium. Those premiums can stay high for years.
Do a little research and discover if it makes more sense to hire a lawyer. For me, pleading stupidity before a uniformed cop works, but hey, maybe going to court with a lawyer works for you.
When a cop pulls you over for a moving violation, it can be hard to remedy, but if you can avoid a ticket or a fine, you’ll save money in the short and the long run. Believe it or not, that’s living frugally.
This article was originally published in 2021 and has been slightly revised.
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