Speeding

Contrary to popular belief, traffic ticket and speeding ticket attorneys are not always about using procedural loopholes and clever tricks like quoting official and hope that does not appear. Sometimes it is actually the practice of law, effectively cross-examine witnesses, pointing out the flaws in the case of the city, and win for a traffic violation did not occur in reality. And sometimes it even more technical than that. Let me give an example to demonstrate what I mean.

This example comes from real life in the City of Seattle (my hometown, where I am a lawyer in traffic, by the way). It is actually a very sad story, but demonstrating what a good traffic lawyer on your side can do for you. Here are the facts.

There was a guy driving a van in Seattle in September 2006. It was the morning, and was probably on his way to work, on their way to a place of work, running a mission or something innocuous and others. He was driving limit speed. Never had a previous traffic violation. He was sober. There had been using drugs. And his life was about to change forever.

He was traveling south on a two-way street (no traffic coming north) and at some point during his campaign that he had to turn left. Like all of us, waited at the intersection for oncoming traffic to clear, and he proceeded to do his duty. However, on this day Specifically, in this specific intersection, a cyclist was heading south. And the driver of the truck did not see it.

I do not think that the collision was severe, but they make the rider fall from his bicycle. And tragically, as she was wearing a helmet, suffered head injuries resulting in death. After the incident the driver was about to blame for the lack of performance, he and his insurance company settled with the family of the cyclist, and tried to move forward with his life.

While the driver of the van was trying to move this horrific event, as often happens in cases like this, the King County agents order reviewed the case to determine whether there was any need to file criminal charges. In the end, only a possibility of existence of a criminal in fact – murder vehicle. The requirements for vehicle homicide, however, does not fit this situation. One of three things is necessary: (1) operating a vehicle while intoxicated, (2) driving a vehicle recklessly, or performance (3) a vehicle with reckless disregard for the safety of others. In this case, neither occurred. Because King County refused to press charges.

The city of Seattle, however, was not willing to give up so easily. It had been recently an ordinance that criminalizes violations of traffic when great bodily harm or death as a result of the violations. In this case, the council decided the driver the van had committed the crime of assault on the cyclist, and went after him. The problem with this, from the perspective of counsel van driver traffic Seattle was that the Washington State Legislature explicitly most traffic violations are not criminal violations, punishable by a fine only. And Do not you know, lack of performance was one of those crimes.

Therefore, the Seattle lawyer traffic moved the court to dismiss the charges on the basis of the invalidity of the law. And the court denied the motion. After a trial without a jury found the truck driver guilty of assault under the statute, which appealed the decision to the Superior Court of King County. In that court, the law was what was seen as a circumvention of the law as created by the legislature State of Washington, and ruled the statute invalid. After appealing this decision to the Court of Appeals and lost (you can read the decision rel = "nofollow" href = "http://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/index.cfm?fa=opinions.showOpinion&filename=618547MAJ"> here, the city is believed to have given up.

So the moral of the story? How a traffic lawyer who knows what they are doing can help tremendously, not always for travel and procedural traps that we know, but because they are excellent lawyers engaged in a practice area which is sorely needed.

Christopher Small is a Seattle traffic lawyer with CMS Law Firm LLC. If you are cited for a traffic infraction in Seattle, don’t pay the ticket. Fight it. And get a good Seattle traffic attorney on your team to help you put your best foot forward.

Traffic Law : How to Get a Traffic Ticket Dismissed