For example, you may want to challenge the speeding allegation if you, the alleged offender, were not driving the car at the time. This may be because the car in question is a company-owned vehicle and you were not driving it, or you may simply disagree with the speed alleged. The first of these is to plead Guilty with Mitigating Circumstances. In doing so, you will have the opportunity to explain why you were driving above the speed limit and give information regarding your personal circumstances.
The information you provide will be used in court, and it may convince the magistrate to reduce your punishment. Alternatively, you can choose to plead Not Guilty. If you do this, a hearing date will be arranged and you will have the opportunity to put forward your defence and call any witnesses who are able to give evidence on your behalf at the court hearing. Ahead of your Trial, you have the right to ask the police for evidence relating to the speeding offence, such as copies of photographs if your alleged offence was caught on a speed camera.
This is useful for a number of reasons. If the offence was captured by a device such as a radar gun or a police car speedometer, you may request a record of this evidence too. During the trial, the prosecution must prove that you were the driver of the vehicle when the offence allegedly happened, and that you were driving above the speed limit at that particular time.
You can also expect to have between three and six penalty points added to your licence. If you were driving at more than 30mph over the permitted limit, you could even be disqualified altogether. Getting a speeding ticket is an inconvenience we can all do without.
Alternatively, you can get legal advice straight away with our use our on-line tool. Call us for free on Driving offences How do I contest a speeding ticket? Have you received a speeding ticket? Show Up in Court and Get Lucky Although there's not much actual strategy involved, drivers sometimes beat tickets in court just by showing up. Challenge the Officer's Subjective Conclusion With some traffic violations, it comes down to whether the officer's subjective conclusion is reasonable.
Challenge the Officer's Observations With many types of violations, the accuracy of the officer's observations is key. Show Your Violation Resulted From a "Mistake of Fact" Judges often give some leeway with regard to circumstances beyond a driver's control.
Show the Violation Was Necessary to Avoid a Greater Harm Emergencies—not of your own making—can justify a violation under the "necessity" defense.
In case it isn't obvious, a legitimate necessity defense doesn't come up very often. Talk to a Lawyer Need a lawyer? Start here. Practice Area Please select Zip Code. How it Works Briefly tell us about your case Provide your contact information Choose attorneys to contact you. Driving Laws. Traffic Tickets. Gather evidence. Evidence could include dashcam video or GPS data from a smartphone app, or photographic evidence that a speed limit sign was obscured.
Research speed equipment. Look up the method the officer used to clock your speed, note its weaknesses and prepare to present them. Instruction manuals include maintenance schedules you can question the officer about, and they may note radar gun weaknesses, for example.
Make witness arrangements. You can call in witnesses, including any passengers in the car when the ticket was issued. Plan your questions. You can question the issuing officer, including about his or her memory and training with speed-clocking equipment.
These lawyers typically specialize in DUIs and more serious cases, but some take speeding ticket cases. Considering the costs, hiring a lawyer is likely worth the money if your ticket is particularly expensive or could result in the loss of your license.
In some areas, you must request mitigation in writing. Typically in mitigation, you admit to the offense and present information that would lead a judge to grant you leniency. For example, if you get cited for speeding, not knowing the speed limit generally isn't a valid defense. It doesn't happen very often, but there are instances where a driver might need to violate a traffic law to avoid greater harm. When this happens, a driver might be able to beat a ticket using the "legal necessity" defense.
The key here is to convince the judge or jury that you were forced to violate the law in order to avoid a serious and immediate danger to yourself or others. For example, suppose you swerved across a double yellow line to avoid hitting a pedestrian who jumped into the road all of a sudden. You broke the law by crossing the double yellow line, but you did so to avoid harming the pedestrian. In such a case, the legal necessity defense might do the trick. Suppose you decide you don't have much of a defense.
For example, you ran a stop sign right in front of an officer or were caught doing 90 miles per hour on the freeway by an officer who paced you drove behind you at the same speed for two miles. Obviously, the attractiveness of traffic school goes up as your chances of beating the ticket in court go down.
But what should you do if you aren't eligible for traffic school? Automatically pay the ticket? When you appear for a traffic trial and the officer is a no show, the judge will typically dismiss the citation—meaning you win the case and don't have to pay the fine or worry about the violation going on your record.
Also, explaining the reason you violated the law like "I didn't see the stop" isn't usually going to get you very far. The information provided on this site is not legal advice, does not constitute a lawyer referral service, and no attorney-client or confidential relationship is or will be formed by use of the site.
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