On May 9, 7:49 am, David Chesler <ches...@post.harvard.edu> wrote:
> I've won two traffic hearings on what a magistrate called "a
> technicality" -- my first question to the cop was "Do you recall the
> events of that day." When he said he didn't, I asked for the ticket to
> be dismissed because I wouldn't be able to question him.
That wouldn't fly in MD. I also suspect it wouldn't fly in MA if you had had a magistrate who was a competent lawyer; many of the traffic ticket courts are run in some states by officials who need not even be lawyers and thus may have no idea what is permitted and what isn't by way of hearsay evidence. Maybe he just liked you that day.
The cop should have been permitted to testify from his notes even if he had no present recollection of the day he ticketed you, since I doubt cops in MA have any better memory cells in their brains than do cops, or civilians, anywhere else. Otherwise, if word gets around (as I'm sure you will help it do), you may have just discovered the "magic words" that will get virtually every MA traffic ticket dismissed; the cops may as well not even bother to write them up any more, since they will be wasting their time. But IMO it's more likely you got a dumb and/or driver-friendly judge that day.
> (In the most recent case, I was going to ask him first why he checked
> "warning" but then put a fine amount;
The answer to that is easy. Something about your manner probably made him change his mind and issue a violation ticket instead of just a warning ticket. Frankly, he doesn't need a reason; it could have just been a slip of the pen first time around when he checked "warning", and that does not invalidate your ticket.
> then I was going to ask him if he
> had actually observed me driving.
"Observed" could mean "saw", but it can also mean "heard", or "smelled", or "tasted", or "felt" (physically, not psychologically) e.g. if you were sticking what felt like a gun in a witness's back and said "stick em up", he could testify to that even if he never saw the gun.
> He had been running radar in the
> opposite direction, and I was trying to improve my driving per a Bob
> Bondurant book by taking advantage of the fact that the 4 lane road was
> down to 2 lanes with raised manholes, and I was practicing quick
> reactions.
What, you were running a slalom around the manholes like on a Gymkhana racecourse? If you were planning to actually testify to that, IMO you were lucky the case got dismissed before you said that. Sounds like reckless driving to me, if it's on an open public street.
> At the scene he said "For your tires to squeal like that you
> must have been speeding."
In MD he wouldn't even have to do that; it is against the law to drive on a public road in such a manner as to cause your tires to squeal, whether due to speed or to rapid turning, and you would most likely be ticketed for violating that statute.
> A later question might have been if it was
> his expert testimony that it was impossible for tires to squeal at
> speeds under the 35mph posted limit.
You probably would have had him there, since it is not raw speed per se, but rather sufficient acceleration (or deceleration) to cause the tires to lose traction (sideways or straight ahead), that causes squeal. A dragster doing a burnout at the Xmas tree is going zero mph initially while laying rubber on the road and making lots of noise but is accelerating at very high initial G's from that standing start. In fact even the dragster is probably burning more rubber below 35 mph than he is once his slingshot gets above that speed and his tires have better traction.
> The earlier case had to do with an
> exit ramp in the toll plaza for the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge which
> allowed one to exit and enter and bypass some of the queue. It was
> signed "No re-entrance" which is factually false, but in any case I
> exited and drove around the block.
There's a "no re-entry northbound" sign at a freeway exit near here leading to a suburban development that only has an exit ramp for northbound traffic, and an entrance ramp on the southbound side. Folks living in that development who want to get in their cars and go north have to go to the other end of the development to find a freeway on-ramp that gets them onto the northbound lanes of the freeway. If you don't live there and get off anyway, you can get back on in the opposite direction, or you have to drive thru the neighborhood to find another northbound on-ramp. IMO that sign doesn't mean that re-entrance northbound at that location is prohibited, rather it means that re-entrance northbound at that location (if you want to do so, and exit in disregard of the sign) is impossible (without driving around on local streets to find another entrance). If I read your post right, your situation was the same.
> The cop asked why, and I was going
> to ask why he asked why, since apparently there was a right answer that
> would have spared me a ticket, so therefore the ambiguous sign did not
> prohibit re-entry.
IMO you don't need such a convoluted argument to get to the point that the sign was informative rather than prohibatory in its purpose.
> A comparable sign in Ft. Lee, NJ, before the George
> Washington Bridge doesn't prohibit re-entry, but does warn that you'll
> be driving on local streets for about a mile before finding the entrance
> which is further away from the bridge than the exit.)
Right. IMO you could argue, all that the signs (both of them) were saying is, "Warning! This is not a complete 4-way cloverleaf allowing re-entrance in any direction but only a partial interchange, so if you get off here, you can't get back on going the same direction and resume your journey." The sign was posted for information purposes, to assist drivers who may otherwise be getting off in an area where they aren't able to re-access the thruway without navigating local roads for awhile, rather than as a prohibition on re-entry for those who had no business in the neighborhood other than to drive around the block.
Also IMO you may just have run up against a stupid cop. Unless, of course, you are leaving something out about the physical arrangement of this interchange, and the authorities were purposely instructed to crack down on a known problem of drivers like yourself taking an unapproved "short cut" to, as you said, avoid the queue, thereby messing up traffic for the responsible drivers who were waiting in the queue and taking their turn.
Or not. I'm not one of those guys who likes to wait in a slow-moving or stopped line of traffic like a lemming if there is a perfectly usable, unoccupied lane adjacent, that would allow me to gain some distance before having to merge back into the waiting line. But only if that can be done legally, of course; the dividing line between "commuting smart" and "driving like a maniac" is very fact-specific and depends on the actual arrangement and signage of the lanes in question as well as local law. If a cop thinks you are on the wrong side of that line, you will be ticketed. And if a judge agrees, you will be convicted.
So you lucked out both times, David.
--
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