Correcting my email address

... 'nuff said ..

John T.

Maryland has always been good at turning minor traffic offenses into cash. I am not surprised they were diligent in tracking you down. It is one of the reasons I left. "Traffic" is not about safety there. It is all about revenue.

Speed cameras are illegal here. So are red light cameras.

Tracking me down for the ticket was easy, the camera clearly shows my Md. license plate

I was expressing surprise they emailed me at the right address. Well, I might have given them the correct address when I renewed the registration, and it might have been the erols address. Maybe they sent the email to both the address I just gave and one they had in their files.

But there still a lot more competent than my doctor's office. It took from Sunday to Thursday, 2 emails and 8 phone calls to restore my logon there. The doctor's office turns it over to nextmd.com and I finally was able to register there, and a few minutes later from NextGen Patient Portal. The url had been nextmd, nothing about nextgen, but okay, it seemed okay.

Then a few minutes later I get an email from everseat.com: "Thanks for joining Everseat! Please confirm your email address. If you do not confirm your email address within one hour, your account will be locked"

Neither the medical practice website or even nextmd had ever mentioned everseat and everseat made no reference to the either of them. It seemed like phishing or malware. OTOH, when I made an tele-appointment for 2 hours later, it said I had to wait for confirmation, so if I didn't do what it said, I might never get the confirmation. So I did it and it was probably legit,

Then I got a text with only two choices. Reject the whole thing or agree to get texts about appointments. I don't want texts, I want emails. But I wanted the confirmation, so I agreed figuring I coudl change it later.

I never got the confirmation, neither yes nor no, when I called the doctor on the phone the receptionist knew nothing about it, and I probably can't use the userid and password from the doctor's office to login to everseat. (But I did use the email they had and got them to send me a password. My profile was pretty much blank and I left it that way. And the everseat Patient FAQ gives a 404,

And it's been 5 days and 3 days respectively since I wrote the doctors' office, specifying as the subject one of their 6 choices, Patient Portal, about this and haven't gotten any answer to that either.

I'd almost rather have to pay fines using a competent computer system than get my diseases investigated using an incompetent one.

Well, it is a school zone, and many/most of their students walk to school.

That would be nice.

I'm going to consider the fine a contribution to the state. They need the money.

And what was the ticket for, running over a pedestrian?

I once got a speeding ticket in a school zone. The cop gave me a break he said because no children were present.

After I paid the ticket I passed by there again and the sign said: Speed Limit 15 when children are present.

I was on record as going 25 mph which was the posted speed. He also gave me the ticket well ahead of the sign.

I guess it al evens out though because I've gotten out of a few tickets by just calling the cop "sir."

Reminds me of a friend who talked himself out of a ticket but was dumb enough to keep taking until he talked himself back into one :)

Yes, but it was not my fault. I couldn't see her. She was very small.

So if he gave you the ticket, what was the break? He lowered the speed you were going from what you were actually going?

LOL. He might have just been just trying to look good, but he might have lost track. If he was sitting there waiting for speeders, he should have had the rules right.

Quotas?

LOL.

I couldn't either argue with or be polite to the camera.

One reason i did not contest it was because I was going over the posted limit.

I was going 35 in a 25 zone.

OTOH: Since he wrote me up for going 25 I could have beat in court and that was the actual speed limit.

Years later and in another city I did take a case to court. Though I was speeding, I did not want a moving violation on my record because I was concerned about my auto insurance going up.

They gladly changed it to a non-moving violation with the same dollar amount fine. It was a small town and all they wanted was the money.

I never even looked at the paperwork until I got home. Oh boy: Vandalizing a street sign!

Now that the workd knows I'm a hardened criminal, I just hope my jail cell is not any where near flumps's.

I forgot to say that I was going 37 in a 25 miles zone. The paperwork said the camera only reports it if it's 12 or more miles over.

Yes, but it would have been difficult to get through the whole thing without lying, and under oath. You'd have to keep reporting to what it said and not what you did.

Wow, and you're not a teenager anymore. I can only imagine what else you do.

Fortunately you don't use your full name here.

I also forgot that there was a 5 or 10 second video of my speeding on the website, and I really did look like I was zipping along. With the picture and google street view, I could see exactly where I was, and could figure out where the camera was, but street view shows no camera, unless it's 100 feet back on the wall of the school. I'm going to go look. Maybe I'll bring some black paint.

On Fri, 15 Jan 2021 13:19:23 -0600, philo posted for all of us to digest...

The citation has several copies and the one you receive does have the box on it that has actual speed on it. That would have been brought out in court.

Glad I did not waste my time going.

Thanks for pointing that out to me though.

About 30 years ago I was in a court room and a woman pointed out to the judge that the block for male/female was checked as male. She said she had been a female all her life. The judge threw out the ticket.

I think that ticket was for going throught a stop sign. During that period the cops had a thing for a complete stop no matter how far you could see down the roads. If you slowed to 1 mph they still ticketed you.

I've been pulled over for speeding 4 times. Only once did I get an actual speeding ticket, which was reduced to a non-moving violation when I went to court. "Failure to heed a traffic warning device" was apparently the plea of the day.

The other 3 were more interesting.

Did I mention that it was a brand new rented car, with less than 2K miles on it? All I had to do was mail the minuscule fine into some small town clerk's office.

I'm white. The officer was black. My daughter is white. Her friend was black.

I don't know if that made any difference, but he simply wished the girls "Good luck" and sent me on my way.

State Trooper Friendly walks up to my van and asks how fast I thought I was going. "I had the cruise control set at 75 sir." (Why lie?)

State Trooper Friendly: "Do you drive this road often?"

Me: "I make a round trip at least once a week, usually more than that."

State Trooper Friendly: "Then you probably know that we give some leeway out here. Try to keep it under 70. Have a good night."

Move to LA and you won't need a driver's license so I doubt they issue speeding tickets either.

My first trip to traffic court was many years ago in Philadelphia. Had to be at least 50, maybe 75 of us. The bailiff comes out and says "All rise, the Honorable Judge Jones presiding" The Judge walks to his place and says "how do you plead?" We all said "not guilty" so judge says "dismissed"

Second trip was similar. My name was called and I walked up. court stenographer says "with a name like that he should be dismissed" The judge says "dismissed". Could be coincidence but years ago I went to school with a guy that was going to be a court stenographer. Maybe he saw my name and marked it.

When my 18 YO daughter got a speeding ticket I went to court with her just in case we could talk to an ADA or something like that.

The first step was to check in with a clerk. As we were standing in front of the clerk's window, 3 cops came in from a side door into the clerk's area and walked over to our clerk to check in. I listened to the 3 names and then checked the name on my daughter's ticket. Nope, not 1 of those 3. The clerk said to the 3 cops "Is Officer Yada Yada" here?" "No, he's on vacation". I whispered to my daughter that she might be in luck.

We go into the court room, sit around with everyone else for a while and then the judge walks in. After all the formalities, the first thing he does is call out 3 names, one of which was my daughter's. "Your cases have been dismissed. Please check out with the clerk."

No cop, no case.

I assume it might be an absurd notion but maybe the contractor who does this was smart enough to see your typo and fix it.

I thought cops were supposed to know they're vacation schedule and put a court date on their tickets that wouldn't conflict. I thought whoever told the cop what court date to use knew his vacation schedule.

And that once these tickets were issued, he'd have to have a darn good excuse to not come to work that day.

I'll bet your daughter was impressed with you.

OTOH, he only wrote 3 tickets... in how many days? I figured they'd have 1 or 2 weeks using the same court date.

I had borrowed my brother's car, a stick shift, and I think was why I did a rolling stop in a town near Dallas, Grand Prairie. Actually the road veered to the left, but there was a non-main road going straight ahead with a stop sign a block later and a cop waiting for people like me.

I went straight to the Traffic Violation building, a brand new building just for traffic offenses, which I think was the town's big industry.