Anyone successfully fight a traffic ticket using one of those $99 lawyers?

[eRondeau]

I feel they purposefully shortened the yellow light so it changed to red pretty quickly. I will probably go and video tape it for evidence if I ever decide to go to court.

Bingo! Cities can't arbitrarily set/alter the duration of yellow lights. Somewhere your state/province has regulations that define what they are. Their timing is probably a mathematical function of the speed limit along the roadway where the lights are installed. Find out what that is, and then check to see if the timing at the intersection where you received your ticket is compliant. If it's not, and you decide to videotape it as proof, you should ensure you're holding an old-fashioned stopwatch running in the frame simultaneously to prove you haven't edited (sped-up) the video. Good luck!

 

[dannyyankou]

I did admit it. But if they purposefully violated the law by making the yellow light change quicker, then why shouldn't I fight it? I mean do you just allow the government to get away with anything because you think they can do no wrong?

Did you slow down or speed up when the light turned yellow? If it's the latter, it doesn't matter how long it was yellow for. Always anticipate the risk of running a red light when it turns yellow.

 

[eyoungren]

Did you slow down or speed up when the light turned yellow? If it's the latter, it doesn't matter how long it was yellow for. Always anticipate the risk of running a red light when it turns yellow.

Some places time them differently.

I learned to drive in California. California generally gives you about 1.5 seconds with a yellow so you learn that if the light turns yellow - stop. Unless you're already in the intersection when that happens of course.

But Arizona is a mess when it comes to yellow lights. The City of Phoenix is known as the red-light running capitol of the US. That's because Arizona has their yellow lights set to about 3.5-4 seconds. It ENCOURAGES people to run red lights around here. I have no ***** clue why the engineers in this state thought that timing the yellow lights this way was such a great idea.

No wonder we have a reputation for running red lights.

 

[acer]

All I can say is that everything I suspected has been proven true. I wish the trial was tomorrow cause I can't wait to expose them.