How to make a traffic ticket disappear in LA?

December 8, 2008 6:20 PM

Can a lawyer make this gridlock ticket go away? Do you know a good one in the L.A. area?

I got a ticket for gridlock in Orange County. The officer that wrote the ticket told me it was a non-moving violation. Surprise! It's a minor moving violation that will cause my insurance to spike for 6 months if I just pay the ticket.

To avoid this, there were instructions that came with the ticket for registering for traffic school. It's more expensive, and you have to pay for the (8 hour!) traffic school on top of it, but I think this means that the ticket will not get reported to my insurance company (at least, that's what I've gathered from the ticket that was mailed to me- I still need to confirm with O.C.).

In my home state of Missouri, there were numerous lawyers you could call if something like this happened. You fax them the ticket, send them a check, and POOF- no more ticket. Is there something like this that will help me avoid going to traffic school?

Alternately, I've heard about online traffic schools. Anybody ever tried this?

posted by Thin Lizzy to law & government (12 comments total)

Online traffic school is boring but easy. At least in Texas. You can't fast-forward through it, though, so expect to spend about as much time as you would with the in-person class. You can eat snacks and sit in your pajamas, though. And no lame comedian, either.
posted by fructose at 6:27 PM on December 8, 2008

My experience has been that not only does taking the defensive driving course eliminate the ticket, but it also reduces your auto insurance for a year. When you take the course, you get a certificate of sorts. One copy goes to the courthouse along with the fee (and that forgives the ticket), and the other copy goes to the auto insurance company (and that lowers your rate, because you took a defensive driving course).

You might call your insurance company and ask if they discount rates if you take the course (no need to mention the ticket). Then, factor that in to the total cost of having the ticket dismissed via the course versus an attorney.
posted by Houstonian at 6:39 PM on December 8, 2008

I did online traffic school in Texas back in 2004. Piece of cake, and I was able to work on e-mail and projects at the same time. They were also responsive to a problem I had with the login -- they e-mailed back in an hour at 10 pm about it. I checked my e-mails and have a gap there so I can't say who it was, but if I ever get pulled over again I'll be on online traffic school like white on rice.
posted by crapmatic at 7:18 PM on December 8, 2008

You might call your insurance company and ask if they discount rates if you take the course (no need to mention the ticket).

Every time there's a policy change, though, some companies will ask if you had a ticket in the last X number of years, so I'm not sure about the idea of trying for discounts.
posted by crapmatic at 7:21 PM on December 8, 2008

Anecdotally, when I tell people from other states about Missouri's system, they act surprised and call us corrupt. I suppose when you think about it, bribing your way out of a ticket is a little shady, as well as undemocratic (since the poor can't do it). *shrug*

Traffic school seems to be the answer in most other states, and it's usually a one-time deal.
posted by chrisamiller at 7:40 PM on December 8, 2008

Online traffic school is the least painful, most advantageous way to banish the ticket. If you're a fast study and internet savvy, you can blaze through the eight-hour course in nearly half that time. Many do.

As for legal-eagle ticket-fixers, beware of ubiquitous ads by firms boasting they can get your ticket dismissed through secret, super-duper lawyer tricks, and that they have astronomically high success rates in doing so.

Some charge hundreds of dollars merely to send out form responses that you can submit yourself after purchasing a good "how-to" book on the subject. If and when they lose, and the court finds you guilty of the traffic offense, these firms then attempt to encourage you to appeal your ticket if you'll give them another few hundred bucks to fight on your behalf. And again, they'll boast astronomically high success appeal success rates. "If it sounds too good to be true..."
posted by terranova at 7:56 PM on December 8, 2008

Just do online traffic school. I did a text-based one, not a video-based one, and was able to use my browser's search function to answer all the questions in the final exam in about 45 minutes. There is no other easy way to get a traffic ticket dismissed unless you know a cop who owes you a favor.
posted by ikkyu2 at 8:03 PM on December 8, 2008

Chrisamiller- that explains a lot.

Ikkyu2 and Terranova- thanks for the advice. It is true that in Missouri you can basically just pay a lawyer to fix your ticket. Apparently that doesn't work elsewhere (which explains a very awkward conversation I had with a traffic lawyer today).

Looks like I'm going to traffic school.
posted by Thin Lizzy at 8:25 PM on December 8, 2008

Nthing the recommendations for online traffic school...it's ridiculously easy and, if you are a reasonably quick reader, you can get through it in about 2 hours. I've done it about 3 or 4 times, seriously (though not recently)!
posted by dhammond at 8:35 PM on December 8, 2008

Speaking as a person who once prosecuted traffic tickets... (this is not legal advice, not your lawyer, etc)

Think of traffic school as something like a condition of probation. That is the usual deal offered by the court that handles traffic offenses because it helps move things along. You don't have to do traffic school, maybe if you discussed with the prosecutor in person, you could show it's not necessary in your case.

You could plead not guilty and spend at least 3 separate mornings or afternoons for traffic ticket docket calls to get to court. At one of them, you should have an opportunity to speak to the prosecutor. If you have a pretty good reason for not being guilty (i.e. I wasn't speeding - cop was wrong) your ticket should be dismissed. It's helpful to bring a copy of a clean driving record.

Of course, if you admit to committing the violation, at best you could get away with just paying court costs (which the prosecutor generally has no control to lower).

There really shouldn't be a downside, other than your time wasted, to go in person. The prosecutor should be offering you the same deal the court offers in person.

Hiring a lawyer wouldn't be that great of an advantage. They tend to know the prosecutor and call them directly to work a deal out, but generally what they get isn't because of some specialized legal training. It's just good people skills. Sometimes attorneys get worse deals than non-lawyers simply because the attorneys don't really care about their clients interests that much.

Most people just take the course because they know they are guilty and/or its just too inconvenient to go to court to fight it. But if you had the time, you could fight it yourself and probably get a better deal. I hate to use the word "fight" though, because it's really just a negotiation.
posted by abdulf at 8:43 PM on December 8, 2008

Online traffic school is the way to go, and there are schools that you can speed through as fast as you can - at least there were a couple of years ago, last time I did it. Took about an hour all told.

You are limited to those schools approved by the court though; maybe the courts have gotten wise and want to reinstitute the punishment aspect of traffic school.
posted by DandyRandy at 9:32 AM on December 9, 2008

I did the online traffic school, and I'll recommend that you do not do the one listed at AffordableHomeStudy.com. Their text is full of typos, they often assert things that aren't true, the narrative encapsulation that they use to reprint the factoids from whatever fuckin' book they took them from are insane (and you'll be questioned on their insanity) and they have a javascript counter that requires that you waste your time staring at the screen for exactly the same amount of time as you would have spent in class. You should be able to read the page in three minutes, and then will have seventeen minutes to wait. You can't even tab away to other pages or select other windows.

That all said, it cost slightly less than the ticket (for rolling a stop sign) and saved me quite a bit on the insurance. So I'd just recommend going to another traffic school, as that one sucks ass.
posted by klangklangston at 11:26 AM on December 9, 2008