The low cost of defending drivers in traffic courts have increased and
slowed down the traffic court system. This has allowed more bad drivers to
continue to drive legally in California. Until recently when the Miami
law firm called Ticket Clinic moved to Los Angeles to take on the
8,000 traffic tickets per day. The amount of contestors will double
over the years with advertising and on technicalities more bad drivers
will get their penaly reduced and worse bad drivers will be given another
chance. The amount of defendants contesting their traffic violations
is double the norm for the U.S. in Miami where this law firm comes
from. They have a McDonald principle of marketing where they charge $69.00 to $99.00 per ticket and get hundreds of people who have a need to take a change. They are 85%-90% effective in getting most people off. In Florida they are 100% effective.

This is why we need legislation to make traffic infractions contestation not be by attorneys like in the Small Claims Court. Please review the research cited below and or email me for a copy.

See “Minor Crimes and Massive Waste”
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF CRIMINAL DEFENSE LAWYERS
April 2009

Over at Slate, “Traffic” author Tom Vanderbilt asks, “What do Timothy
McVeigh, Ted Bundy, David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz, and 9/11 ring-leader
Mohammed Atta have in common?”

Yes, they’re all murderers. But Vanderbilt also points out that they
were brought to police attention by “routine” traffic violations.

The point? Traffic tickets are good for you, America, Vanderbilt
argues very convincingly. And they’re not just effective at netting
madmen, he writes in “In Praise of Traffic Tickets.” They’re good for
you in more ways than you think.

In the U.S., where the car is the dominant mode of transportation, he
writes, “most crimes involve driving. But another factor is that
people with off-road criminal records have been shown, in a number of
studies, to commit more on-road violations.”

Of course, there are also the otherwise law-abiding citizens who flout
traffic laws. Vanderbilt laments the nation’s long-standing tendency
to consider traffic violations “folk crimes” instead of real crimes.

“The consequences of not issuing tickets were shown in a recent study
of traffic violations in New York City. From 2001 to 2006, the number
of fatalities in which speeding was implicated rose 11 percent. During
the same period, the number of speeding summons issued by the NYPD
dropped 11 percent. Similarly, summonses for red-light-running
violations dropped 13 percent between 2006 and 2008, even as the
number of crashes increased. As an alternative approach, consider
France, where the dangerous driver is as storied a cliche as a beret
on the head and a baguette under the arm. As the ITE Journal notes,
since 2000, France has reduced its road fatality rate by an incredible
43 percent. Instrumental in that reduction has been a roll-out of
automated speed cameras and a toughening of penalties. For example,
negligent driving resulting in a death, which often results in little
punishment in the United States, carries a penalty of five years in
prison and a 75,000-euro fine.”

Traffic Court defense lawyers are increasing the “bad drivers” getting off and doing it for lower and lower fees in an effort to extort the Traffic Court by threatening trials. You should not be able to have a lawyer represent you in traffic court (infractions)just like Small Claims Court. This would stop the 85% effective results the traffic law attorneys are getting in California doing this.

He wants a list of technical definitions, tell him to gimme a call! ubrayj02@yahoo.com

There could also be a requirement of traffic calming check off in some form or another. . . but that is really the next step . . .

For the most part, City Transportation Depts. overlook or appear to be afraid to apply the existing allowable speed reductions: A “penalty of perjury” check off gives an engineer an incentive to carefully survey conditions, and justify why any such were not used to lower speed limits.