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Originally Posted by Cowboy89
Also further to Ken's "Don't fight the ticket if it's justified comment" the reason why you should fight is to remove the complacency from cops who catch people doing 8km/h over while hiding between pillars in a police motorcycle underneath Beddington Trail on Harvest Hills Blvd.
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Ok, if you get a ticket for 8 km/h over on Deerfoot, then by all means fight it. I guess to clarify my position; I hate the fact that for me to fight a ticket costs me a day's wages- so I may as well just pay the dang thing. The reason it takes so long is because so many people fight the tickets. I also see this as part of a problem on the part of the Crown; they seem to be far to willing to deal just because somebody asks. It's like when I worked in a restaurant and we adopted a policy that any meal complaint meant a free meal. Within a little while we were giving away as much as we were selling; because the word got out.
My last ticket was 66 in a 50 zone. (non-residential.) I could have sworn it used to be a 60 zone, but didn't fight it. Mostly because I realized that technically I was in the wrong. That ticket was 6 years ago.
As for the comments about quotas; I find that hard to believe because most times I get pulled over I can talk my way out of the ticket. And don't get me wrong; I speed. I speed a
lot. I just don't get caught. Not by using anything like a radar detector, but I make sure that when speeding I am being extra careful. Other than one multinova; I'm doing quite well with that.
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Maybe if they were expected to justify themselves in front of a judge everytime they issued a ticket they would think twice about what they're pulling people over for.
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Are you suggesting that we should have fewer police on the roads? There's already too many idiots on the road, if every ticket came with a court appearance, that would increase the time spent on a ticket from 15-30 minutes to a few hours. The flip side would be to pay for the extra officers we could raise the fines, but then we'd be talking about $600 for doing 15 over the limit. Would that be better?
Yep, getting tickets sucks. I know I was a little choked when I opened the mail and saw a picture of my car speeding alone. And it hurt a bit when I paid it.
Here's some more food for thought- what happens when the system gets so badly abused that we ar eno longer given the option to fight tickets? Think that can't happen? Well, there are caps on personal injury claims now because that was also being abused. It could happen with things like traffic tickets.
Once again, I'm not saying to never fight a ticket. Your 8 km/h example is one of a cop not following the spirit of the law. But not every ticket needs to be faught.