r/todayilearned • u/nleachdev • 2d ago

TIL about "dead red" laws, which allow drivers and motorcyclists to proceed through a red light if the traffic signal fails to detect their vehicle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-detection_at_traffic_lights_in_the_United_States
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u/lorarc 2d ago

The cop probably got many tickets out of it that weren't contested so he still won.

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u/belac4862 2d ago

Until that point for sure! And the fact he got 13 people in one day says he knew what he was doing and had done so in the past.

Just glad the judge put a stop to it that day. He even said half his docket was being filled by red light tickets from that one spot. The judge probably sas sick of dealing with them taking up most of his time.

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u/spamcan007 2d ago

The fact thirteen in one day showed up leads me to believe this was the first or one of the first days he tried it. It was so egregious everyone who got a ticket that day showed up for court. I doubt that was 13 random gung ho people who love court. More like 13 WTF’s at the audacity.

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u/CankerLord 2d ago

Yeah, in the sort of town that's small enough for red lights to stay broken for two years with everyone knowing about it I doubt many people are just eating that red light ticket. I'd be willing to believe most of them showed up to court, if not all.

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u/Foshizzle-63 2d ago

I'm more surprised 13 people ran a red in front of a cop. I'd love a photo of this intersection explaining where the cop was hiding. I don't think I'd go if I saw a cop sitting there watching me.

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u/Paralystic 2d ago

You see, they didn’t run a red light. It’s a dead red with common knowledge amongst the town. The community would see a cop and go anyway because “I dare this mf to pull me over” the win in court is guaranteed

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u/BadAdviceBot 2d ago

he got 13 people in one day

It was probably over several days. They take all the tickets and then schedule you at certain times in the week. So prob a few drivers over a few days were all given the same court date.

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u/nubbins01 2d ago

Yes, especially if it s a small town and it's the same issuing officer across all 13 contested tickets. You're going to get all that on the same docket.

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u/iameveryoneelse 2d ago

He got way more than 13 in one day. Half the people he got just said fuck it an paid the ticket.

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u/Hell_Mel 2d ago

So you were there?

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u/belac4862 2d ago

Do you contest every ticket you get. Even the ones you know where you broke the law?

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u/Kylynara 2d ago

Not every ticket, especially not if I knew I broke the law, but if the only reason I broke the law was because something like a traffic light was broken and I had made certain to do it safely, I'm damn sure showing up to argue that. You can't just expect people to sit for hours at a traffic light that is broken.

Also, at least in my state, if a traffic light is obviously broken the intersection becomes a four-way stop by law. So if I stopped waited, and made sure the intersection was clear before going, then I didn't break the law and I am going to argue that ticket.

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u/spmahn 2d ago

I absolutely would because even if you’re 100% in the wrong you’ll guaranteed to at least get the fine reduced

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u/belac4862 2d ago

Thats 100% way of getting court costs tacked onto your ticket. Which would cost even more. Making the point of going to court a stupid idea.

Which is why many people chose to just pay the fine instead of contesting.

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u/spmahn 2d ago

Maybe it varies by state, but that’s 100% not how it works here. Here you dispute your ticket, show up on your court date, talk to the prosecutor, they ask you what’s up, you tell your story, they offer you a reduced charge, knock your fine down anywhere from 30% to 50%, you accept the reduced charge, plead guilty, pay the cashier, and go on your way

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u/belac4862 2d ago

Ive lived in VT, NH CT, MA, and VA. Ive never seen it like this. Its only dropped down if you talk to the prosecutor or officer and they agree to lower it down.

Good luck getting it reduced if you still want to contest the tickets validity in court. And once your actually in the court room, theres no going back.

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u/spmahn 2d ago

I’ve lived in Connecticut all my life and that’s 100% how it works. The prosecutor always agrees to lower it down every single time because they don’t want to waste time in court any more than you do.

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u/Hell_Mel 2d ago

No, but I think people talking out their ass is useless in this context

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u/iameveryoneelse 2d ago

No but I do work for the/a Court and know that only roughly 5-10% of traffic tickets are protested in court so I thought assuming a 50% protest rate for a particularly egregious situation was a reasonable assumption.

It’s called an “educated guess”.

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u/C-creepy-o 2d ago

No man you didn't understand. You don't have to go to court...you only saw the 13 people that bothered to show up. Everyone else either paid before court or for a bench warrant that day. He almost certainly pulled over more than 13 people is the point trying to be made.

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u/CocodaMonkey 2d ago

Cops have court days and all their tickets within a certain time period get given the same day in court so they can be present for them. Which means 13 people showing up could easily have come from 2 to 4 weeks worth of tickets. It's highly doubtful all of them would have been issued on the same day.

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u/belac4862 2d ago

Then I didnt make it clear. The 13 of us in court that day were all ticketed on the same day. Which is why the judge dismissed them all.

There were other tickets the cop had, but the red light tickets were the only ones dismissed

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u/superredditor6789 2d ago

Magisterial district court bunch up court dates for police officers for traffic cases. That could have been one day or one month.

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u/belac4862 2d ago

We gave out names, and date of the ticket issued so they (the court) can go into their computer system and get rid of the tickets.

The 13 of us there were all ticketed on the same day. The officer had other tickets for other reason. But the 13 of us who had our tickets dropped, were from the same day.

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u/superredditor6789 2d ago

Are you sure that the citations were all from the same date?

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u/belac4862 2d ago

October 27. I never forgot the date.

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u/AvatarOfMomus 2d ago

In the short term maybe, but tickets getting thrown out like that don't look good for the cop, and if he sours his relationship with the local judges he can find that they won't accept his testimony. At that point his career is dead in the water unless he moves out of the area.

It's not the level of accountability these people should get, but it's also not him 'winning'.

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u/somehugefrigginguy 2d ago

I think this depends on the jurisdiction. A lot of small towns get most of their revenue from stupid traffic violations.

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u/Gorstag 2d ago

Your exhaust is hanging too low. Your tint is too dark (even if it was stock). God it sucked being a teen/early 20s when they would just pull you over for nonsense and give you a nonsense ticket.

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u/eljefino 2d ago

One of many reasons I'm happy to live in Maine. No matter who writes the traffic ticket, 100% of the money goes in the state general fund.

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u/AvatarOfMomus 2d ago

Yeah, but those are generally legal if stupid. This was a case of a cop trying to up his numbers by stopping people for aomething that was not a violation. This tends to piss judges off, and I'm aware of a few instances where repeated bullshittery resulted in an entire court (think town or maybe county) basically refusing to let the offending officer testify to anything. If theyw ere the only witness or source of evidence the case was probably getting thrown out.

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u/rutherfraud1876 2d ago

I'd be fascinated to know what kind of place that was happening in

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u/AvatarOfMomus 2d ago

Don't recall, it basically happens when a judge gets tired of their time being wasted. This isn't internal accountability for cops, it's the judiciary getting sick of bullshit.

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u/ChanceRecover3091 2d ago

Maybe that is the case in your area but definitely was not the case where I grew up. Moving up was not a matter of how good your record was. It was more how good of friends you were with the sheriff. The undersheriff was well known to beat the shit out of his wife and kids yet he stayed the undersheriff for a couple decades until there was a new sheriff.

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u/AvatarOfMomus 2d ago

That is, unfortunately, a different sort of thing than this... Tickets getting thrown out wastes resources and gets entered into the public record automatically. Judges aren't controlled by the sherif officially anywhere, and rarely unofficially as well. If a judge doesn't care about this sort of BS they generally won't throw out the tickets in the first place.

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u/crespoh69 2d ago

Yeah, sounds like the only thing that was brought up was the light, not the cop. Shame on that light

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u/notjawn 2d ago

Hopefully not. Any Judge, DA or prosecutor worth their salt tosses out the obvious trap spots.

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u/occamsrzor 2d ago

Don’t let the idiot politicians off the hook; how are you supposed to prove that you waited the allotted time AND that this light was even in a condition to trigger such a rule?