OT: American rules of the road

[Taxed and Spent]

but you might not get an increase.

[James Wilkinson]

Are your cloverleafs different? This is one of ours, I see nowhere where people are exiting and entering at the same point.

[bobm3]

While we're on the topic I'll add my own experience(s): Our state (CT) spent a zillion dollars last year to upgrade their computer system(s). As one would expect from such an agency, it was a fiasco and now, over a year later, its still quite a mess.

At the main headquarters office my usual wait for service (usually approx 30 mins) was now in excess of 3 hours. But the cake was that I was stopped by a St trooper who informed me that my registration had expired. Our is a multi-year and I pesonally remember renewing it and had papers to prove it. His answer was to tell the DMV. Well I did and was informed that I still HAD to pay it, including having the emissions testing redone ($$) and IF the state ever determine that they were wrong I would get a refund. Kind of makes citizens fume, correct. A couple of months later my daughter received the same mention and had to do the testing and renewal as well. Ain't government just grand?

I know there's nothing anyone can do about this but why is it almost predictable that big government will pay zillions of dollars and always get a defective software system.

Just venting.

[Wade Garrett]

Don't blame you a bit!

[James Wilkinson]

And I thought the UK system sucked.

[Meanie]

The state most likely realized they wasted their (our) money on a debunked system and charging everyone twice was a way to gain some of it back.

They're all crooked.

[gfretwell]

Dunno, This is a cloverleaf and in the center where you have a steady line of cars coming up the ramp from one side and cars going down the ramp on the other a well disciplined zipper merge keeps them all going pretty fast. In the DC beltway some of these were built pretty tight because of land availability and it may only be a hundred meters of merge space between the on and the off ramp. At 100 km/h that goes by pretty fast.

[gfretwell]

There are scanners on toll roads to implement "toll by plate" but for the purposes of enforcing registration violations it is the scanner on the police car that is of the most utility. The toll collection company will just send a bill to the last owner of record, no matter how old the tag is. The cop with the scanner on his fender can pull you over right then. I do not see many scanner equipped cars but I see one occasionally. I have received "toll by plate" bills for a car that was not mine. One phone call did make it go away but if this was a surveillance operation I would be reported in a place that I was not with no recourse until I was a defendant.

[AL]

The police car scanner is much more than a license plate tax collection device. It can also bring up felony warrants, stolen cars (and plates), missing persons, etc. And if hooked to the national database can be very effective.

In my state all but a few serious traffic violations (drunk, reckless, hit & run, etc.) are civil in nature. So if you get one in the mail from a radar/scanner device and don't pay they have to serve you before they can proceed further. So if you don't answer your door you can beat it. Not so with a cop issued ticket where you are served when you sign the ticket.

I once made the mistake of not notifying the state when I sold a car. When the new owner didn't transfer the registration, I started getting his parking tickets. I quickly notified the state but just paid the parking tickets as it was less hassle than going to court.

[gfretwell]

The problem is they start adding penalties as soon as it is due and you can be in a lot of (financial) trouble before they finally get around to coming after you. The toll by plate already adds a $4-5 "administrative fee" just because you did not buy a transponder and there are no toll booths to pay as you go. That quarter it cost to go over the bridge suddenly becomes five bucks. If you don't pay right away that number continues to climb. You get billed for every time that process server knocks on your door. If it gets to the (failure to appear) "warrant" phase, it can easily be more than $200 plus whatever the court fees are and you might end up in cuffs with your car impounded adding another $100+ bill.

[AL]

Note I said "in my state" (above). It always depends on the law in

*your* jurisdiction.

And I'm not talking about beating tolls. I've never had that problem since there are no toll lanes/roads in my state.

[gfretwell]

Civil law is fairly uniform in that regard. The speed cameras and red light cameras are just like the toll by plate. It is a private contractor but they are working with the force of the state behind them. In any case, ignoring the bill can get expensive in a hurry. It is all about the money and more money is the penalty until you get to the failure to appear warrant stage. Then you have insulted a judge and that never works out well.

[AL]

Apparently not from what you say your state does.

Here's how the game is played in my state:

So far all the people I know who have done this have succeeded including a cop who got the ticket off duty in his personal car.

[gfretwell]

We went another way and these photo ticket machines are banned in most of the state. I suppose if you want to live your life dodging a process server it might be fine, assuming you are not in Scottdale (which pretty much says it is not state law)

[Ed Pawlowski]

Best defense I saw was a guy ticketed for 139 mph. His defense was the car is rated with a top speed of 134 mph. Guilty anyway.

[AL]

You don't have to dodge the process server for life, only 120 days.

From the link: "if you manage to dodge the server, the ticket will disappear from the system 120 days after it went in."

Scottsdale still has to get you in 120 days. And according to the link

2/3 of the ticket dodgers still weren't served (and thus beat it).

Speed laws can be either state, county, or city. But it makes no difference which speed law was cited on your radar ticket since the 120 day service rule is a state law and thus must be followed by all AZ jurisdictions.

[gfretwell]

After each ticket.

But the article said Scottsdale is getting a judge allowing simply tacking it on the door if they demonstrate that 3 services were not successful. I really don't care because I think camera tickets are questionable at best and they have been largely abandoned here. The toll by plate is a growing industry tho. The thought was toll roads were a way to get tourists to pay their way and they seem to be everywhere in the "blue" areas. I don't have that many toll facilities here and not nearly enough to justify a transponder but when I am up in the Tampa Bay area visiting I get slammed.

[AL]

I think that was to scare the public into paying. Because 5 trips (3 attempts, once to court, once more to tack on the door) isn't really a very efficient way to collect on one ticket. But publicize that and many who thought about cheating may decide not to.

Cameras were gone here for years. They went away because of a legal problem. The legislature finally fixed it so they are now making a comeback. IMO they can be effective if used where actually needed and not just for revenue generator. People definitely get halos when they know there's a camera about.

We fleece our tourists with high hotel and rental car taxes. But then CA does the same thing to me when I vacation there. (There are so many of us over there that they have a name for us...Zonies.)

[Ed Pawlowski]

Perhaps it is time to look into it again. I pay a service fee of $1 a month for the transponder. It saves a lot of time and some money even though I don't use toll roads often. Cheaper than paying the service fee for the "mail a bill" method some states use.

[gfretwell]

We have pretty good sized hotel taxes too but it makes up for no state income tax.