Obedient revolution

I get at least one new client every month who has fought their speeding ticket all the way from city traffic court until it ends up accused as a state court misdemeanor. Unless there were two nuns in the car with you, willing to swear that you were following both the letter and the spirit of the law, I consider this really stupid. The cheapest and easiest way to deal with a traffic ticket is to pay the damn thing and be done with it. If you take it to trial, you will have an angry jury who can’t believe that you’re wasting their time because they all know that you were speeding. Because everyone does. They do, too, and when they’re caught, they pay up. That’s exactly what the system is counting on, and that’s why your opportunity to be a rebel was before you drove too fast.

Forget those emails telling us to show the oil companies who’s boss (they are) by not buying gas for a whole day. If you really want to stick it to the man, start following every traffic law to the letter. Anyone who’s ever driven down county roads and state highways on the way to the beach knows that local communities rely on traffic violations as a major source of revenue. The more I work in the law, the more I see this in action. I never really believed the stories about quotas until I became a public defender, but now I can safely say that Atlanta police do operate under a quota system, and not just for traffic citations, but for actual arrests. Going out and fighting dangerous criminals, solving old cases, etc– good TV material, bad way to get promoted. The cops are judged by the number of arrests and tickets, at least in the beginning of their career.

There are more people with an interest here than you can imagine. By the time someone gets to court and is willing to plead guilty, there is the fine, there are surcharges for various funds, and there’s often a hike in insurance rates. If you have to take a defensive driving class, that costs money, too. If you can’t afford to pay it all at once, probation gets monthly fees for handling you– and in Fulton County, misdemeanor probation is a for-profit company, reputedly owned by former cops.

So why should this bother you? For the same reason it bothers me; a large portion of society relies on these fines, yet it also criminalizes them. I find that galling. A group of Georgia Tech students infamously decided to prove a point about interstate speed limits in the city by driving 55 mph during rush hour on I-285. They made the news: helicopter cameras showed the line of commuters stretched out behind them as they drove abreast as fast as the law would allow. I’d like to take it a step further. I’d like to see everyone obey every traffic law for a solid month– minimum. I’d like to force law enforcement and the courts and insurance companies and everyone else who has an interest in these fines, to drop the pretense, drop the charade that this is criminal behavior that should be stopped. I want it acknowledged that we need people to violate this law because of the way that we have chosen to enforce it.

As for the alternative, I think something akin to a “cuss jar” would work fine. Go this fast, pay this much. If that sounds like the same thing to you, it isn’t. A speed tax would be critically different from a traffic citation in that there’s no criminal act involved. You aren’t subject to a search of your car. You aren’t subject to being hauled in and jailed. You don’t get a record. And bottom line, you aren’t labeled a criminal, a bad member of society, for doing something that society relies on.