DOUBLE SPRINGS, ALABAMA – A Winston County judge threw out 220 traffic tickets this week after he and the defendants showed up for court but had nowhere to meet.

The only courtroom large enough to handle the crowd was in use by another judge, court officials said.

Winston County District Court Judge Michael Newell ordered that all pending traffic cases on his Tuesday docket, except DUI cases, be dismissed. They included tickets for speeding, driving without a license or with a suspended or revoked license, driving with switched and expired tags, driving without seat belts, and one for racing on a highway.

One man had eight tickets dismissed for various traffic infractions stretching back to 2006.

Newell said that, if a defendant had arrived late to court, he would have held the person accountable. Because of the courtroom mix-up, people with tickets who showed up on time Tuesday were being made to wait, which didn’t seem fair to Newell.

“I should hold myself to the same standard and that’s what I was trying to do,” Newell said. “I feel like I did what was appropriate in light of the situation we encountered on Tuesday.”

By the time the cases were dismissed, the defendants, some of whom were missing work, had been held up more than an hour, he said.

People who had pleaded guilty before Tuesday by paying their fines did not get their cases dismissed.

Winston County Circuit Court Judge John Bentley took the blame for the scheduling conflict. “If anyone is to blame for this stuff, it’s the presiding judge and that’s me. … The buck stops here.”

Newell had scheduled traffic court for 9 a.m. Tuesday at the county courthouse in Double Springs. That’s the same time Winston County Circuit Court Judge Lee Carter was beginning scheduled probation revocation hearings.

Carter was handling both his and Bentley’s probation revocation dockets Tuesday because Bentley was out of town, Bentley said. The revocation hearing docket had been set since September, and Bentley didn’t realize Newell had scheduled traffic court that day, he said.

Bentley said he wasn’t going to criticize Newell’s decision to dismiss the cases rather than delay them until another day.

“He felt that was the proper thing to do and I support him 100 percent,” Bentley said. “He’s the judge of that court and I’m not.”
The Alabama Administrative Office of Courts was notified of the traffic case dismissals, an official with that agency said.

“The chief justice understands from talking with presiding judge John Bentley that this incident was a result of a scheduling error with the one courtroom in Winston County and that the chief justice has been assured by Judge Bentley that he is working on this issue and that it will not happen again,” said Keith Camp, a spokesman for the Administrative Office of Courts.

One thing that will help keep scheduling conflicts down in the future is that Winston County officials are working to build a courthouse annex, Bentley said.

Winston County Administrator Joanie Wright said the county has borrowed about $6.5 million for construction. An area next to the courthouse has been cleared and prepared for construction, and county officials are reviewing plans for the annex that will include space for the additional courtroom, new jail, and district attorney and circuit court clerk offices.

“We want it as bad as they do,” she said.

Birmingham News – Kent Faulk

Traffic and speeding ticket laws in Alabama.

Need legal help for an Alabama Traffic Ticket?

LeBron James downplayed his latest traveling violation Monday, but experts said it could have been fatal.

James’ 101 mph drive down Interstate 71 on Dec. 30 was too fast for the highway and his 2008 Mercedes, even though the road was straight and conditions were clear, experts said.

The speed limit where he was driving is 65, and authorities said an interstate highway without visual obstructions is designed for drivers to reach about 75 mph safely, depending on grade and road surface.

“I was on my way home to go to sleep,” James said. “It’s not a big deal. You just have to abide by the rules. I made a mistake, and I have to live with it.”

He joked that his speedometer reaches 200 mph but said: “I was doing 101. I was speeding.”

While James didn’t think it was a big deal, safety experts were more than concerned.

Not just for James but for other people on the road in the early morning.

“When you travel at such high speeds, the crash would overwhelm the engineering and the safety features of any vehicle,” said Russ Rader of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in Washington, D.C. “A crash at that speed would leave a person unlikely to survive.”

In 2006, the State Highway Patrol charged 300,000 drivers with speeding. Only 1,400 hit the 100 mph limit, the patrol said.

State troopers stopped the Cavs star at 2:43 a.m. on his 23rd birthday, heading south on I-71, just south of Ohio 303, an area known for crossing deer.
Trooper Harley Steppenbacker, responding to a call of a drunken pedestrian along I-71, noticed the white Mercedes with the vanity plate “KNG OF AK” speed by him, and so he used his radar, said Lt. Joshua Swindell. Steppenbacker pulled James over, and the Cavs star was polite.

Steppenbacker lacked a paper citation to hand James, so the trooper told him he would have to go to the Medina post to pick it up later, Swindell said. James’ attorney picked up the ticket Jan. 7, and James was charged with speeding. Steppenbacker could not be reached for comment.

James said Monday that he was on his way to his Wadsworth home after the Cavs had returned from a game at New Orleans. He is scheduled to appear in Medina Municipal Court next month. James could face a $150 fine if convicted.
Under Ohio law, he would also have four points on his license.

Safety experts said those are the least of James’ problems. Excessive speed, even by a world-class athlete, poses an increased danger.

“Operating a vehicle at that speed is ludicrous,” said Medina County Engineer Michael Salay. “Going 101 wouldn’t be safe anywhere, except the Indianapolis Speedway.”

Clarence Ditlow, the executive director of the Center for Auto Safety in Washington, said the design of the road makes little difference when a person is going as fast as James was.

“Even if the highway is designed for 100 mph, a car is not,” he said. “At 100 mph, if you hit a fixed object, the chances of being around are pretty slim.”

On Jan. 12, 2000, former Cavs player Bobby Phills died when he drove his Porsche 100 mph after a practice with the Charlotte Hornets. Former Cav David Wesley was charged with reckless driving in another car, and he denied that he and Phills were drag racing.

That caused many in the basketball world to take notice. The collective-bargaining agreement between the league and the players union says a player cannot “engage in any activity that a reasonable person would recognize as involving or exposing the participant to a substantial risk of bodily injury.”

The Cavs could fine James, but league insiders say that is doubtful. Cavs general manager Danny Ferry declined to comment.

It was James’ first speeding ticket in six years.

His last speeding ticket came when he was a sophomore at Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary High School.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer – John Caniglia & Branson Wright

Free attorney consultation for Ohio Speeding Ticket

The automatic cameras at busy intersections around metro Atlanta serve a simple function: Run a red light and you get a ticket.

What hasn’t been so simple is getting all the violators to pay up. Some local municipalities have been left holding a pile of uncollected tickets.

Roswell had nearly $200,000 in uncollected fines. The cites of Lilburn and Duluth were seeing more than one in four tickets go unpaid.

They all sought a similar solution: Forget the cops — call in the bill collectors. The three cities have each hired an Alabama company to recoup unpaid red-light fines.

The company keeps about a quarter of what it brings in. But for the communities, it’s worth the cost.

“When a person violates the law, it doesn’t seem to make sense to let them say, ‘I’m just going to ignore the ticket,’ ” said Phil McLemore, city administrator for Duluth. “It’s the principle. You’ve violated the law. There is a penalty for that.”

That city recently added the red-light cameras to a second intersection. The first produced about $1 million in ticket proceeds in its first year.

In Roswell, in the past nine months alone, cameras installed at two intersections have netted $1.2 million in fines.
A relatively small portion — about 16 percent — hasn’t been paid for at least 60 days. These fines, considered delinquent, will be turned over to the collector, said a city spokeswoman, Julie Brechbill.

Cities say they need the outside help because tickets generated by the so-called “red-light cameras” carry civil penalties, limiting their authority to collect.

Unlike with unpaid taxes, cities can’t attach a lien to a property for unpaid tickets.

And they can’t revoke a driver’s license or arrest someone for not paying.

But they can — and will — hire companies that specialize in bill collection.

If ticket holders continue to skip the payment, the penalty is a tarnished credit report.

Lilburn, Duluth and Roswell, chose Birmingham-based Revenue Discovery Systems to catch up with delinquent red-light runners.

About six months ago, Lilburn determined about 30 percent of the tickets triggered by its red-light cameras were being ignored, city manager Tom Combiths said.

“We just wanted to make sure we had a mechanism in place to follow up with these folks,” he said.

To allow some people to skip the fines would be unfair, he said.

“If you have folks who comply with the law, and those who don’t, and there’s no penalty for them not complying, it’s not a fair system.”

The city was among the first in Georgia to install the red-light cameras, which first were authorized by the state Legislature in 2003. Although they bring in revenue, the cameras also carry expenses.

Cities typically pay companies to install and monitor the cameras and send out tickets.

Roswell pays its contractor about $300,000 a year for the service.

And state law requires someone to independently verify that each photo taken with the camera, in fact, depicts someone who has run the red light.

The tickets are limited by state law to $70.

For cities with the cameras, the dollars add up quickly.

In Marietta, cameras at one intersection produced $1.7 million in fines in 2005. That intersection, Windy Hill Road at Cobb Parkway, is among the busiest in Cobb County.

Duluth installed the cameras as a way to curb red-light running.

The number of violations, McLemore said, was disturbing.

Now, two years later, he estimates that the number of serious T-bone accidents at the intersections has declined by 30 percent.

The city decided to hire the collection company when it determined about a quarter of the tickets issued with the cameras were going unpaid.

“There are people out there who don’t believe they have to pay these, and aren’t,” he said.

Atlanta Journal Constitution – Mary McDonald

Read about Traffic Laws in Georgia
Georgia Traffic Lawyer

A Crown Point, New York resident received a speed camera ticket claiming his Korean War-era Blue Willy Jeep had been driving at a speed it is not capable of reaching. The city of Cleveland, Ohio insisted that Christopher Johnson’s 56-year-old military machine blasted past East 71st Street and Chester Avenue at 48 MPH on September 1, even though the vehicle’s top speed is well below 35 MPH.

“It’s not a candidate for a speeding ticket,” Johnson told the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper.

The Cleveland Parking Violations Bureau demanded $140 from Johnson who first learned about the infraction in October from a delinquency notice. Johnson was not interested in paying a ticket from a city he had not visited in more than a year-and-a-half. A copy of the speed camera photograph showed a red minivan and a silver SUV with unreadable license plates — not a Jeep. Despite the city’s claim that a human police officer personally reviews every photo after ticket vendor Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) issues the citation, it is clear no such review took place in Johnson’s case.

When Johnson tried to resolve the problem through letters and phone calls, he was ignored. There is no financial penalty for either the city or ACS for issuing a bogus ticket, but there is a significant likelihood that many motorists will simply pay the ticket to avoid the hassle of a fight. When the Plain Dealer called the Cleveland Municipal Court, Johnson’s ticket was quickly dismissed.

Legal help for a speeding ticket in Ohio.

Cleveland Plain Dealer – Mark Puente 12/27/07

Taking a road trip home for the holidays this year? Be sure to go easy on the gas pedal, particularly if your travels take you up or down the East Coast.

According to stats from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the I-95 corridor between the southeast and New England includes five of the 10 U.S. states carrying the highest fines for speeding–Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina, Maryland and New Hampshire. All hit up speeders for a maximum of $500 or more for a first offense. Judges in Carolina and Georgia, not to mention 16 other states, have the discretion to add jail time.

Ten States With The Toughest Tickets

Tough for travelers? Sure. But nothing compared with what can happen to residents. Virginia, this year’s lone newcomer to the list, instituted a $1,050 surcharge to state residents on top of its traditional $300 speeding fine in July. The law is designed to raise money for infrastructure projects throughout the state without raising taxes. Thankfully, the penalty only applies to locals.

Spearheading the new law was Virginia state legislator David Albo, whose law firm, specializes in defending drivers against traffic violations. Critics have railed at Albo for what they see as an obvious conflict of interest, though he scoffs at the idea he’s made any money from the legislation.

“Who’s going to pay $1,500 to go to court with a lawyer for the non-guarantee of getting out of a $1,000 [or so] speeding fee?” he says. He points to stats from Virginia’s Joint Legislative Audit Review Commission showing an 11% decrease in reckless driving arrests since the new law passed, while speeding tickets have dropped off slightly.

The national median for a first offender’s top-end fine is $200, according to the NHTSA. And even states with lower standard fines sometimes have exceptions. Connecticut, for example, generally caps fines for first-time speeders at $50, though exceeding 70 miles per hour on a “multiple lane, limited access highway” will usually bring double or triple that amount. In Massachusetts, anyone caught going more than 10 miles per hour above the limit is socked for $10 for every additional mile, over and above the state’s $50 minimum.

And be on the lookout in financially strapped rural areas and beach towns thick with tourists. Both are notorious for raising revenue by sticking lots of people with speeding tickets.

Getting stopped by a police officer for speeding doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get written up. Those with the skill and know-how to talk or act their way out of a ticket have saved themselves a lot of money over the years. Rule No. 1, of course, is being polite to the officer. No need to antagonize someone who’s in a position to set you back hundreds of dollars.

“The guy has a gun, badge, Billy club and a ticket book, so be nice to him,” advises Alex Carrol, author of the book Beat the Cops, which offers tips on getting out of tickets. Others include little things like removing sunglasses, turning off the stereo and pulling over far enough so that the officer isn’t practically standing in the passing traffic while he quizzes you at the driver’s side window. A little consideration can go a long way.

Also, Carrol points out, don’t ever volunteer information. Wait for the officer to tell you why he pulled you over. Launching into an immediate apology for speeding can bring an extra charge if the officer had initially stopped you for a faulty tail light.

How hard a speeding ticket hits you in the wallet can vary according to several factors, including how fast over the limit you were going, no matter where in the country you’re caught. Is it your first offense, or are you a multiple offender? Half the states in the U.S. use a “points” system to measure drivers’ moving violation history. Piling them up increases both fines and insurance rates. Also, were you caught zipping too fast through a school zone or construction area? If so, expect to pay as much as double the normal fine in some states, thanks in part to targeted efforts by the Governors Highway Safety Association.

“We’re recommending enforcement in certain areas, like school zones and work zones. The idea is to go after the worst offenders first,” says Jonathan Atkins, an Association spokesman.

Not surprisingly, young males are nabbed for speeding more than anyone else, NHTSA figures show, with 38% of men under 21 caught in the act last year. In fact, it’s not until you reach the men’s 35 to 44 age group that the number of speeding incidents comes in below that for 15- to 20-year-old women.

When it comes to trying to get out of a ticket, some people really know how to get creative. Carrol relays a story of a woman who carries a camera in her car, purely as a prop to show cops as she tells them she’s rushing to the hospital to meet her pregnant sister, for whom she promised to take pictures during delivery. Then there’s the guy who always drives around with a full water bottle. Anytime he’s pulled over, he pours a little out onto his lap, and then tells the approaching officer he’s been trying to rush home ahead of a bladder emergency.

“He always gets out of tickets,” Carrol says.

Article from Forbes.com – Tom Riper