20 Speeding ticket defenses - Traffic attorney explains how to beat a speeding ticket

hi I'm Luke Nichols with the law firm of business in green I'm going to talk to you about 20 speeding ticket defenses now I watch hundreds and hundreds of speeding trials every year I'm in court probably 200 days a year and about half of all the cases I defend are traffic related so I can traffic work all the time and I watch people stand up and try to defend themselves and pitch all sorts of interesting and very good defenses so I'm going to talk to you about 20 of the most common and effective speeding defenses some of them are good defenses some of them are bad defenses and some it depends on how you use them so I'm going to go over the pros and cons and how to use these defenses and when you use these defenses so the most common defense I hear is continuing the case and hoping the officer doesn't show up now this may work in other jurisdictions but it doesn't work in Virginia the reason why it is each officer is assigned one core data month to prosecute all of the tickets they write for that month if the officer doesn't show up it's not just your case it goes out the window it's a month worth of work that is gone officers can get in big trouble with their supervisors they can affect our career it can even be held in contempt of court if they just don't show up so officers rarely don't show up in Virginia and when they don't show up it's often because of a family emergency or a law enforcement emergency or they're sick or something like that and in that case they can just call the court and if it's a bona fide personal emergency the court will just continue all the cases to the next day so it's rare to have a situation where officer doesn't show up and doesn't have a good excuse typically this is only when they also leaves the police force one of the most common excuses I hear in speeding cases is I was going with the flow of traffic now this typically is in a very effective defense of judges here all the time and it usually doesn't do much good what's more effective is to get a copy of the dashcam video of the police officers cruiser and while the video will not show any speed readings on there typically it will show whether or not you were going with the flow of traffic so you can put the dashcam video in and it shows going with the flow of traffic then all you have to do is ask the officer well how fast was traffic moving at and they'll typically say something like five to ten miles over the speed limit and so that shows that you weren't going any more than five to ten miles per hour over the speed limit because if the video shows you're moving with the flow of traffic and the officer says the flow traffic was five to ten over speed limit you couldn't have been doing you know 15 20 over to speed up so that's the more effective way to use that are you arguing that your speedometer is broken can be helpful but you have to understand how to use it a broken speedometer is not a defense to speeding in the state of Virginia so it doesn't get you out of trouble completely it's mitigating evidence which means evidence it you aren't as blameworthy that you shouldn't be punished as harshly it's not evidence that you're innocent so what you do is you go out and get a speedometer calibration you take your car to a mechanic you typically put the car on a device called a denominator which spins the wheels and then you can compare the speed on the denominator or the speed on the speedometer and the mechanic will write up some sort of calibration certificate that says at this speed the car speedometer is this and at this speed the car speedometer reads that yeah and you take that to court and present the certificate to the judge to prove that your speedometer is it accurate typically if your speedometer is low meaning that your speedometer reads lower than your actual speed you can use that as mitigating evidence to convince the judge you should be cutter brain attacking the calibration of the police officers speed measuring device it's probably one of the most effective ways to outright win a speed case however is also one of the most technical and most challenging ways to do this so basically what happens is that the log Virginia says that an officer needs a calibration certificate if they're going to try to introduce some sort of speed measurement so whether it's a pace laser case or a radar case there's some calibration to fit get associated with that speed measurement and that also needs to bring that calibrations ticket to court there's very laws that govern how you can introduce into evidence calibration certificates and these are very technical laws and if the officer doesn't follow all the technical requirements permitting that certificate into evidence you can kick out a certificate and if you kick out the certificate the officer doesn't get to testify to what the device set this is a very effective method for beating speed cases but it's also a very technical and complex way to beat speed cases even attorneys who are not experienced in doing speed enforcement cases struggle with this sort of thing so doing it on your own is pretty tricky needing to use the bathroom is one of the most common excuses for speeding now the problem with this excuse is that most people who use it didn't have an accident when they got pulled over so here's the problem if you speed to go to the bathroom and you get pulled over by the police who write you a ticket it takes more time to get to the bathroom than if you just obey the speed limit so if you can make it to the bathroom without having an accident even after being ready to take it then you could have just driven the speed limit and then fine so if you I really had to go and so you were speeding down the road if you had an accident that's a pretty legitimate excuse it sounds like you know it's still not a defense but it's a good it's a very sympathetic excuse if you were speeding to get to the bathroom and you didn't have an accident despite being pulled over by the police well at least acknowledge into the judges and say well you know I felt at the time that I wasn't going to make it I I wasn't sure at the time and in hindsight I really should have slowed down and just gone the speed limit but you know that's why I did it at that time in traffic court a lot of people try to justify their speeding because of their emergency their wife was having an ababy they got a call that somebody was in the hospital or trying to catch their flight they had any work order and be fired something really big was happening to justify their speed if you're going to go down this route make sure that your excuse really justifies the behavior the higher the speed the better the excuse to be additionally you have to explain why there wasn't a safer law-abiding way to accomplish what needed to be accomplished you know why couldn't you just call an ambulance or were you really going to miss your flight you know things like that if your excuse really doesn't justify the speed admit it to the judge tell them listen at the time I felt this was really important and I got overly focused on needing to be done work on time or catching my flight I know speeding those dangers I should have just slowed down I should have left the house early and this is not how I'm going to deal with these emergencies in the future and that's really important when you go and tell a judge that you are justified in what you're doing that's the same is telling him I'd do it again if I could okay and judges don't like that they don't want to hear that I'm going to keep speeding that I don't think I did anything wrong I don't need to change so if your excuse wasn't a really good one make sure you make it clear the judgeship even though I felt it was a big deal I'm not going to do this again in the future sometimes you don't have an excuse you just know that you're right and the office is wrong if you're in that situation don't get intimidated that's okay this is the legitimate defense but here's what you should do first off Guinness calibration certificate that shows your speedometer is accurate so you can get up and testify and say I saw my speedometer I was doing 55 miles per hour and here's a calibration certificate that shows what's the dollar is accurate second write down everything that happened and everything that you said to the officer he said you keep it detailed record of everything that happened about the case little details what was the weather like what was traffic like draw a diagram out where you were relative to other cars and the police officer what did the officer say to you what did you say to him write this all down and preserve it so that when you take the stand you have notes that you can reference to refresh your memory third talk to an attorney almost every attorney I don't exclude myself included that's free consultations call us up we can give you a lot of free advice and you never know you might end up services and the fourth thing try to get a dashcam video okay a lot of police cruisers have dash cams you can use that to see what you were doing relative to other our cars and it can often be used to help backup your story to begin with you speeding in the state of Virginia the speed limit site has to be properly posted there's three ways that a sign is not properly posted what is the sign gets obscured either by vegetation tree limbs other signs it gets knocked down the other way is that it's not actually speed limit sign those yellow signs that have speed limits on them they're yellow and black those are advisory signs they're not actual speed limit signs so if you go onto an off-ramp and it has a yellow sign that's not the speed limit that's not an official speed of the sign sometimes officers get that confused the third way is sometimes local governments or local organizations will kind of go vigilante on us and they'll post their own signs if you can find out who posted the sign you can find out whether or not they had authority to do it and whether they didn't according to the law so those are the three ways we attack whether or not the speed limit sign is properly posted many jurisdictions will dismiss or reduce your charge in exchange for a driver improvement course however each jurisdiction has its own rules and regulations about how they do this or even if they do this for example Fairfax County in Northern Virginia doesn't do this program at all Prince William County does Arlington County also does it but they require a very specific Arlington County court and there's very particular rules about how and when they do it talk to a local attorney or talk to your local County Clerk's office to find out if that program is available and what are the requirements of that program believe it or not people go to court and argue that they were speeding because they were running out of gas a lot of people think of you're about to run out of gas go faster in order to get home quicker before you run out of gas of course this isn't a great idea for a couple reasons one it's not a very good use for putting people's lives in danger and speeding and breaking the law and two if you go slower you actually save gas so by going fast you run out of gas quicker and your car runs less efficiently so if you didn't know that don't use that one in court you can do a lot with a good driving record you're going into court and just say hey I've never been in trouble for I've never gotten a ticket before I have a clean record that carries a lot of weight on minor traffic infractions in Virginia a plus five record is a perfect record anything between a zero to a plus five is a good record right around negative two two plus three is kind of average from under negative two to about negative four is not so great and if you get a negative 5 or below that's that's pretty bad if you're a negative ten you're gonna shock people in the my personal only my personal best is I once saw a negative 54 record so yeah having a good record can really help oftentimes you can just ask cut me a break because of my good record you can take a driver improvement class in the state of Virginia to receive five good points to your record you can do this voluntarily at any time and you can do it once every two years it cost about forty five dollars to do it online or about seventy five dollars to do it in person if you don't have a perfect record you'd like to improve your record before trial you can take the driving improvement class on your own and get those five good points out of your record many people are caught speeding while they're trying to pass someone and often they go to court and use this excuse or defense and it backfires at them the reason why is it doesn't work very well if you're accused of speeding more than about ten miles per hour over the speed limit here's the reason why first off the question becomes how fast was the person you were passing how fast were they going if somebody's already going ten miles over the speed limit you really don't need to pass them all right you're already breaking the law why do you need to go even faster than they are okay if somebody is driving the speed limit you don't need to drive 15 miles per hour over limit to pass them okay so what happens is if you're accused of speeding more than fifteen over the speed limit it doesn't really make sense why passing them as an excuse okay now this isn't always true there's special circumstances where it could be the case but you have to think it through one of the most effective ways to be the speed case is to attack how they also did their job how they use their speed enforcement equipment this is the most common way we win cases where people are accused of going over a hundred miles per hour however it's a very technical defense and it requires a lot of experience and a lot of technical training you have to understand the science and the methodology behind all the equipment they're using you have to understand how they were trained you have to understand the nitsa enforcement methodologies and you have to understand the rules of evidence and the legal maneuvers necessary to exploit that information and it really takes a technical background to focus in speeding defense but if you have an attorney who knows how to do this it's very effective it's just not the type of thing you can do on your own without years of experience and a lot of training a lot of people get caught speeding as they're coming down ahead now this can be a good excuse in hey I I really wasn't meaning to go that fast and it's just you know it's coming down a hill and I picked up a little extra speed this works particularly good if you're accused of just going like you know ten fifteen miles over the speed limit the important thing is to know where the officer measured your speed most officers like to measure your speed with radar or lidar as you come over the top of the hell right as you're cresting the hell they do that because you don't have a chance to slow down when you see the officer they get your right as you come over that he'll other officers will sit there and measure your speed and tag you as you get to the bottom after you've picked up a few million miles per hour so find out which of those things your officer did before you start arguing that he measured you at the bottom of the hell sometimes we speed to get away from unsafe situations there's a drunk driver or someone tailgating us an aggressive driver but we have to make sure that our driving behavior is justified by situation obviously if you're driving 90 or 100 miles per hour to get away from somebody who was tailgating you a little bit that doesn't really make a lot of sense so this defense works best at lower speeds so if you're accused of going 10 or 15 miles over the speed limit maybe that makes a little bit more sense additionally you have to explain why you couldn't just pull over or let the person go by why speeding was the necessary way to get out of the situation sometimes it wasn't and you just admitted to the judge said listen Your Honor this guy was tailgating me and I accelerated to get away from him I wouldn't do it again if I had the chance it was a poor decision at the time but that's why I did it sometimes we speed to get away from somebody who looks like an aggressive driver and it turns out to be a police officer police officer who come up in an unmarked car tailgate you and you keep accelerating to get away from them and they keep following you it's creepy and you don't know what's going on I explained that to a judge try not to be accusatory or are you pointing the finger at the officer Tuggle just explained me I didn't realize I don't know this is some creepy guy I was just trying to get away from him and he kept following me and I got scared I didn't know what was going on and sometimes I think be able to do the defense but a police officer writes you a ticket it's really common for there to be errors on the ticket most the time these errors have nothing to do with your case and they're not a defense at all but sometimes they are if the officer wrote down the wrong address for the court the wrong time for the court that's a big deal talk to an attorney immediately about that before you go to court if you officer wrote down the wrong name of the person accused that can be a big deal if he's simply misspelled your name that's usually not a big deal additionally there'll be a little biographical information like your height weight eye color or the make and model of your car but these details are wrong it's usually not too big of a deal unless there's a genuine issue of whether or not the officer pulled over or ticketed the correct person a lot of people get ticketed for speeding because they're behind the wheel we're not used to they drive an older slower car and they borrow a friend's car or get a rental card it's just heavier it's smoother it has better suspension and they don't realize how fast they're going this can be a really good explanation especially for low level speeding offenses so if this is your situation tell the judge what car you normally drive I tell them what car you were taking it in explain to them how you just weren't used to the feel of the car this is particularly effective if if you are alone at night or on an empty road and there was nothing really around to gauge your speed with ignorance is not an offense to speed but it's not irrelevant either if you didn't realize how fast you were going explain it to the judge explain to them why you didn't know so if your speedometers accurate present that information if you're driving a car that just goes faster and feels slower tell it to the judge if you're in a car tire off the ground I could pick up or an SUV often it just feels slower if there were no other cars around to kind of gauge your speed explain it to the judge these things can all be relevant however things you don't want to say are I didn't realize it was going that fast because I've taken some medication it was making me kind of loopy that's a DUI and that sounds really unsafe you don't want to say that you don't want to say I didn't realize I was going back fast because I've been working 15 hours straight and I was really sleepy yeah saying I was sleepy n speeding not a good idea so make sure that your explanation of why you didn't realize you're going that fast is it worse than the accusation of skiing if you're in this situation take a driver improvement class before court and then tell the judge how taking the driver improvement classes made you better at being aware of your speed and better at avoiding accidentally speeding if you look up traffic defenses and speeding ticket defenses online you'll find a lot of material from organizations and people calling themselves sovereign citizens these arguments take a lot of different forms but they all basically say the same thing the gist of the argument is that the courts and the police officers don't have the to enforce traffic laws or even write traffic laws for that matter they often say very arcane laws and cases that don't really have anything to do with traffic laws and these arguments rarely if ever work I've never seen one work in my entire career despite the thousands of cases I've seen another traffic ticket defense it's become quite vogue online recently is the right to travel defense this defense revolves around the idea that you have a constitutional right to travel and that as long as you're not engaged in commerce the government can't regulate how or when you drive therefore laws requiring me to get license plates have the driver's license or basic speed limits that those are all unconstitutional because they have fringe upon your right to travel these arguments are incorrect they misunderstand our constitutional rights first off you do have a right to travel however you do not have a right to drive a car driving the vehicle is not a constitutional right it is a privilege and the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that over and over again so you may have a right to travel but driving the car is not the same as traveling you can travel without a car additionally just because you have a constitutional right doesn't need the government can infringe upon I have a right to privacy but the government can still search my house if they have a search warrant I have a right to own a gun but the government can still require me to get a permit before I can conceal it so just because you have a constitutional right doesn't mean the government can't a fringe upon it it just means that they can afraid your planet only when it's reasonable to do so and the infringement is outweighed by a pressing public need in my entire career I've never seen the right to travel defense work with a speeding or traffic ticket case nor have I never heard of it working in a traffic ticket case before so if you're going to try this you can but it's not something I recommend well hopefully this video helped you out and learned a little something from it if you have a traffic ticket in Northern Virginia or if you have a question a traffic or criminal case in Northern Virginia call our firm that law firm with niggles and Green for a free consultation if you have a traffic ticket or criminal matter in some place other than Northern Virginia call a local attorney most attorneys will do free consultations anyway thanks for watching and if you'd like to see more legal videos and more information about your rights click subscribe to the Nicholas Greene YouTube channel and if you ever have a traffic or criminal matter go to virginia call us for a free consultation thanks for watching

Channel: NicholsGreen

Views: 456,496

Keywords: Traffic attorney, Virginia Traffic Attorney, speeding ticket defenses, how to beat a speeding ticket, traffic court, speeding ticket, beat speeding ticket

Id: b0URuTLH93k

Length: 21min 56sec (1316 seconds)

Published: Fri May 27 2016