Unlike popular opinion, traffic ticket and speeding ticket lawyers are not always about using sly tricks and procedural loopholes like subpoenaing the official and hoping he does not appear. Some times it is actually about practicing law, properly questioning witnesses, pointing out the flaws within the city's situation, and winning must be traffic infraction actually didn't occur. And it is sometimes a lot more technical than that. Let me give an illustration to you to show what I am discussing.

This case comes out of real-life, in the City of Seattle (my city, where I'm a traffic lawyer, by the way). It's actually a pretty unhappy story, but the one that demonstrates what having a great ticket lawyers for traffic stops on your side can perform for you. Listed below are the reality.

There clearly was a man driving a vehicle in Seattle in September of 2006. It was the morning, and he was likely on his way to function, on his way into a job site, running an errand, or some other innocuous thing. He was driving the speed limit. He had never had a traffic infraction before. He was sober. He had maybe not been using drugs. And his life was going to change forever.

He was traveling southbound on the two-way road (there was traffic coming northbound) and sooner or later all through his travel he had a need to produce a left-turn. Like all of us do, he waited in the junction for on-coming traffic to obvious, and he proceeded to create his turn. Nevertheless, on this day, in this intersection, a biker was proceeding southbound. And the driver of the vehicle didn't see her.

I do not believe the collision was severe, but it did trigger the bicyclist to drop off her bike. And, tragically, while she was wearing a helmet, she suffered head injuries finally resulting in her death. After the event the driver was forthcoming with his fault for failure to produce, he and his insurance company settled with the bicyclist's family, and he tried to go on with his life.

King County police reviewed the case to determine if there was any have to file criminal charges, while the van driver was trying to move one from this horrendous occasion, as typically occurs in situations like this. In the long run, only 1 chance existed for a criminal charge under the facts - vehicular manslaughter. The requirements for vehicular manslaughter, however, didn't quite fit this example. One of three items is needed: (1) operating a vehicle while intoxicated; (2) operating a vehicle recklessly; or (3) operating a vehicle with reckless disregard for the safety of others. In cases like this, none of these happened. Because of that King County declined to press charges.

Town of Seattle, nevertheless, wasn't willing to stop trying therefore quickly. They had recently passed an ordinance when great bodily injury or death resulted in the violations criminalizing traffic infractions. In this case, the Town decided the van driver had committed the crime of assault to the bicyclist, and they went after him. The situation with this, from the perspective of the van driver's Seattle traffic lawyer, was the Washington State Legislature clearly made many traffic violations non-criminal infractions, punishable by fine only. And, wouldn't you know, failure to yield was some of those crimes.

So, the Seattle traffic lawyer moved the court to dismiss the charges based on the invalidity of the statute. And the judge denied the motion. After a bench test found the van driver guilty of assault underneath the statute, they appealed the determination to the King County Superior court. At that court, the statute was viewed for what it was, a circumvention of the law as developed by the Washington State legislature, and ruled the statute invalid. After appealing that decision to the Court of Appeals and losing (you can read that decision here, the Town is believed to have quit.

More details would be found on this page.

So, the moral of the story? Finding a traffic ticket lawyers who knows what they're doing will help you immensely, not at all times for that procedural barriers and trips they learn about, but since they also are excellent attorneys focused on a practice area where they are sorely needed.