A New Haven, Connecticut Superior Court program that allowed people to get out of minor traffic tickets by donating a toy to charity won’t be continued next year.

The program was reviewed and the decision to end it made after one resident questioned whether the program was unfairly coercing ticket recipients to make a donation instead of fight, whether some offenders who did donate were getting off too easy and whether the state was losing too much money for every toy that was donated in lieu of paying a fine.

A spokeswoman for the Judicial Branch deemed the program “well-intentioned” but not appropriate considering the concerns that were voiced. Ultimately, it was “justice bought and sold” which means that, despite the low level nature of the infractions, the program must end.

Interesting program, but the decision to end it was probably the right call.

In January, a man named Kevin Richardson won Volkswagen’s The Fun Theory, a contest for ideas to make obeying speed-limits fun. Now, less than a year later, his entry is in use in Stockholm, Sweden.

Kevin’s idea is very simple.  Record vehicles that enter enforcement zones at or under the speed limit and automatically enter the vehicle in a lottery.  Prizes?  These come from the fines paid by speeders.

If speed enforcement were truly about safety and not revenue collection, this would have potential.  Unfortunately, it’s unlikely an idea like this would gain traction in the US because of the potential lost revenue.

As for safety, in Sweden thus far the average speed of cars measured by the program dropped from 32 km/h prior to the program to 25 km/h after.

Watch the video for more info on this interesting contest and idea

I’ve read it various places online and been asked by friends and clients on numerous occasions whether it’s true.

It’s the “overpayment” myth.  And the answer is NO, it is not true.

Here’s a version of it I found from a quick search online:

This is very simple.  In New York, when you are convicted of a traffic violation DMV is notified.  DMV will place the conviction on your driving record and you’ll have points on your record if it was a point carrying conviction.  That’s it.  Conviction for a point carrying violation means you have points.  Period.

As for payment of any fine due,  it’s a separate matter.  If you fail to pay, you’ll end up suspended for failure to pay eventually.  If you under or over pay, different courts will probably treat if differently.  However, under no circumstances does the over or under payment have any bearing on the points and the conviction.

Just a heads up Long Island..

Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano was in Albany recently to lobby for financial help for the county.

He met with lawmakers twice, as recently as Dec 7, to discuss ways to increase county revenue.

Included in that conversation was the possibility of more red light cameras and additional fees on traffic tickets.

At least it’s not more “we’re making the roads safer” rhetoric…

Dozens of motorists are getting traffic tickets dismissed in the Sacramento, California area just for fighting.

There’s a dispute between the District Attorney’s Office and the Sacramento, Elk Grove and Folsom police departments over who’s going to pay for the prosecutor’s traffic court services.

Officers are just not showing up and motorist are easily beating tickets.

We work hard for our clients in NY–we’d welcome a few easy wins like this one day…

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/

Minor mistakes on your traffic ticket are unlikely to merit dismissing the charge.

Consider some of the information on a ticket issued for a moving violation. Your name, date of birth, address, license number, and vehicle make, model, color and plate, etc. A slightly misspelled name or the wrong color car or a mistake with the address or other license info can easily be overlooked by a Judge because of the presence of all the other information. A Court/Prosecutor/Judge can be satisfied, even in the face of certain minor errors, that the person with the ticket in their hand is the person who was observed driving and allegedly committing the violation in question.

Moreover, if a John Smith who drives a green car were to claim the ticket written to John Smite in a brown car was not issued to him, there would also be an issuing officer who could potentially identify the person in court as the driver of the vehicle and end any doubt.

Small mistakes leading to dismissal of the charges is simply another traffic court myth. The myth likely comes from parking tickets where small errors on the ticket are much more damaging. Parking tickets are issued to a vehicle, not a person. If the vehicle is not identified exactly, then there will be legitimate questions about the ticket itself and which car was allegedly parked improperly. There isn’t the additional information, like address, date of birth, ID number, etc. that could be considered.

In any case, we still do recommend looking over the ticket carefully. While mistakes on a traffic ticket may not mean an automatic dismissal, sometimes an attorney can argue that perhaps the officer was distracted or similarly mistaken about the underlying violation itself. Multiple small mistakes can make such an argument even more likely to succeed. Thus, while mistakes don’t automatically help one’s cause, they don’t hurt either. Mistakes do have some merit and could be used as a tool to help chip away at the sufficiency of the evidence offered against a driver.

Submitted by Scott Feifer

It’s not a New York issue, but one particular quote caught my eye recently.

There’s a small controversy surrounding some speeding tickets issued via camera surveillance on a Washington DC roadway. Enforcement officials claim the cameras were put up to protect construction workers in a construction zone where the speed limit had been lowered by 10mph to accommodate the construction.

Now, however, the construction has stopped but the cameras remain.

Here’s the quote: “We’re hoping to use these speed cameras more often,” said Assistant Police Chief Patrick Burke. “This is to keep people safe.”

It would be nice if an official would finally just come out and say “we want to keep people safe…but the money is pretty nice too”.

Did I mention in the 2.5 months since construction more or less ended, $3.73 million in fine money has been collected?

It’s never ONLY about safety and officials who claim it is just come off sounding silly.

If for some reason you’re reading this and have questions about a camera or other speeding ticket in the Washington DC area, feel free to consult with a Washington DC traffic attorney via our national site TicketHELP.com.

Submitted by NY Traffic Lawyer Scott Feifer

If you drive in NYC, please keep the following in mind:

1.  Unless otherwise posted, the speed limit is 30 mph.  All those local streets that have no speed limit signs are considered “unposted” 30 mph zones.

2.  50 mph is the highest speed limit in NYC.  It’s never 55, 60 or 65 on any of the highways no matter what the conditions of the roadway may be like.  Be particularly careful as you transition from Westchester or Nassau County highways to NYC as the speed limit drops.

Read more about speeding tickets if you have further questions.

There was an article posted recently on a Nashville, Tennessee news website about a student who went to pay for a speeding ticket. When he got there, he was told he had 3 outstanding red light camera tickets that he didn’t know about.

Like in NY, the camera tickets and speeding ticket really have nothing to do with each other. The speeding ticket is a moving violation which can potentially affect your driving record. Red light camera tickets are treated like parking tickets written against the registration because an individual driver cannot be identified.

Unlike New York, however, for some reason they are forcing this student to pay the red light tickets before he can pay the speeding ticket because the red light tickets were issued first.  Apparently you must pay tickets in chronological order there.

Of all the issues people have trying to figure out which agencies to deal with, what they owe, how to fight, whey they weren’t notified of certain tickets but were for others, which tickets may affect insurance and how, staying timely on tickets and avoiding suspension, etc, this is a new one for me.

In this case, failure to pay the red light camera tickets will not affect his driving privilege but failure to pay the speeding ticket ultimately will. Now he needs to come up with the money for these non-moving violations first and, if he doesn’t do it quickly enough, he’ll be suspended for the speeding ticket.

Just seems like an unnecessary additional burden on people who are already burdened by different types of multiple, low level summonses.

If you happen to have a question about a Tennessee traffic ticket or other issue, you may be able to consult with a Tennessee traffic ticket attorney.

NEWEST UPDATE:  As of 7/12/11, cell phone violation convictions in NY will result in three (3) points on your license and using a portable electronic device is no longer a secondary violation but will be considered a primary violation.

UPDATE:  As of 2/16/11, cell phone violation convictions in New York will result in two (2) points on your license.  Read about the rule change here (2 points for NY cell phone tickets) or continue reading about the violation itself below.

We get a lot of inquiries about tickets written under Section 1225 of the New York State VTL (which covers use of mobile telephones and other portable electronic devices). The following may help with some of the common questions and misconceptions concerning these distracted driving related summonses.

NY Cell Phone Law:

The cell phone laws came first. Section 1225-c became effective on December 1, 2001. The law is simple: “no person shall operate a motor vehicle upon a public highway while using a mobile telephone to engage in a call while such vehicle is in motion.” Some considerations here…

· Mobile telephones with a two way paging function are included

· “Using” means holding the telephone to, or in the “immediate proximity” (close enough to talk/listen) of one’s ear. Using speakerphone while a phone is sitting on the passenger seat or center console may be fine but it you have to hold the phone to bring it closer to your mouth/ear, then it’s no good. “Holding” is the key.

· “Engage” in a call means talking/listening but does not include activating, deactivating or initiating a function of the phone

· There is an assumption that if the phone is in the proximity of your ear that you were indeed engaged in a call. The law welcomes “evidence tending to show that the operator was not engaged in a call” to rebut this assumption.

· Emergencies are the exception to the law. You may communicate with any of the following regarding an emergency situation: an emergency response operator; a hospital, physician’s office or health clinic; an ambulance company or corps; a fire department, district or company; or a police department.

Our take on this is simple. Avoid cell phone tickets by not talking on the phone while driving. If you do get a ticket for cell phone use, you can probably forget arguing the phone wasn’t on (just holding it) or you were using speakerphone or you just pressed the button to activate bluetooth or “ignore” the incoming call or you only used it while stopped at a red light or in traffic. While these may technically be allowed under the law, an issuing officer is simply not going to agree with any of this. If the ticket was issued, the officer will be prepared to testify that he saw you in motion with the phone at or near your ear/mouth. You could always try to show “evidence” that you were not engaged in a call but remember that phone bills with itemized calls on it could easily belong to a different phone and/or an actual phone presented in court to review a phone log may simply be a different phone than the one used that day. It will be difficult to overcome the officer’s observation and the legal presumption that you were using the phone.

As for emergency exceptions, some good documentation in court and a corresponding statement to the officer on the road alerting him to the emergency (whether he believes you or not) may help.

NY Portable Electronic Device Law:

Another simple law: “no person shall operate a motor vehicle while using any portable electronic device while such vehicle is in motion.” Some considerations here:

· Section 1225-d went into effect on November 1, 2009. It defined “Portable electronic device” essentially as everything else that came around after cell phones. PDAs, anything with “mobile data access”, texting, games, ipods…all covered.

· “Operating” basically just means holding it here. With this section, there’s no proximity to the ear involved

· If you are holding the device, the presumption is you are using it. Like the cell phone section, you can offer evidence to rebut this.

· Portable excludes an item like a GPS affixed to your vehicle somehow.

· Emergency are an exception—the language is the same as that in the cell phone section.

The biggest difference with the newer law is that it is considered a secondary offense. Where an officer can observe you talking on the telephone and pull you over/issue a ticket just for that, he technically must have reasonable cause to believe you’ve committed a separate violation before ever issuing a ticket under 1225-d. He doesn’t have to issue the other ticket (“I’m giving you a warning on the red light but will cite you for using that ipod”), but must be able to state what the other violation was if he is called to testify.

Other than the secondary law issue, our take is the same with this section as it is with the cell phone section enacted eight years prior. Avoid these tickets by not using your gadgets while driving. If you do get a ticket, plan on it being very difficult to convince a judge that you weren’t somehow using the device that the officer claims you were using. Again, the best chance you’d have of getting the ticket dismissed would be good evidence of a legitimate emergency.