One man’s voice

Going to court

Posted on September 14th, 2007 in Rants

So today I went to the court house. And it looks like I am going to court.

On August 3, 2007 I was driving southbound on Paseo Padre Parkway just north of Durham Avenue. This stretch of Paseo Padre happens to be on a fairly steep downward slope. Just after I made the final turn in this large sloping downhill I was flagged down by a Fremont Police Officer Snow who basically pulled me over by waving me down while walking toward me in the middle of the street. He approached my vehicle and asked if I knew why he had flagged me down. I responded that I suspected it had something to do with speed (a logical guess since I was coming down a steep hill). He asked if I knew what the speed limit was for the road I was one and I responded that it was 35 MPH. He said it was not 35 MPH but 30 MPH. He hen asked if I knew how fast I was going. I didn’t, but I suspected it was going to be well over the 30 MPH speed limit since I was already under the estimation that the speed limit was 35 MPH. He said I was doing 48 MPH, though he had clocked me at 46 MPH. He then proceeded to issue me a citation for speeding.

That left me pretty steamed. If I had been knowingly and willfully negligent and broke the speed limit because I wanted to drive fast, I could see this being a legitimate citation. But this officer was actually behind a car that was being cited by another police officer also at the bottom of the hill. Come one now, exactly how viable a citable situation is this? These officers were at the bottom of the hill, where every car is going to be going over the speed limit. In fact, as you make it to the point where there is a viewable speed limit sign, at that point, you are already going 46 MPH if you started the descent at 30 MPH. If you slow yourself down to 30 MPH at that point then let your foot off the brake, by the time you are were I was when I was cited you would be between 45 and 50 MPH. Literally the only way to keep from speeding going down this hill is to make the drive with your foot on the brakes the entire way. This just does not seem logical.

It also seems like a ticky-tack ticket to issue on the part of the police officers. I mean seriously, if they wanted, the entire police force could sit at the bottom of this hill and write enough citations to pay for the entire police departments overtime budget just on the speeding citation revenue.

So rather than moan and groan about it, I am going to court. My court date is set for February 8, 2008 and I am looking forward to it. Now if I could just figure out what I need to do to prepare…