The last ticket I contested, I only did so out of curiosity. I was not speeding, but it was the first time I had been pulled over in over 30 years, so I approached the whole thing as a learning experience. It was kind of fun, really, and very enlightening.

The cop was not in court. Neither was the prosecutor. It was up to me, under Washington law as the defendant, to specifically request their presence. I did not. The "judge" (I use that term very loosely in this instance) asked me why I thought the officer had pulled me over. I answered that it was not my place to speculate as to his motives or perceptions, and that any questions of that nature would be more appropriately directed to the officer. The "judge" answered that the officer was not there, because I had not requested his presence, so he could not ask him. I responded that I had no questions for the officer, but it sounded like the court did. I mentioned that I had taken a day off from work to be there, but neither the officer nor the prosecutor had assigned that level of importance to their charges. I moved for dismissal, since it was apparent that the court required information not contained in either the ticket itself or the officer's report.

The "judge" responded that he would just assume the officer had good reason, and knew what he was doing. I said that hardly seemed "fair and impartial" on the part of the court. The "judge" said "committed" (they cannot say "guilty", because that is reserved for criminal cases). I said "gee, it seems to me that the less information the officer provides, the more leeway the court has to make assumptions in his favor".

That's the way it is up here in Washington.

Todd, planning a big ride to Alaska, taking the haul road all the way to Prudhoe Bay. Taking about three weeks to do it. The plan is for June of next year. So you have plenty of time to heal up. In the meantime, you ready to take that GS on some trails?

Wow. That would explain some your frustration with the process up there. If the officer doesn't show up for court here, case dismissed and your money is refunded. If the officer doesn't have the required paperwork, ie certifications, calibrations and current surveys, same thing.

Going back to the video recording thing:

For simply defending yourself against a false speeding charge, a camera that shows the speedo and the rearview mirror, recording a rolling 10 minutes with a time stamp, would be enough. In most cars you could mount it in the headliner. Doesn't need to be completely hidden, just unobtrusive enough to not be noticed during the stop. There is no need for sound recording, so you are not recording a "conversation" and no issues of legality. A speedo certification would be nice too.

Of course, it would provide additional evidence of guilt in 99% of cases. I have never been ticketed for speeding when I was not speeding, and the ticketed speed has always been close enough to my actual speed.

Actually it would be required and current just like the officers.

Michael, I've also lived in Massachusetts, and that's another state ("Commonwealth") in which the ticketing officer does not need to show up in court.

Not sure how you come up with those statistics...unless 99% of tickets issued are to you. Sort of like saying that since you have never been murdered...99% of murders are really suicides. If I had to guess based on my experience...it is closer to 50/50. The first time I assumed it was some sort of mistake or equipment malfunction...but after a couple of times, you have to wonder just how common such mistakes could be. While I do only speed occasionally, and get very few tickets, the few I have received were when I was driving carefully and obeying the law. It seems the "mistakes" happen a bit too often to be coincidence...especially since driving a 911 or other expensive or sporty car seems to add 10-15 mph to the speed "recorded."

On the typical freeway anywhere on the west coast, almost every car is exceeding the speed limit. Try driving 55 or 65, whatever the posted limit is, and count the cars that pass you versus those that do not. I estimate 90% are passing you versus 10% not. Further, the vast majority of the 10% are little old ladies and trucks in the slow lane. If officers used a method of randomly ticketed everyone on the freeway, they would be "right", meaning the car would indeed be speeding, 90% of the time. If officers used a method of randomly ticketing everyone in all lanes excluding the slow lane, they would be "right" 99% of the time. Based on 20-some years experience with CHP, they do better than that second method. Meaning they actually identify speeders rather than ticketing randomly, and I have never seen them ticket a car driving the speed limit in the slow lane, so I reason they are "right" at least 99% of the time.

Now, are they further "right" in the sense that the car is indeed speeding and the ticket is written for roughly the correct speed? That I can only judge from personal experience. In 20-some years, with me anyway, they have been.

I think most of the time, when people complain about speeding tickets, they are really complaining that some other car nearby was speeding "more" than they were, and deserved the ticket more. That's not a defense.

I don't have much experience with Washington officers. Maybe they are much worse than CHP.

Personally, I have really lost interest in really speeding on the freeway. If the limit is 65, you'll find me in the slow lane doing 65-70, pulling out to pass when needed, then tucking back into the slow lane. If I get a ticket for my 70 periods, well I can't really complain. It doesn't happen, though.

Where I still get speeding tickets is on surface streets from photo radar. That is irritating.

Agreed. The freeways are in one of two states - either (1) gridlocked (in which case nobody can possibly speed) or free-flowing, in which case if you're doing the speed limit you're likely to be seriously killed.

"Speed kills" is utter hogwash. What kills is differences in vehicle speeds. FAR more unsafe. I have absolutely no problem whatsoever and am quite comfortable in a pack of cars cruising along at 80 or 90 mph but am very anxious about watching some jerkoff/redneck whip in and out of lanes at 80 or 90 mph when everyone else is doing say, 70. The latter situation is FAR more unsafe and I've only seen or heard of someone getting nailed for it ONCE (when I lived in Chicago I witnessed it first-hand).

This crap is about R-E-V-E-N-U-E. Plain and simple. Go ahead and try to convince me otherwise. Any safety benefit is coincidental and unintended.

When it comes to the freeways, I actually tend to agree with you, except I dont really feel comfortable with the soccer mom in the SUV and a car load of kids cruising along at 85-90 clueless, everyone out there does not have the skill set of the typical pelicanite.;)

Personally I don't work the freeways. The streets I work have traffic signals, pedestrians walking and running, bike paths and other driveways that enter onto the roadways. 60 mph in these areas where the speed limit is 40 or 45 is to fast. 35-40 mph in a residential area where children are playing or walking to school is to fast. I'm sure you would feel the same if it was your street or your child. I have written traffic reports of vehicles that have hit kids, having to notify the parents. Your lucky that is something you won't have to ever do. You can call that revenue if it makes you feel better, I won't ever lose any sleep over writing these type of tickets.

That really seems wrong, If the officer is going to write the citation, he should be required to come to court and explain and defend his citiation.

I generally do the speed limit. Never more than 10 over and rarely even 5 over. I never exceed the speed limit in a neighborhood...yet I have been stopped and actually received tickets for doing 15-20 or more miles per hour faster than I was actually driving. Once I was stopped and given a breathalyzer because I was driving too slow...which seemed suspicious (I was the only car doing the speed limit). They really wanted an excuse to search my car because of the out-of-state plates. Odd for a clean-cut, middle aged guy in a conservative car wearing a suit...out with his middle-aged wife wearing a nice dress and heels on their anniversary.

Obviously law enforcement personnally come in all types like the rest of us. Some are superheroes...some are dirtbags. Too bad revenue coollection sometimes seems to keep them too busy to be the superheroes that many are/could be.

In philly there is a liason cop who just reads the ticket. You're pretty much always guilty.

Then you go to appeals court, the actual cop does show up for that, and the DA automatically waives all points and suspensions and only aks for the fine.

It is a total scam.

Must feel nice being a part of all that, for those involved in the system.

+1.

My office mate at work used a Carchip to get out of a ticket. He took the chip with the original data on it and a downloaded file that could be compared to the original if needed and made several plots of speed versus time data. It showed his top speed as 58mph in a 55mph zone so he could not have been doing the claimed 67mph in a 55mph zone and the case was thrown out. Maybe a recording GPS would work as well for the similar case, although video would be a bonus.

Make several backup copies and if the judge kicks it out then leak it to the news media as a newsworthy video and plant it on Youtube. Once a video is on the internet it's available forever.....

I wish all of our traffic enforcement was carried out with such level headed common sense, Michael. I fully support strict enforcement in towns and congested areas. Folks speeding in those areas are simply exercising poor judgement, to the point that someone else - like you - needs to step in and "help" them with that.

Out in the country, on the open road? I think "safe and prudent" type general speed laws should apply. The vast majority of us are responsible enough to drive in that manner, and certainly do not need some sort of nanny-state oversight holding us to what someone else deems appropriate. Worse yet, what that someone else settles on is typically far below what would be established under a traffic study, employing the "85% rule".

We actually had one of our more progressive small towns (Lake Stevens, about an hour north of Seattle) commission traffic studies on its busy arterials several years ago. They used the 85% rule to set new speed limits, generally raising existing limits by 10-15 mph or more. The hand-wringing ninnies went into a full-blown snit - the carnage was going to be unimaginable. Well, it didn't turn out that way. Their accident rate plummeted, traffic flowed much better - life is good.

Here is a Google map of where I was stopped. I was northbound on Elliot Road (it changes names back and forth between Elliot and Cathcart-Snoqualmie River Road, as you can see). The deputies were standing in the angled driveway at the upper left center of the frame, at about 11:00. They "recorded" my speed as I was rounding the corner at the bottom right. The speed limit on this road is 35 mph. I ride or drive this road at least 3-4 days a week to unwind after work. The damn school buses bringing kids home in the afternoon drive it at over 50 mph; there is simply no reason not to, other than that artificially low 35 mph limit. Anyway, the map (click"view larger map" below it to see the whole thing):

<iframe width="425" height="350" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" src="http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&amp;ll=47.832323,-122.066216&amp;spn=0.005157,0.013905&amp;t=h&amp;z =17&amp;output=embed"></iframe><br /><small><a href="http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&amp;ll=47.832323,-122.066216&amp;spn=0.005157,0.013905&amp;t=h&amp;z =17&amp;source=embed" style="color:#0000FF;text-align:left">View Larger Map</a></small>

Well Flintstone and others, we might be safe from illegal searches in the future thanks to a recent Supreme Court decision.

Editorial
Supreme Court puts brakes on car searches
The justices not only clarified the rules on police searches of vehicles, they showed that the desire to hold officers accountable to the Constitution crosses ideological lines.
April 22, 2009

Even in Los Angeles, a man's car isn't his castle. For reasons of public safety, motorists have to put up with some invasions of privacy that the law doesn't make them endure at home. But the U.S. Supreme Court reassuringly ruled Tuesday that even when the site of a search has wheels, police must abide by the 4th Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches and seizures.

Since 1981, the court has allowed police to search a suspect's vehicle "incident to his arrest," even without a warrant. The justification for such an exception is obvious: During an arrest, a suspect may reach for a concealed weapon or try to destroy evidence. But with the acquiescence of the Supreme Court, police have exploited the exception to conduct open-ended searches.

That was the case with an Arizona man named Rodney Gant. In 1999, Gant was arrested for driving with a suspended license, handcuffed and locked inside a police car. While he was safely disposed of, officers searched his car. Not for the first time, an illegal search yielded results. Police found cocaine inside the pocket of a jacket in the back seat, and Gant was convicted of drug possession. The Arizona Supreme Court overturned the conviction, ruling that the evidence should have been excluded.

On Tuesday, by a 5-4 vote that scrambled usual alliances, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed. Writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens concluded: "A rule that gives police the power to conduct such a search whenever an individual is caught committing a traffic offense, when there is no basis for believing evidence of the offense might be found in the vehicle, creates a serious and recurring threat to the privacy of countless individuals." Stevens' opinion was signed not only by fellow liberals Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David H. Souter but by conservatives Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia....

rest of Op-Ed here.