I've been to court once in my life before Friday. My criminal justice class in college went to a murder trial. Other than that, my experience has only consisted of an occasional episode of Judge Judy. And that's okay. I don't mind.
About six weeks ago I picked up food for Julia's birthday party in a nearby city, and I got a red light photo ticket in the mail a few weeks later. I knew the area had photo cameras, and I thought I was careful. I must admit that I'm a sucky driver. I do try to be careful, but my mind wanders, I like to drive fast, and bad things occasionally happen.
The pictures ("evidence") they sent weren't especially convincing. It was at a red light, and I was turning right. Perhaps I rolled more than I should have. I was shielded by people making a protected left. But I do recall stopping. I knew it had a photo camera there.
So I contested the stupid ticket because I didn't want it to go on my record. My court date was on Friday. I was really nervous because I haven't ever been to court. All I knew was that I needed to dress up, so I wore a suit. There were about 30 of us there. Apparently they bunch up all the photo ticket offenders and do them together. Everyone else was dressed Pacific Northwest casual. Shorts, t-shirts, sandals. I felt horribly overdressed, but I thought you were supposed to dress up. And it couldn't hurt, right?
I wrote out my little statement. Not that I had to, but I thought I had to give testimony so I had the points I wanted to make on a notecard. My goal was to get it dismissed completely, but my standby was paying the fine but it not going on my record.
The judge started with her photo ticket speech. Apparently I hadn't closely read my ticket. Photo tickets didn't go on your record, so I breathed a HUGE sigh of relief when I realized that my insurance company wouldn't find out about my rolling right turn at a stoplight.
The judge seemed really nice; I guess I was expecting a mean judge who would tell us that we were all the lowest human beings ever for running red lights.
Being in the middle of the alphabet was so nice. She started at the beginning of the alphabet. I was looking forward to getting familiar with how this was going to go with the other people in front of me so that I could prepare my defense the best.
First dude goes up. We watch the video. I watch this video so closely. I was waiting for the glaring error. His car came up to the red light. He was making a right turn. He stopped, and then he turned right. We all look confused, we were all giving each other looks.
That's when we all got the right turn on red lecture. In the video, she pointed out the white line in the right lane. You are supposed to stop BEFORE the white line. Something back from driver's ed was starting to come back to me. Like something about stopping twice at a red light. Stopping at that line, and then creeping forward and stopping again. Back at the time, it didn't seem to make any sense to stop twice. And in practice, I never do. It doesn't seem like anyone else does either.
She gives the dude the stopping at the white line first, then creeping forward and stopping again speech. Then she dismisses his ticket.
Next up. We watch another video at the same intersection with the same thing happening. Exact same thing.
For the love of GOD! We were all there for the freaking same thing. It's not like we all blatantly ran red lights. We were all making a right on red, and we stopped after the white line on the street.
This had to be the stupidest city money generator ever. Seriously. We're quibbling about stopping a foot over the line?
Short story: My ticket got dismissed, and I conquered my first (and hopefully last) court appearance.
Moral of the story: Always stop at the white line when making a right turn at a red light camera intersection.
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