American playwright Tennessee Williams said, “Time is the longest distance between two places,” and that is especially true when you are trying to traverse the roads of Broward County.  Between working, school, kids’ soccer games, and everyday errands, most people manage to lead very busy lives.  It’s easy to see how trying to knock out the next thing on your agenda can lead to a speeding ticket.  You have things to do and there are obstacles that stand between you and accomplishing your daily routine.  Then it happens – you see the blue lights flashing as a police cruiser eases in behind you.  Now you are going to be really late.  Cops don’t seem to be in any particular hurry to get you back on the road once they pull you over, and that is only the beginning.

If you have ever been to traffic court in Broward County, you know that it can be a lengthy ordeal.  Just like going to the Department of Motor Vehicles to register your car or getting your driver’s license renewed, you can count on a lot of standing or sitting around waiting for the system to work – at roughly a snail’s pace.  It seems like it should be an easy enough process, but whenever you deal with any type of bureaucracy, you can forget about your time being of value to anyone involved except yourself, and of course, your traffic ticket attorney.  This is just one of the many reasons why it is always important to retain one.  If, however, you do choose to contest your speeding ticket in traffic court yourself, you need to be well-prepared if you hope to be successful.

Obviously defending your speeding ticket yourself is going to demand more of your time than just your appearance at the Broward County courthouse.  First you will need to do some research by going over your ticket with a fine-toothed comb to see if there are any inconsistencies in how the ticket was written.  Police officers do make mistakes, but finding these errors is not always an easy task.  Often, the average person will not be able to determine whether a ticket is written to the letter of the law because they don’t have any education or training in traffic law.

Something else that you should consider is whether or not the cop who pulled you over has a history of repetitive negative behavior such as writing bogus tickets, not showing up in court, or similar actions.   Any one of these things can help to get the ticket dismissed.  This is going to be more of a challenge because it is quite unlikely that you have experience in dealing with the cop previously.  Many times this is one area where a traffic ticket attorney can really come in handy.  Just like the rest of us, police officers can be creatures of habit.  There are some cops who write tickets frequently – usually the same type of tickets over and over – and then there are others who tend to be more lenient.  Since it’s our job as traffic ticket attorneys to be in court daily to deal with all types of traffic tickets, we become quite familiar with those police officers who write a lot of them.  This day-to-day experience also helps us to gauge whether or not he is likely to show up.  If he’s a no-show, the judge may be inclined to dismiss the speeding ticket.  Of course, you won’t know that until after you have spent time researching the ticket, taking time off of work or school, and standing around for however long it takes until your case is called.

Once your case is called, you can and should make an appeal to the judge to dismiss or reduce your speeding ticket.  There are various factors that will effect whether or not the judge will agree to your request.  Your attitude and “presence” are two of those considerations.  If you go to court dressed badly or behaving in a less than professional manner, this can have an impact on how the judge perceives you and whether or not he thinks you are taking the speeding violation seriously.

Just like there are cops who love to write speeding tickets, there are also traffic court judges who have very little empathy for people who appear before them.  You will have to spend some time trying to come up with a defense strategy that will appeal to the judge.  For the most part, if you offer up a “reason” for violating a traffic law of any kind, the judge will just hear an “excuse.”  This is possibly because after listening to defendants all day long, you are probably not the first one to have offered up your particular explanation.  Granted, there may be an occasional set of circumstances that are unique, but that doesn’t happen very often.  This is another situation where a traffic ticket attorney is beneficial to you.  Just like with being familiar with a lot of the police officers, we work extensively with Broward County judges.  We learn their various personalities and how best to approach them in asking for a dismissal or a penalty reduction.

But wait!  There’s more.  You may be able to choose the option of going to traffic school, but that can cost you another day out of your life.  Some classes are four hours, but others are all day long.  You get to sit there and listen to someone drone on for hours about things you probably already know, and like many types of traffic tickets, the fact that you attended traffic school stays on your driving record.  All that fun and you still get to pay for the class, the fine, and the court costs which will end up costing you hundreds of dollars. When someone chooses to fight their speeding ticket, they seldom are aware of all of the work and preparation that goes in to it.  They often think that it is going to save them money to do it themselves instead of hiring a traffic ticket attorney, but they usually don’t think about the value of time.  The process of fighting a traffic ticket can be extensive and expensive, so anyone who thinks about doing so needs to consider all of the angles before engaging in such an undertaking.  Call the Traffic Ticket Team at 954-967-9888 for a fee consultation.  We will be happy to discuss all of the options available to you so you can make an informed decision about how to proceed in fighting your speeding ticket.