Confused about why I was just pulled over...

[Bailey Guns]

Hey, HB. I'd say you have a couple of options if you don't wanna pay the fine.

1) Go to court and work something with the county atty. Take some photos of the windshield to show the crack doesn't interfere with your vision. They might cut you some slack. If I remember correctly the charge is "Obstructed Vision Through Required Glass" or some such nonsense. Could be titled differently but should be something like that.

2) Get a new windshield and call the county atty. Most of the time (though not always) they'll dismiss the case.

Unfortunately, either option isn't guaranteed to get you out of the ticket but in my experience they generally drop the case if you get the discrepancy fixed.

Having said that, it sounds like the officer probably did stop you for the signal violation. Just a thought but he may have seen you doing something else like weaving a little and thought maybe you were a DUI. Seriously...that happens pretty often. Once he stopped you and saw you obviously weren't impaired he cut you a break on the lane change and wrote you for the windshield. It's chickenshit, no doubt. But, when I left law enforcement the agency I was with was just about to implement a policy that if someone was worth stopping it was worth writing a ticket. That's a possibility as well (that's also the sort of thing that compelled me to look for a new line of work).

The sort of ticket he wrote you is what I called a win-win. He knows the likelihood of the ticket being dismissed for one or more reasons is pretty high. He knows he most likely won't have to go to court. And, if in fact the SO has a policy that the deputies must write tickets for every stop then he stays in the good graces of his Sgt. I did the same thing many times to honest Joe Citizen...if their insurance card was expired I'd warn them on whatever I stopped them for and wrote the insurance ticket. If they really didn't have insurance then they deserved the ticket. If they did, all they had to do was fax a copy of a current card to the city atty and the case was dismissed and they didn't pay a dime. I'd always explain that to them.

If I couldn't write them for no insurance or some other charge I'd try to explain that I noticed they weren't wearing their seatbelt *wink*wink*. It was only a $15 fine and they were happy to get out of a speeding ticket with a warning in exchange for no seatbelt.

Of course, lots of people got tickets because they earned them.

Bottom line, there's lots of reasons he may have handled the stop the way he did. Maybe he just likes to write chickenshit tickets. That's a possibility, too, and there are plenty of guys who do that. Just food for thought.

[HoneyBadger]

Hey, HB. I'd say you have a couple of options if you don't wanna pay the fine.

1) Go to court and work something with the county atty. Take some photos of the windshield to show the crack doesn't interfere with your vision. They might cut you some slack. If I remember correctly the charge is "Obstructed Vision Through Required Glass" or some such nonsense. Could be titled differently but should be something like that.

2) Get a new windshield and call the county atty. Most of the time (though not always) they'll dismiss the case.

Unfortunately, either option isn't guaranteed to get you out of the ticket but in my experience they generally drop the case if you get the discrepancy fixed.

Having said that, it sounds like the officer probably did stop you for the signal violation. Just a thought but he may have seen you doing something else like weaving a little and thought maybe you were a DUI. Seriously...that happens pretty often. Once he stopped you and saw you obviously weren't impaired he cut you a break on the lane change and wrote you for the windshield. It's chickenshit, no doubt. But, when I left law enforcement the agency I was with was just about to implement a policy that if someone was worth stopping it was worth writing a ticket. That's a possibility as well (that's also the sort of thing that compelled me to look for a new line of work).

The sort of ticket he wrote you is what I called a win-win. He knows the likelihood of the ticket being dismissed for one or more reasons is pretty high. He knows he most likely won't have to go to court. And, if in fact the SO has a policy that the deputies must write tickets for every stop then he stays in the good graces of his Sgt. I did the same thing many times to honest Joe Citizen...if their insurance card was expired I'd warn them on whatever I stopped them for and wrote the insurance ticket. If they really didn't have insurance then they deserved the ticket. If they did, all they had to do was fax a copy of a current card to the city atty and the case was dismissed and they didn't pay a dime. I'd always explain that to them.

If I couldn't write them for no insurance or some other charge I'd try to explain that I noticed they weren't wearing their seatbelt *wink*wink*. It was only a $15 fine and they were happy to get out of a speeding ticket with a warning in exchange for no seatbelt.

Of course, lots of people got tickets because they earned them.

Bottom line, there's lots of reasons he may have handled the stop the way he did. Maybe he just likes to write chickenshit tickets. That's a possibility, too, and there are plenty of guys who do that. Just food for thought.

Thanks for the insight. I'm just frustrated because I think it was BS and then I'm confused by the outcome. He definitely *could* have written me a ticket for insurance, or even the taillight that I just noticed is burned out (on a 1 year old car... wtf?), but instead he chose the windshield?