Fla. county will no longer ticket drivers for signaling police speed traps

[enzo1]

A Florida driver's lawsuit challenging police who ticket motorists for flashing their headlights to warn of speed traps is having a rippling effect across the state, the Orlando Sentinel writes.

The Orange County sheriff's office will no longer write such tickets after its lawyer says it is not against the law.

The Florida Highway Patrol has already put the practice on temporary hold, as has the Seminole County sheriff's office.

The pullback follows a legal challenge from Erich Campbell, a Tampa-area man who has filed a class-action suit on behalf of thousands of Florida motorists who have been ticketed in the last five years.

Campbell, who was ticketed by an FHP deputy, calls it a motorists' free-speech issue and is quoted by the Sentinel as calling the latest developments "a tremendous success."

The paper notes that some counties, such as Osceola and Miami-Dade, have never written such tickets, while Volusia and Lake counties will continue the practice.

[cstreit]

What did the ticket actually cite? (ie what law did they break?)

[enzo1]

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/seminole/os-flashing-headlights-moratorium-20110913,0,7641317.story According to Jones, the lawyer who filed both suits, "We've got a controversy on how traffic enforcement is applying the statute."

Both suits allege that cops who write those tickets are misapplying a statute designed to keep drivers from adding after-market emergency lights to their vehicles.

Bernie Rice, legal director at the Orange County Sheriff's Office, came to the same conclusion. This is what he wrote in his department-wide memo earlier this month:

"Does Florida Statute 316.2397(7) or another state law authorize law enforcement officers to ticket drivers who flash their headlights to warn other motorists of nearby traffic enforcement operations? No."

The Tallahassee suit alleges that Florida cops wrote 2,900 of those tickets between 2005 and 2010.

Highway Patrol spokesman Capt. Mark Welch said his agency doesn't know how many of those tickets Florida cops handed out in those years. It used to report those statistics but later discovered data errors that it cannot correct, he said.

What it can report with confidence, he said, is that 82 were written in the past 12 months.

[pwd72s]

Bravo!

[GH85Carrera]

A friend of mine was stopped and ticketed for flashing his lights. The ticket was for a defective light switch. He got it thrown out in court but it cost him tons of time and effort and several days off work. He does not flash his light anymore.

[masraum]

I flashed some folks last week after I passed a couple of motorcycle cops running radar.

I don't get the opportunity very often. I think that's probably the 3rd or 4th time in the last 10-15 years that I've flashed folks to warn them. Honestly, I suspect that only 5-10% of the population would know what it meant anyway.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

A friend of mind and I got a tongue-lashing from a cop years ago as we happened to see a roadside speed trap and went back to his place, got a big sheet of plywood and a can of spraypaint to make a sign reading "cop ahead". Unfortunately we weren't far enough away from the speed trap and they figured out what we'd done pretty quickly but it was still pretty funny. I think I was about 10 or so.

To this day I wonder if radar traps are really about safety (getting people to slow down) then why wouldn't the police applaud us for our efforts (we DID get cars to slow down!) and/or put similar signs themselves all over town? The reminder alone and threat of maybe actually having a cop ahead would increase safety, no?

I figured out at an early age that things aren't exactly how they're sold to you and that the police aren't necessarily the "good guys".

I'm glad people are standing up to this kind of crap. Finally.

[URY914]

This just proves that cops are giving tickets to make money, not to make you slow your speed.