My Dumbest Traffic Ticket

Started off my day today by getting the world's dumbest traffic ticket.  I got a ticket for "improper position making a right turn".  Huh?  The cop pulled me over, and asked me if I knew why he was pulling me over, and I said "I have no idea".  At the previous intersection, the two lane road has a very brief dedicated right turn lane.  The officer argued that I did not get all the way over into that lane before I turned right.  You have got to be kidding me - he must be behind in his quota for this month.  Ironically, he issued me the ticket while I was sitting in the very parking lot that my car was broken into 3 months earlier, a crime the police did not lift a finger to investigate.

Look, I am no virgin here.  You could probably nail me for speeding on any given day.  But "improper position making a right turn??"

8 Comments

  1. Brad Warbiany:

    I've been ticketed twice for "Illegal squealing of tires".

    I once got a fix-it ticket for "no license plate illumination light". I was seventeen or eighteen, cruising through sleepy Wheaton, Illinois on a saturday night, blasting Pink Floyd out my big stereo in my Ford Escort. I went past a known speed trap at the speed limit, got 300 yards past the cop, and he came out after me. Hassled me a little bit, and wrote me a fix-it ticket because the light above my license plate wasn't working. Utter BS, just looking for a reason to pull me over.

  2. Stephen VanDyke:

    I've had my share of speeding tickets too and know when I'm boned and when it's bullshit. My favorite bullshit ticket was one in L.A. for failure to yeild when making a left at a light. The kickers is that it was him I failed to yeild to (it was night and I couldn't tell). Of course, it was hard to swallow that load of crap since he was 700 or so feet away, but doing 80 in a 45 without his flashing lights on.

    I was belligerant on that one, nearly ended up going to jail because I asked to have the ticket transfered to the county seat right there and when he declined I wrote that fact below my signature. Apparently that is called "defacing a ticket," haha.

  3. Andy:

    I would just go to court to contest. High likelihood that they will either drop the ticket or offer a settlement...

  4. Matt Walters:

    Going to court seems to be the best way in most states. I've gotten out of a speeding ticket that way in the past.

    I think someone needs to do a proposition (in a state that has them) to raise the speed limit on all roads in a given state by 20mph. I don't understand why we put up with rediculously low speed limits when almost everyone speeds.

  5. Max Lybbert:

    If it makes you feel better, the Washington Post recently wrote about Supreme Court nominee Judge Roberts:

    "When Fielding asked him about a traffic court appearance noted in his schedule, Roberts wrote a one-page memo, saying he was cited in an accident for the 'laughable catch-all charge' of failure to devote full time and attention" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/19/AR2005081901609_pf.html look at the last paragraph).

  6. Traffic Tickets Ontario:

    Fight it! What was the statute you were charged under? Does the prosecution have to prove a someones safety was in jepordy?

    Thank You,
    ==========================================
    Randy J. Houlahan BSc.
    Road Warriors Traffic Ticket Services
    http://www.roadwarriors.ca

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