verslibre wrote:$200 for speeding? Not in Californi-ayyy!
Over here, ANY traffic violation that does not involve speeding is now $238. That's right. I made a left-hand turn (followed a bunch of other cars) into a parking lot and whammo! The cops were there with a really convenient, no-effort sting operation. They ambushed every one of us with a $238 ticket. They wrote dozens of them, no doubt. The two officers easily made their quotas for the month. I asked the cop to cut me a break, I can't afford it, blah blah blah. No dice. There is NO left hand turn sign posted on the opposite side of the street. They fucked all of us in the ass because it's "a school zone." It turned out somebody almost hit a kid, so they decided to make a bunch of us pay for it. A 10MPH left-hand turn (that I've made many times over a period of three years) cost me $238. I've never seen the cops there again because they knew it wouldn't work twice.
And forget fighting it. The judge won't throw it out. Not here, anyway.
Speeding violations start in the neighborhood of $400-odd dollars. MINIMUM. We're fucked!!!
Fuck that. Here in Pennsylvania, the most common ticket is "Failure to Obey Traffic Control Device." It's $111 out the door, including all fees and costs, and has no points. Ok, maybe not the most common, but it's always what I plead my speeding tickets down to
They get their money, I don't get any points and everyone "wins."
That speed trap I originally posted is in New York, about 10 minutes north of me (I live a 30 second walk from the border) They have that blatant bullshit speed trap and others like it AND they fuck you just about as hard as California does. They won't plead anything down either, because their sole purpose for even having that 40mph zone on a 4 lane is for revenue. There hasn't been a single time I've driven through it and someone wasn't pulled over. Usually Ontario plates or otherwise people not from the area, as the signage saying that it's a 40mph zone really sucks.
But don't worry, it's for safety! It's dangerous to go 55mph in a 4 lane in the middle of nowhere. Save that 55mph driving for the windy 2 lane part of Rt. 219 just a few minutes past it! It gets you by all the houses faster, thus creating a safer environment.
I'm so fucking glad that the mouthbreather Ralph Bottone slipped up and admitted in public that it's purely a revenue trap. Some attorneys in the area are looking into what can be done about it.