A woman on Facebook recently posted a request for getting several traffic tickets fixed.

Another woman, identifying herself as a chief investigator for the Houston Fire Department, responded that she may be able to help because she knew the particular officer involved.

Shortly thereafter the same chief investigator followed up with a post that the tickets would be taken care of. A little later she wrote again and confirmed that the traffic tickets had been ripped up.

Now an investigation is underway as Houston officials are wondering just how a speeding ticket got thrown out after a simple, very public plea on Facebook.

The Houston Firefighter’s Union says the person who posted the request is the daughter of a veteran fire fighter who recently died. They say she was actually out making funeral arrangements at the time she received the traffic tickets in question.

While her behavior may have ultimately been excused by a court and the tickets ultimately dismissed, this was simply not the smartest way to go about it. The lesson here isn’t to avoid asking for help if you have a good reason and know people who may be able to help with your traffic tickets. It’s just that if you do ask, do it PRIVATELY…

Freeinsurancequotes.com recently analyzed how many people have traffic tickets on their mind by measuring how many complaints about speeding tickets are posted (tweeted?) on Twitter.   They looked at all the tweets concerning speeding tickets and analyzed the percentage of those tweets that came from each state.  California leads the US in speeding ticket tweets, with 14 percent of all speeding ticket related tweets originating from the state of California.  Note that Los Angeles, with about 11 percent of the total California population, accounted for 44 percent of the California tweets.  Following California are New York speeding ticket tweets (8 percent), Texas (7 percent), Florida (6 percent) and Ohio (5 percent).  At 4 percent are Colorado, North Carolina, Virginia, Illinois and Georgia speeding ticket tweets.

There are interesting aspects to this.  For example, Illinois, with about 1.5 million more people than Ohio, had 20 percent fewer speeding ticket related tweets than Ohio.  By analyzing the data you can potentially get a feel for which states more aggressively issue and prosecute speeding tickets.  Or, depending on how you look at it, maybe we’re just learning which states have residents who are more likely to complain about stuff…

I’m still curious though what numbers are involved.  Are there 100 tweets about speeding tickets–which would obviously be quite a small percentage compared to the millions of overall tweets–and 14 came from California or are the number of tweets about speeding tickets in the millions?  While this study breaks down all the tweets about speeding tickets we still have no idea how many such tweets there are.  We’ll have to check that out ourselves I guess.

If you need help with a speeding ticket in Los Angeles (apparently many people do), that’s outside our range as NY traffic ticket lawyers.  You can find excellent Los Angeles speeding ticket attorneys at our national site TicketHELP.com.  Of course, if you have questions about a NY speeding ticket and want to do more than merely tweet your concerns, feel free to contact us anytime.

From what we’ve seen lately, it appears that the DMV may be encouraging judges at the TVB to crack down on drivers who continue to ignore seat belt and cell phone laws.

Both violations carry no points. In the past, we routinely told potential and existing clients not to bother retaining our firm to fight cell phone or seat belt tickets unless it was a situation where the individual had some serious existing license issues or we had some reason to believe a conviction would affect the driver’s insurance. Recently, we’ve changed our policy based on case results we’ve either been involved with or been informed of after the fact.

In multiple cases, we’ve seen judges issue suspensions to drivers convicted of driving while using a cell phone or without a seat belt in NYC where one or more such conviction was already on their driving record. We’ve seen too many examples of this to call it a coincidence and we’re now advising anyone with a seat belt or cell phone ticket answerable to the TVB to at least talk to one of our attorneys before proceeding under a false sense of “no points can’t hurt me” security.

Right now the problem is unique to the Traffic Violation Bureau which handles traffic tickets issued in New York City as well as parts of Buffalo, Rochester and Suffolk County. TVB judges have the discretion to suspend motorists for just about any reason. Compare this to the local county, town and village court judges who generally leave the decision to suspend up to the DMV itself. The DMV generally sticks to the “11 points and you are out” rule of thumb and wouldn’t act on the addition of a zero point violation to a driving record and issue an otherwise discretionary suspension.

Feel free to read more about the differences between the TVB and the local traffic courts throughout New York or to contact us if you have any questions about a seat belt ticket or cell phone ticket in NY.

Submitted by Scott Feifer

Chu-sing to write tickets out of spite is just wrong.

On June 14, Queens Councilman Dan Halloran (R-Queens) observed an NYPD Traffic Agent, Daniel Chu, speeding through a stop sign with his police lights flashing. Halloran tailed Chu and stopped to snap photos of him parked illegally in front of a Dunkin’ Donuts in Whitestone, Queens. Chu yelled at Halloran and wrote issued him a ticket for blocking a crosswalk.

After Halloran complained about Chu’s behavior, Chu confessed to driving recklessly while talking on a cell phone and was disciplined. Chu’s been forced to say goodbye to the vehicle he’s pictured with above and has been demoted to foot patrol. He is required to undergo retraining at the Police Academy, which includes sensitivity training. He also faces several days’ docked pay.

Yesterday, the traffic ticket issued to Halloran was dismissed.

After the story found it’s way into the news, Halloran was bombarded with calls and e-mails from motorists claiming to have been wrongly ticketed by Chu. Halloran is still calling for a review of every ticket the agent wrote.

While a review of such closed traffic ticket matters is unlikely in my opinion, this story raises a couple of interesting points:

1. Thousands of “spite” tickets are written every year to people who verbally challenge an officer, pass an officer’s vehicle, drive too close to an officer’s vehicle or otherwise behave in a manner that results in the issuance of a traffic ticket where no real ticket-worthy violation was committed. It’s an outright abuse of power.

2. It takes a complaint from a Councilman to get anyone to listen. The vast majority of complaints made by people who were issued traffic tickets are blown off by officials as sour grapes.

3. If a complaint from a rich or otherwise powerful person is much more likely to be acted on than complaints from “ordinary” ticket recipients, enforcement officers decrease their chances of getting disciplined by pulling over taxi drivers, less expensive cars and less “connected looking” motorists in general. Why pull over the guy in the expensive BMW who may have the ear of some city official when you can pull over someone who barely speaks English and in unlikely to initiate any kind of effective complaint at all?

4. NOT ALL POLICE OFFICERS ISSUE BAD TICKETS. This type of story gets people cynical about enforcement officers. I’ve appeared against hundreds at traffic hearings and spoken to many off the record. Most simply issue tickets when the see blatant violations and tell the truth in court and that’s that. Behavior like Daniel Chu’s is way more the exception than rule. Unfortunately, most of the tickets that are written for the wrong reasons ultimately end up in convictions as traffic judges have little incentive or means to determine that an officer completely fabricated a charge.

Submitted by Scott Feifer

Traffic enforcment in Suffolk County (Long Island), NY may soon involve the use of airplanes.

The county sheriff’s office is testing the use of a small plane to spot bad drivers.

It’s just a trial program right now.  Last Friday, a plane flew low over the Long Island Expressway.  Spotters in the plan looked for aggressive drivers and radioed details to deputies below.

Sheriff’s deputies handed out 88 traffic tickets between 7:30 and 10:30 a.m., many based on what the spotters saw from the single-engine plane.

The spotters interviewed seemed impressed with the ability to see everything that was happening below very clearly.  Cars changing lanes unsafely, moving faster than others, tailgating, etc.

The plane was a loaner from Bergen County, N.J., but Suffolk County has already applied to the federal government for funding for its own plane.

Submitted by Scott Feifer