Just a bit ago, the local press fleet send me a present via the City of Chicago -- I flashed a speed camera at somewhere more than 6 mph but less than 10 mph over. Oddly, it's not the same camera that caused me to ask a QOTD about how y'all feel about these cameras -- it happened more than a week after I wrote that, and on a different stretch of the same road.
Since I can't re-ask the same QOTD I just asked a few months ago, I will ask you a slightly different one -- how do you react to getting a speeding/parking ticket? Does it change if you get it via camera as opposed to the old-fashioned way?
I won't bore you with stories, but I will say this -- I usually don't fight speeding tickets. That's because everytime I've been stopped, I was driving over the limit, and there was no technicality, like a broken radar gun, that I could try to leverage. But I have fought parking tickets, at least when I thought they were issued in error. I have a decent record there -- only one loss. it helps that Chicago has certain conditions that allow for contesting a ticket, and it's easy to figure out if one of those conditions has been met. For the rest, I either prevailed or the ticket got buried in Chicago's bureaucratic hell and I don't know if there ever was an outcome.
I won't fight this ticket, though part of me wants to argue that cameras are unfair -- a cop would likely not stop me or anyone else for such a small amount over the limit. I also don't think the video, which can be viewed online, shows the exact speed. Maybe that would be grounds for a fight.
Enough rambling on my part. I assume many of you like to drive fast, and even some of the most cautious drivers I know I take chances with/get confused about parking rules. So I assume most of you have had the "pleasure" of either being handed a citation by a member of law enforcement or getting one in the mail. Which is why I ask -- how do you react?
Do you just say "ya got me" and pay? Do you only do that if you're obviously guilty? Do you look for any angle you can use to fight it? Or are you like me -- you pay when you know you're guilty, and only fight when you think there's been an obvious error?
Sound off below while I dig out my credit card.
[Image: Sampajano_Anizza/Shutterstock.com]
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