Police will be watching school zones for speeders as local schools reopen this month.

Champaign police Sgt. Dave Griffet reminded motorists that speeds in school zones are 20 miles per hour unless otherwise posted.
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Champaign elementary schools with a “balanced calendar” are already in session, but the rest will begin Aug. 21.

“Drivers should be attentive to pedestrians in crosswalks in and around the local school,” Griffet said.

Pedestrians should cross at designated intersections and crosswalks when they have the right of way, he said.

Champaign police officers will be posted near school zones to monitor the speeds of vehicles, along with improper lane changes, tailgating or other safety issues, according to Deputy Chief John Murphy.

School patrols will be done with regular shift officers, as well as extra manpower through the Selective Traffic Enforcement Patrol program, which hires back additional officers.

August will also be one of the months for allocation of state grant money to pay for traffic enforcement. Champaign received a grant of $130,000 from the Illinois Department of Transportation to hire back additional officers to target speeding violations on Windsor Road, Church Street, Bradley Avenue and Neil Street.

School for Urbana begins Aug. 27 and 28, depending on grade level.

“We ask motorists to be vigilant not only in school zones, but also in areas where students will be walking to and from school,” said Urbana school spokesman Mark Schultz. “There’s going to be a lot of kids out there.”

Urbana police Lt. Anthony Cobb, patrol supervisor, said extra patrols will be made around schools when they are in session. In addition to speeding violations, police will be watching for drivers who ignore school bus stop-arm warnings and pedestrian crossing issues.

Cobb said most school traffic violations will result in tickets, and some carry heavy fines or possible license suspension.

Article by Steve Bauer
The News Gazette, Champaign Illinois

Traffic Laws in Illinois

New Hampshire motorists who use drive time to chat on the phone, read the paper or apply makeup may want to focus on the road.

In that state, if you cause harm to another vehicle or a pedestrian while engaged in an activity behind the wheel, you face a maximum fine of $1,000 and lose your license for up to a year.

“This is a good deterrent to have on the books,” says Peter M. Thomson, coordinator of New Hampshire’s Highway State Agency. “I travel 65 miles to work, on Interstate 93, and I see a ton of distracted drivers. You name it, and I have seen it. It drives me crazy to see people trying to drive with a full plate of food on their lap while trying to steer with their knees.”

New Hampshire’s no-nonsense law carries the greatest fine and penalty of the nine states with the harshest laws for distracted drivers on our list.

Distraction Equals Accidents
Almost 80% of crashes and 65% of near-crashes involved some form of driver inattention within three seconds of the event, according to the 100-Car Naturalistic Driving Study, conducted by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and released in April 2006.

The most common distraction cited was cellphone use (followed by drowsiness).

Bans on using a handheld cellphone while driving are in the works in several states, including California, which on July 1 will become the latest state to ban cellphone use, joining New York, Washington, D.C., Connecticut and New Jersey–though hands-free phones will still be permitted. This will be a primary offense, meaning police officers can ticket motorists talking on a handheld phone even if they haven’t violated other traffic laws.

Connecticut bans the use of handheld cellphones, yet goes a step further by prohibiting the use of other electronic devices, such as personal digital assistants. New Jersey does the same and adds text messaging to its list of specific offenses. Washington State banned text messaging in January and, come July 1, will prohibit the use of handheld cellphones in general.

Ohio is the only state on the list that doesn’t ban using cellphones while driving. But, in Ohio, it is a primary offense to drive while wearing earphones or earplugs for listening to devices such as iPods or CD players (though ear-in devices for cellphones are permitted). This law has been on the books since 1989. Violators are cited for committing a minor misdemeanor, which carries a maximum fine of $1,000, says Bradley Shaw, a spokesman for the Ohio State Highway Patrol. The amount of the ticket varies by county and is determined by your driving record, prior convictions and other moving violations.

While other states are debating bans on cellphones, text messaging and other distractions, lawmakers and auto safety agencies continue to review the best ways to deal with people who insist on multitasking while driving.

Like New Hampshire, Utah prohibits multiple activities that it deems distracting, like smoking, eating, drinking and “physically attending to a passenger.” The maximum fine is $50 on top of fines incurred for related moving violations, such as running a red light or causing an accident.

Rules For Hands-Free Phones
No state has entirely banned the use of cellphones while driving; you can still use hands-free wireless devices, but the rules aren’t the same for all drivers. Seventeen states and the District of Columbia have various levels of restrictions for all cellphone use, hands-free included, for teens age 18 and younger, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

For now, drivers over the age of 18 with full driving privileges can use hands-free communication devices, even in the states that ban handheld electronics. But this is something that Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety, a Washington-based consumer watchdog for auto safety and quality founded by Ralph Nader in 1970, is fighting to change.

In March, the CAS filed a petition with the NHTSA, asking the agency to write rules prohibiting the use of interactive systems that allow drivers to have wireless access to e-mails and phone calls. “There is a false perception that hands-free phones are better,” says Ditlow. “Your mind is still off the road and focused on the conversation.”

When Washington’s ban on text messaging goes into effect July 1, it will be a secondary offense; you’ll only receive a ticket if you commit another moving violation, other than speeding. Though the same holds true for distracted-driver laws in several states, it pays to play it safe. In Connecticut and New Hampshire, for example, the fines and license-suspension terms go up with each offense.

However, you don’t have to worry about inadvertently breaking the law when commuting across state lines: The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety ( www.iihs.org) and AAA publish a state-by-state listing of cellphone bans and distracted-driving laws.

Story by Jacqueline Mitchell, Forbes.com

Traffic ticket defense lawyers.

San Jose, California - A driver nailed by a roving radar truck in San Jose is taking his case to court in hopes of getting back the money he spent on speeding tickets and increases in insurance costs for himself and others mailed fines by the city.

The city killed the program that put white radar photo vans on the streets to cut down on speeding after questions were raised in 2006 about the legality of having city engineers - not cops - write citations.

But that was after officials had issued about $5 million worth of tickets through the decade-old program. In 2006 alone, San Jose issued 7,000 tickets using the radar vans that took photos of a speeding car’s license plate and driver. Notices of the violations were then sent to the vehicle’s registered owner.

Jorge Luis Ramirez’s attorney contends that since the tickets were illegal, the city should pay back what it got from the program. Attorney James McManis filed the lawsuit in Santa Clara County Superior Court on Monday.

“They have this illegal program,” he said. “They should do the right thing” and pay back those who were charged under the program.

City Attorney Richard Doyle had not seen the lawsuit as of Monday afternoon, but he said the city didn’t know the program was illegal when it ran it. As soon as officials learned that the state Legislature was questioning such programs, he said, the city stopped using the radar vans.

“It was a program that everyone had operated in good faith,” he said.

Doyle said the courts sanctioned the program because judges and commissioners signed off on the tickets when they were brought to court. People who questioned the legality of the program, he said, could have appealed.

Ramirez was twice ticketed by the radar vans - both times for going less than 10 miles an hour over the speed limit. He paid the tickets but later decided to bring the suit after friends told him it was unusual to be cited for such a small infraction

Leslie Griffy, MercuryNews.com

Speeding Laws in California.

Dallas City Hall has idled more than one-fourth of the 62 cameras that monitor busy intersections because many of them are failing to generate enough red-light-running fines to justify their operational costs, according to city documents.

Initial gross revenue estimates for the red light camera system during Dallas’ 2007-08 fiscal year were $14.8 million, according to city records. The latest estimate? About $6.2 million. City Manager Mary Suhm on Friday estimated net revenue will fall $4.1 million under initial estimates.

That leaves Dallas government with a conundrum. Its red-light camera system has been an effective deterrent to motorists running red lights – some monitored intersections have experienced a more than 50 percent reduction. But decreased revenue from red light-running violations means significantly less revenue to maintain the camera program and otherwise fuel the city’s general fund.

Exacerbating the drain is a new state law requiring that municipalities send half of their net red-light-running camera revenue to Austin and post signs alerting drivers of upcoming camera installations. Also, city records indicate Dallas has lengthened yellow-light intervals on 12 of its 62 monitored traffic signals, giving motorists more time to beat a red light.

City transportation officials say they’re brainstorming potential changes to the red-light camera program, which is financed by the general fund, before a planned update to the City Council next month on the program’s status.

“We did not anticipate having such success so early with the number of people not running red lights,” said Zaida Basora, Dallas’ assistant director of public works and transportation. “If you have success in safety, you don’t have a lot of success in revenue. The other side is the people will go back to what they were doing before without the cameras.”

 source

As if the $125 ticket wasn’t bad enough, Lauren Kamm’s illegal left turn onto Ashland Avenue in Chicago earned her an extra surprise: Her driver’s license was confiscated.

Kamm was told it would be returned after her case was completed, a process potentially lasting weeks. While she could still drive legally with a copy of the ticket, the thought of having no photo identification sent her into a panic, especially since she planned to attend a college reunion at a North Side bar the next night.

The 23-year-old public relations consultant awoke early the next morning last fall and drove to a driver’s license facility to get a state ID.

“I had to do it,” said Kamm, who lives in Wicker Park. “I wasn’t going to miss [the reunion] just because they took my license.”

Illinois is one of the few states where officers can — and often do — take a driver’s license during routine traffic stops. But a group of state officials is trying to change that. In an era when a government-issued photo ID is often needed to board an airplane or make a credit-card purchase, the practice is antiquated, they said.

“Your driver’s license is probably your only government-issued form of ID,” said DuPage County Circuit Clerk Chris Kachiroubas. “To lose it for a bad left turn, I’ve always thought that was a bad idea.”

Kachiroubas’ office is among those most aggressively pursuing the end of taking licenses and could be the closest to eliminating the process. The county is rolling out a new electronic ticketing program to reduce paper and save money, but the system also could allow drivers to pay for tickets or bail with a credit card during a traffic stop.

Now, state law requires that drivers ticketed for a moving violation post bail. They do that by paying $75 at the police station, surrendering a bond card (usually available from insurance companies) or giving up their driver’s license. Police officers also can just ask for a signature, but such leniency is rare.

Because few people have bond cards or the time to travel to a police station, they usually give
up their licenses, experts say. In some cases, drivers are not given a choice. Kamm was not, she said. Her license was returned a month later in the mail after she paid her fine.

Wholesale changes to the law cannot be made without the approval of the state Supreme Court. A subcommittee re-examining the state’s traffic bonding laws for the first time since the early 1990s is expected to make recommendations by the end of the year.

The practice of taking driver’s licenses was established in Chicago in the 1950s and later expanded statewide under the presumption that holding a license hostage makes accused lawbreakers more likely to pay their fines or come to court.

Protocols in other states vary widely. In Michigan, officers take licenses of out-of-state drivers only. In Mississippi, police can take driver’s licenses of in-state residents but rarely do. Like many states, Texas and Oregon take licenses only during drunken-driving arrests. Few take it as a common first option, like Illinois.

“The process is outdated,” said Logan County Circuit Clerk Carla Bender. “The law and the Supreme Court rule need to catch up to technology.”

Champaign County Circuit Judge Jeffrey Ford, chairman of the subcommittee, said the driver’s license issue “has been discussed” but declined to predict whether there will be changes. He said he was surprised to learn that Illinois was one of the few states that regularly take licenses as a form of bail.

“The question is, if we can get away from it, how far do we go?” Ford said.

Some less-affluent counties still might need to take licenses from people who can’t afford to pay $75, he said.

“What about in counties that aren’t as rich?” he said. “What do you take if they can’t pay a bond?”

In DuPage County, two police departments are experimenting with “e-ticketing,” which, as its name suggests, removes most paper from the ticketing equation. Officers create tickets on a laptop, hand a printed copy to drivers, then transmit the information to the police department and circuit clerk’s office.Officials hope that the system, if approved by the Supreme Court, eventually will allow some drivers to post bail or pay their tickets with credit or debit cards on the side of the road.

Police departments in West Chicago and Wheaton are testing the equipment, and a handful of other police agencies will be online soon. Most in the county are expected to be on board by the end of the year, Kachiroubas said.

The technology was bought for $2.4 million from Florida-based Advanced Public Safety.

Several police officials said they would be happy to stop taking licenses.

“From a law-enforcement standpoint, it doesn’t bother me at all,” said Laimutis Nargelenas, deputy director of the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police. “You don’t have to deal with calls from people saying they need their license back because they have to take a trip.”

Your driver’s license, please

The state requires that drivers ticketed for a moving violation post bail in one of these ways:

*Pay $75 at the police station.

*Surrender a bond card (usually available from insurance companies).

*Give up their driver’s license.

*Signing tickets also can win release, but few officers do this.

Alternatives: DuPage County is experimenting with an electronic ticket, which could lead to drivers paying for tickets or bail with a credit card on the spot.

By Josh Noel -Tribune reporter
ChicagoTribune.com

Illinois Traffic Laws

DENVER — Breaking the law while driving could soon cost you a lot more. State lawmakers taking the first step to increase fines on traffic tickets.

On Tuesday, a house transportation committee passed a bill that would double most state fines for moving violations.

“Our fines in Colorado are three times lower than states like Massachusetts and Vermont. We haven’t actually raised traffic fines in about 3 decades in Colorado,” says the bill’s sponsor, Buffie McFayden of Pueblo.

The State Patrol says it wants fines to go up on moving violations that cause crashes, like DUI, unsafe lane changes and speeding.

“We believe this is a tactic, a strategy we’ll employ to reduce our injury fatal rate,” says Terry Campbell, State Patrol legislative liaison. They hope higher fines will lower danger on the roads.

Drivers paying traffic tickets at Denver’s city and county building say the increases are a good idea. “That’s the first one in 8 years [a speeding ticket]. Being a new father with another on the way. I don’t have a problem with that,” says Erik Anderson of Englewood.

“I think I’d be more scared now to be driving or speeding, think I’d be more aware. I’d be like, ‘Oh my God. I have to pay this much,’” says Franci Moldanado of Denver.

“It does hurt the pocketbook. But it would deter me from speeding,” says Ellen Landy-Steward/Denver.

While most tickets would double, some would triple. Here are examples.

-Speeding 10 to 19 miles over the limit, the fine will increase from $50 to $135.
-Running a red light goes from $35 to $100.
-A first DUI conviction would go from a minimum $500 fine to $1,000.
-An unsafe lane change goes from $35 to $100.
-And careless driving jumps from $50 to $150.

The bill also increases from 50% to 75% the money going to the highway users tax fund if the violation happened on a state or federal highway. That money helps fund the State Patrol as well as work on state highways.

The bill now goes to the full House for consideration.

Tammy Vigil, MyFoxColorado.com Reporter

Locate an Traffic Lawyer in Colorado.

WINTER HAVEN , FLA - Mike Greene says the $261 ticket he got for speeding 10 miles over the limit in a school zone was uncalled for.

But the police and the city say the ticket was fair and square.

The disagreement boils down to whether the slower-speed school zone was properly posted.

Greene said he pleaded not guilty this week to the ticket in Polk County Court.

Police Capt. Lisa Albury said she doesn’t see where Greene has a legitimate gripe.

On Dec. 11, he dropped his son off at Denison Middle School.

Because he had a doctor’s appointment, he took a short path he normally doesn’t take, down Fourth Street Southeast toward Avenue C Southeast.

At that point, he said, he knew without question he was in a school zone.

Then he turned right, heading west on Avenue C.

He passed Grace Lutheran Church and approached Grace Lutheran Early Childhood Center.

There’s only one school zone sign after making the turn.

It’s near the end of the Grace school property and announces: End School Zone.

He said that’s where he got pulled over.

Greene, 42, said that when an officer gave him a ticket for doing 25 in a 15 mph school zone, the officer told him, “Children are a precious commodity.”

Green, in an interview, said he agrees.

“It’s true,” he said, “so why can’t they just put up a school zone sign to warn people turning onto Avenue C to keep it slow?”

He said he believes the lack of a sign is a money-maker for the city at the expense of child safety.

He said the $261 he may have to pay for his ticket should be enough to cover the cost of a sign.

“They know there’s a problem there, but they won’t do anything about it,” he said.

This is simple, said Capt. Albury.

“When you drive into a school zone, you’re in it until you see an end school zone sign” even if you make a turn, she said.

“There are all kinds of kids and a crossing guard there,” she said.

“I don’t see where there’s a problem.”

Albury said the city, not the police, put up signs.

At City Hall, spokeswoman Joy Townsend said Albury is correct about the signs.

“When operating a motor vehicle in a school zone, all drivers should assume they are still in a school zone until they observe an ‘end school zone’ sign,” she said.

Greene said he has a good driving record and doesn’t want this blemish on it.

News Article Rick Rousos - The Ledger

Florida Traffic Laws

MONTEREY, Calif.—Monterey Vice-Mayor Jeff Haferman insists he didn’t run a stop sign and he demands to go to trial over the $159 ticket.

Haferman is also suing the city.

He was given a traffic citation on July 26 for failure to stop Camino Aguajito and Fremont Street at the exit from northbound Highway 1.

The Monterey council member says the intersection is a “speed trap,” that city police have a ticket quota and that the city knew the sign was illegally placed in front of a traffic signal. The city has denied the allegations.

Besides wanting the traffic ticket dismissed, Haferman has asked the court for $3,000 in damages from the city.

Read about California Traffic Ticket Law

From AP Story & Monteray County Herald

DOUBLE SPRINGS, ALABAMA - A Winston County judge threw out 220 traffic tickets this week after he and the defendants showed up for court but had nowhere to meet.

The only courtroom large enough to handle the crowd was in use by another judge, court officials said.

Winston County District Court Judge Michael Newell ordered that all pending traffic cases on his Tuesday docket, except DUI cases, be dismissed. They included tickets for speeding, driving without a license or with a suspended or revoked license, driving with switched and expired tags, driving without seat belts, and one for racing on a highway.

One man had eight tickets dismissed for various traffic infractions stretching back to 2006.

Newell said that, if a defendant had arrived late to court, he would have held the person accountable. Because of the courtroom mix-up, people with tickets who showed up on time Tuesday were being made to wait, which didn’t seem fair to Newell.

“I should hold myself to the same standard and that’s what I was trying to do,” Newell said. “I feel like I did what was appropriate in light of the situation we encountered on Tuesday.”

By the time the cases were dismissed, the defendants, some of whom were missing work, had been held up more than an hour, he said.

People who had pleaded guilty before Tuesday by paying their fines did not get their cases dismissed.

Winston County Circuit Court Judge John Bentley took the blame for the scheduling conflict. “If anyone is to blame for this stuff, it’s the presiding judge and that’s me. … The buck stops here.”

Newell had scheduled traffic court for 9 a.m. Tuesday at the county courthouse in Double Springs. That’s the same time Winston County Circuit Court Judge Lee Carter was beginning scheduled probation revocation hearings.

Carter was handling both his and Bentley’s probation revocation dockets Tuesday because Bentley was out of town, Bentley said. The revocation hearing docket had been set since September, and Bentley didn’t realize Newell had scheduled traffic court that day, he said.

Bentley said he wasn’t going to criticize Newell’s decision to dismiss the cases rather than delay them until another day.

“He felt that was the proper thing to do and I support him 100 percent,” Bentley said. “He’s the judge of that court and I’m not.”
The Alabama Administrative Office of Courts was notified of the traffic case dismissals, an official with that agency said.

“The chief justice understands from talking with presiding judge John Bentley that this incident was a result of a scheduling error with the one courtroom in Winston County and that the chief justice has been assured by Judge Bentley that he is working on this issue and that it will not happen again,” said Keith Camp, a spokesman for the Administrative Office of Courts.

One thing that will help keep scheduling conflicts down in the future is that Winston County officials are working to build a courthouse annex, Bentley said.

Winston County Administrator Joanie Wright said the county has borrowed about $6.5 million for construction. An area next to the courthouse has been cleared and prepared for construction, and county officials are reviewing plans for the annex that will include space for the additional courtroom, new jail, and district attorney and circuit court clerk offices.

“We want it as bad as they do,” she said.

Birmingham News - Kent Faulk

Traffic and speeding ticket laws in Alabama.

Need legal help for an Alabama Traffic Ticket?

LeBron James downplayed his latest traveling violation Monday, but experts said it could have been fatal.

James’ 101 mph drive down Interstate 71 on Dec. 30 was too fast for the highway and his 2008 Mercedes, even though the road was straight and conditions were clear, experts said.

The speed limit where he was driving is 65, and authorities said an interstate highway without visual obstructions is designed for drivers to reach about 75 mph safely, depending on grade and road surface.

“I was on my way home to go to sleep,” James said. “It’s not a big deal. You just have to abide by the rules. I made a mistake, and I have to live with it.”

He joked that his speedometer reaches 200 mph but said: “I was doing 101. I was speeding.”

While James didn’t think it was a big deal, safety experts were more than concerned.

Not just for James but for other people on the road in the early morning.

“When you travel at such high speeds, the crash would overwhelm the engineering and the safety features of any vehicle,” said Russ Rader of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in Washington, D.C. “A crash at that speed would leave a person unlikely to survive.”

In 2006, the State Highway Patrol charged 300,000 drivers with speeding. Only 1,400 hit the 100 mph limit, the patrol said.

State troopers stopped the Cavs star at 2:43 a.m. on his 23rd birthday, heading south on I-71, just south of Ohio 303, an area known for crossing deer.
Trooper Harley Steppenbacker, responding to a call of a drunken pedestrian along I-71, noticed the white Mercedes with the vanity plate “KNG OF AK” speed by him, and so he used his radar, said Lt. Joshua Swindell. Steppenbacker pulled James over, and the Cavs star was polite.

Steppenbacker lacked a paper citation to hand James, so the trooper told him he would have to go to the Medina post to pick it up later, Swindell said. James’ attorney picked up the ticket Jan. 7, and James was charged with speeding. Steppenbacker could not be reached for comment.

James said Monday that he was on his way to his Wadsworth home after the Cavs had returned from a game at New Orleans. He is scheduled to appear in Medina Municipal Court next month. James could face a $150 fine if convicted.
Under Ohio law, he would also have four points on his license.

Safety experts said those are the least of James’ problems. Excessive speed, even by a world-class athlete, poses an increased danger.

“Operating a vehicle at that speed is ludicrous,” said Medina County Engineer Michael Salay. “Going 101 wouldn’t be safe anywhere, except the Indianapolis Speedway.”

Clarence Ditlow, the executive director of the Center for Auto Safety in Washington, said the design of the road makes little difference when a person is going as fast as James was.

“Even if the highway is designed for 100 mph, a car is not,” he said. “At 100 mph, if you hit a fixed object, the chances of being around are pretty slim.”

On Jan. 12, 2000, former Cavs player Bobby Phills died when he drove his Porsche 100 mph after a practice with the Charlotte Hornets. Former Cav David Wesley was charged with reckless driving in another car, and he denied that he and Phills were drag racing.

That caused many in the basketball world to take notice. The collective-bargaining agreement between the league and the players union says a player cannot “engage in any activity that a reasonable person would recognize as involving or exposing the participant to a substantial risk of bodily injury.”

The Cavs could fine James, but league insiders say that is doubtful. Cavs general manager Danny Ferry declined to comment.

It was James’ first speeding ticket in six years.

His last speeding ticket came when he was a sophomore at Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary High School.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer - John Caniglia & Branson Wright

Free attorney consultation for Ohio Speeding Ticket