Bogus Ticket
written by sideout
I was driving home (I took my car today instead of a bike) getting on a freeway going approximately 15 mph merging into a lane. The traffic was slowly moving, lets say at a pace of 5 mph. A police cruiser was among the cars in the lane I was merging into. I passed it and kept moving at slow and steady pace. All of the sudden it jumped from its lane got right behind me and turned all his strobe lights on. I pulled over. Per officer I made an unsafe passing on the right. Besides being rude he’d cited me with the violation of the section 21755 of the California Vehicle Code. The ticket says that I made an “unsafe passing on the right in stopped traffic”. It also states my approximate speed of 25 mph where 5-10 mph is safe.
The California Vehicle Code section 21755 states that “The driver of a motor vehicle may overtake and pass another vehicle upon the right only under conditions permitting such movement in safety. In no event shall such movement be made by driving off the paved or main-traveled portion of the roadway.” So lets try to dissect this and apply to my situation. I was never off the road, I was always within the lane markings. My speed in relation to traffic was 10 mph which is approximately 14.7 feet per second. The length of my car is 15.05 feet. So basically my relative speed was one car body per second. I can’t imagine this being unsafe in any way.
Furthermore the citing officer had absolutely no way to correctly identify my speed, neither could he have seen me being within or beyond the boundaries of the lane. He was on the left of me as I drove by. His line of sight was limited to his window and then obstructed by the body of my car. He could not have paced me, nor could have used any other legitimate techniques to calculate my speed as he would not have had enough time to do so.
It is clearly a bogus ticket. I can understand a running the red light ticket or a speeding ticket. But this is something I can’t comprehend. And it frustrates me to know that the California highway patrol resorts to these in order to cite motorists.
This is complete BS. What is it with you and cops? Can’t you just get along? By the way out mutual friend got 100+ ticket this Saturday riding his Beemer from Santa Barbara ;(
Motodisiac
May 7th, 2008
By the way if you were on a bike this post wouldn’t exist….. just saying
Motodisiac
May 7th, 2008
I guess our mutual friend was ticketed for speeding. And I am so riding tomorrow :).
sideout
May 8th, 2008
Hmm…this seems a bit fishy..And I’m not talking about the contents of Sideout’s volleyball shorts.
I see guys flying up the right side of the merge lane, trying to get to the front before merging.. and that annoys me. That should be a ticketing offence. It sounds like this wasn’t the case here.
Do what you’ve been doing with your other tickets and appeal. You should have a nice leather courtroom chair with your own name on it by now.
Stoafer
May 8th, 2008
I will definitely contest this ticket.
sideout
May 8th, 2008
Especially Bone-Headed of the Cop to pull someone over and cause everyone passing by to slow down to look while traffic is already down to 5 miles per hour.
Wiseburn
June 25th, 2008
Couldn’t agree more.
sideout
June 25th, 2008