It doesn’t take long for vehicles traveling north on South Memorial Drive from 61st Street to get moving.

Cresting a small hill and urged along by a four-lane road with no stop lights for a mile, the 40 mph speed limit can come quick.

Vehicles on that road travel at speeds that easily average 50 mph, said one woman who works on South Memorial Drive. “I see excessive speed. I see drag racing,” said the worker, who asked not to be identified. “They are coming down the hill and they just aren’t watching their speed.”

But someone is.

A six-block stretch of South Memorial Drive between 51st and 61st streets ranks as the No. 2 spot for Tulsa police to write speeding tickets during a four-year period ending in May. The 2,321 speed-related tickets written in that area are among the 100,000-plus speeding citations written by Tulsa police in the last four years.

The No. 2 ranking for South Memorial Drive is among the findings in a Tulsa World analysis of traffic citation data made available to the public by Tulsa police as part of a federal racial discrimination lawsuit involving the Black Officers Coalition.

The data, which dates to 2004, is maintained on the TPD Web site and includes information about thousands of citations issued by police, including the race and date of birth of those cited, as well as where the violation occurred. The analysis excludes speeding citations that resulted in an arrest.

But while that portion of Memorial Drive keeps police busy, anyone who has driven the Broken Arrow Expressway near downtown enough times has probably seen where police are the busiest. Nestled in the median between the 1300 and 1700 blocks of the expressway, police stake out the area and snare motorists exceeding the 55 mph speed limit. Over the past four years, the near-downtown stretch of the Broken Arrow Expressway ranks as the No. 1 area in the city for TPD speeding tickets, with 3,739 citations issued during the past four years.

Read the rest of this entry »

When and where in San Antonio are you most likely to get a speeding ticket? After analyzing thousands of speeding tickets given out in a six-month period, KSAT 12 found that Interstate 10 is a hot spot for getting speeding tickets.

“Every traffic shift has anywhere from 20 to 30 officers on it,” said Sgt. Gabe Trevino, with the San Antonio Police Department. There are three shifts each day.

According to the study, the No. 1 spot to get a ticket was on Interstate 10 and West Avenue. The third most likely spot to be ticketed is also on Interstate 10 at Fresno Street. The second most likely spot to receive a ticket is on Interstate 35 and Malone Avenue.

Most tickets are issued between 2:30 p.m. and 4 p.m.

According to Trevino, Officer Jason Aicher is the king of ticket-writers. “First of all, he’s a motorcycle officer,” said Trevino. Aicher wrote more than 1,300 tickets in six months. (That’s about 10 per work day!) He often watches school zones, and gave out 13 percents of the tickets he issued in those areas.

More tickets are issued at the end of each month, leading some drivers like John Rodriguez to believe there may be a quota. “It was toward the end of the month, meet the quota,” Rodriguez said.

Despite the study showing the greatest number of tickets being written during the last week of the month, police said there is no quota. “We don’t tell them, ‘You need to go write a certain amount of tickets every single day,’ [or] ‘At the end of the month we want to see a certain number of tickets,’” Trevino said. “That’s not the case.” Police say ticket quotas are illegal.

Still, police generate a significant amount of revenue from fines — including speeding tickets. In the year ending Sept. 30, the San Antonio Municipal Courts reported receiving more than $26 million from fines. Police, however, say money is not the motive. There have been more than 100 traffic deaths this year, and police said catching speeders saves lives.

Source: KSAT.com

This is just plain funny!  –  A man who had been pulled over and ticketed by police ran backward up and onto a Buffalo Grove squad car, apparently in his haste to drive off.

Henry Raskin, 70, of Niles had been pulled over by a Buffalo Grove (Illinois) officer on the 400 block of Dundee Road around 11:30 a.m. Friday for driving 58 mph in a 35 mph zone, Sgt. Scott Kristiansen said. The officer wrote the ticket and returned to the car, and Raskin got ready to drive away. Except he went flying backward.

“(He) apparently was going to pull away at a high rate of speed, but the only problem was that he was in reverse,” Kristiansen said. He said Raskin was not happy about getting a ticket. He said police are reviewing the squad car videotape to see what Raskin might also be charged with.

Raskin was taken to Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights as a precaution. Kristiansen said police don’t believe Raskin has any medical conditions that could have led to the crash. Raskin’s age also didn’t seem to play a factor, he said. The officer, a 20-year veteran of the Buffalo Grove department, was not injured, but his car will be out of service for a while. “He ended up with the left rear wheel of the car coming through his windshield, about 6 inches from his face,” Kristiansen said. “Luckily, he was not injured.” The squad car suffered significant damage to the front end, including the windshield and the hood.

Kristiansen said the police investigation so far shows the officer initiated the traffic stop properly. He said officers are trained to treat every stop as if it isn’t a routine procedure so that they are aware when unexpected circumstances like this one take place. “The officer stopped the car properly and positioned himself properly,” he said.

The traffic ticket industry relies on people not having enough time to fight their tickets. Going to court, often multiple times, can be a burden on even the most motivated ticket fighters.

Because of the amount of time a traffic ticket case requires, we’re often asked if there is any way to fight a traffic ticket without the hassle of driving to the courthouse. The good news is that in certain states, through something called “trial by declaration” or “trial by affidavit,” it’s possible. The bad news is that those states are in the minority.

Trial by declaration allows a defendant to state their case in writing, send it to the judge, and have the judge make a decision based on the facts presented in the letter.

Although this may sound appealing, there are few things to consider before fighting a traffic ticket in this way:

1. 1. When you fight your traffic ticket using trial by declaration, you give up the right to directly ask the officer questions.
   2. Any chance of dismissal due to the absence of the ticketing officer disappears.
   3. Because you’re not there in person it becomes much easier for the judge to find you guilty — all it takes is a rubber stamp.
   4. In some states you give up your right to a regular trial when opting for trial by declaration.
   5. As mentioned previously, it’s not available in the vast majority of states.

States where trial by declaration is not allowed include:

Read the rest of this entry »

RENO, NV – It seems kind of unusual. A local man caught for speeding is sent to jail. Police claim he committed a crime, but he says it was all a misunderstanding.

38-year-old father and business owner, Anthony Buck is not your typical criminal. “I don’t speed very often. My brother always calls me the old lady, you know, ’cause I don’t go very fast,” said Buck. But on Monday, Buck was driving 40 miles per hour down Dixon Lane in South Reno. It’s a 25 miles per hour zone and he admit that he was speeding. But when he got pulled over, he says he gave the officers his license and registration, but couldn’t find his insurance card.

“My kids, one of their little chores to clean out my car and they put stuff everywhere. I know I had it and I said ‘can I have a minute to look for my insurance?” Buck says the officer then wrote him a ticket for not having insurance, which he refused to sign, because he thought that meant he was admitting guilt. He says that’s when the officer arrested him. “He spread my legs, handcuffed me, put me on the curb,” said Buck. Sent to jail, over a speeding ticket. Police say it’s extremely rare, but unfortunately, Buck technically, did break the law.

“In the state of Nevada, traffic charges are misdemeanor offenses, so whereas in California, you might have an infraction that isn’t arrest worthy, in the state of Nevada, they are misdemeanors or crimes,” said Lieutenant Dave Evans with the Reno Police Department Traffic Division. Police say under Reno city code, you must have proof of insurance with you in the car at all times…and if you get pulled over, by law, you must sign the ticket. “The ticket itself is just merely a summons. It’s not an admission of guilt. It’s just saying you promise to appear in court,” explained Evans.

Read the rest of this entry »