Traffic Court is Purgatory
Sep. 26th, 2003 01:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chickenI had a speeding ticket in July. I was driving on Bristol Ferry Road in Portsmouth, a highway-like road on which everyone seems to go at least 65. In fact, when I got the ticket, people were zooming by me.
The officer said I was going 45 in a 35 mph zone.
Needless to say I was quite surprised, not having seen a speed limit sign. But oh well.
So today I went to the traffic court to plead for a dismissal under the good driving record statute.
(If you have not had a moving violation in the last three years, you get this one "go", and then have to wait another three years from that date to use your good driving record "go" again.)
First off, I don't see why the police department makes everyone stand in front of a judge to do this. Can't they just look up your record and give you a dismissal through the mail? About 90% of the people there today were in this category, like me.
So I was there from 8:30 AM until almost 11:00 AM. And they didn't even get to the East Bay offenders (Portsmouth) until around 10:00 AM.
I don't mind driving all the way to Wakefield to go to traffic court if it were really necessary (it on the opposite side of the bay from Portsmouth and 45 minutes from Providence when driving the speed limit).
But it didn't seem necessary when they should be able to look this stuff up for themselves, and when they could have given us an extra hour of sleep.
Plus, the benches were hard and they wouldn't let us read while we waited. Purgatory. This is the real punishment for speeding. Sitting on hard benches, waking up earlier than ever, and having to wait for over 2 hours to be processed.
Whine whine whine. I realize this is all really needless whining. But surely the system could be reformed a bit.
The officer said I was going 45 in a 35 mph zone.
Needless to say I was quite surprised, not having seen a speed limit sign. But oh well.
So today I went to the traffic court to plead for a dismissal under the good driving record statute.
(If you have not had a moving violation in the last three years, you get this one "go", and then have to wait another three years from that date to use your good driving record "go" again.)
First off, I don't see why the police department makes everyone stand in front of a judge to do this. Can't they just look up your record and give you a dismissal through the mail? About 90% of the people there today were in this category, like me.
So I was there from 8:30 AM until almost 11:00 AM. And they didn't even get to the East Bay offenders (Portsmouth) until around 10:00 AM.
I don't mind driving all the way to Wakefield to go to traffic court if it were really necessary (it on the opposite side of the bay from Portsmouth and 45 minutes from Providence when driving the speed limit).
But it didn't seem necessary when they should be able to look this stuff up for themselves, and when they could have given us an extra hour of sleep.
Plus, the benches were hard and they wouldn't let us read while we waited. Purgatory. This is the real punishment for speeding. Sitting on hard benches, waking up earlier than ever, and having to wait for over 2 hours to be processed.
Whine whine whine. I realize this is all really needless whining. But surely the system could be reformed a bit.