Top 10 Ways to Avoid a Speeding Ticket

As a former Traffic Cop who now fights speeding tickets many times people ask me is there some trick to radar or laser or is there some special way to beat these traffic tickets at court?

Although there are lots of ways to fight your speeding ticket with OTT Legal probably the best way is to not get the ticket in the first place. So here is my top ten ways to avoid a speeding ticket.

1. Don't Speed, yes its obvious but if you set in your mind a mental picture to follow the speed limit you avoid getting the ticket in the first place. Be cognizant about what the speed limit is. If you don't see a sign then in the city the speed limit is always 50 and in the country it's 80km/h.

2. Avoid being the lead vehicle. The police target the traffic coming towards them. If you're the first car and you're speeding, you're the person that's going to get stopped first. If you know you're speeding try to get another faster car in front of you, so that they get stopped not you.

3. Stay out of the passing lane. Many times the police target the passing lane because that's where the faster vehicles are driving. Try to stay in the curb lane as much as possible. If your on the highway many times the police just target the fast lane, because its dangerous for them to go across lanes trying to get you stopped.

4. Look ahead. If you look down the road sometimes you can see the police car before the officer can target you with the radar gun. Typically the police are targeting vehicles around the 300 metre mark. If you see a police vehicle on the roadway slow down well before you reach it.

5. Slow down going over or down hills. The police like hills, because you have to either push on the gas going up the hill or the vehicle naturally accelerates going down. Also you can't always see a police vehicle stopped behind hill, slow down at hills.

6. Watch the Ramps. While traveling on the highways watch as you come up to ramps. The police like to sit on the ramps because it gives them a higher elevation to look down onto the highway and its a safe spot to sit.

The down side for the officer is that most of the time the radar or laser can only look forward or ahead of the police car. You have to pass the police car or ramp before the officer can target your vehicle.

As you drive down the highway watch the ramps for police vehicles and you should be able to slow down before the officer can catch you speeding.

7. Use your cruise control. If you set the cruise control at or near the limit you avoid going over the speed limit inadvertently.

8. Go no more than 10 or 15 kilometres over the limit.

Although not always the case most police officers set a buffer of about 15 to 20 as an acceptable amount over the speed limit. After going past this you leave yourself open to being caught.

9. Once your stopped for speeding, if you can get out and speak with the officer.

The more you talk to the officer and explain what happened or if you have an excuse or story to tell, the higher the chance that the officer will let you off with a warning. If you say nothing then for sure you will receive the ticket. Although some officers will not even want you to get out of the vehicle, if you can talk to the officer.

10. If you do talk to the officer, be polite and acknowledge that you were speeding. You will gain nothing by being rude or disrespectful to the officer.

If you do receive a speeding ticket give us a call at OTT Legal to fight your ticket to win!

Thousands of Speeding Tickets mean Thousands of Dollars in "Back To School"

Where does the money go from speeding tickets?

Answer: To the municipality whose officer issues the tickets!

As Ontario school children headed back to school, local police issued thousands of speeding ticket in the name of a "Back to School Campaign". The municipality of Clarington Ontario is advertising to the media that the local police have issued 1,500 speeding tickets.

The math is, 1500 times 100 dollars equals $150,000.00 in fines in two weeks.

As police departments send out their army of police officers to write speeding tickets in the name of public safety, the city collects thousands of dollars in traffic ticket fines.

Of the thousands of dollars created by the police how much goes back into actually making school zones safer from speeding motorists... not much.

After years of complaining that speeding motorists put our children at risk, how much traffic calming has been installed around school zones to slow down drivers when the police are not watching?

When are they going to install traffic calming and implement road design that makes traffic move slowly through a school zone? When the municipalities stop making millions of dollars per year on traffic ticket fines that's when.

Every year the police send their army of officers out to collect fees for speeding tickets, and it doesn't seem to stop the problem. Traffic calming, like bicycle lanes, stop signs, road design and speed bumps would stop the speeding within school zones but how much have you actually seen of this.

Of the thousands of motorists caught speeding in Ontario, most were driving less than 20 km/h over the limit, hardly dangerous, and certainly at a level that a speed bump would have slowed them down to a crawl.

Lets put an end to this revenue system for the municipality, get the police doing more productive work and install some speed bumps and traffic calming.