Damn Ticket!

As I wrote about back in October, I got a speeding ticket.

The address on my license was an old one, so I figured I wouldn’t be getting anything about the ticket in the mail because they would be sending it to the address on my license. I pulled up the Orange County Courts website to see what I would need to do before my deadline date December 3rd. I found out there's a court house right around the corner from my work and decided to head over there to pay my fine to get it out of the way before Christmas.

When I got there they looked at my ticket and told me it was a mandatory court appearance. Well that’s just great. So I arranged for a night court session the 20th of December. I showed up, get signed in, and waited for my name to be called. It’s was a looooong 3 hours. I was finally called before the judge and he asked for proof of registration and insurance. I showed him those and he signed off on them on the ticket. Then he looked at the speeding portion of my ticket. He told me to sit back down while he has my driving record pulled up. I wait another 20 minutes until he finally has it. He called me back up and asked if I would like to take traffic school. (Because I was going 25 mph + over the speed limit, technically I was ineligible for traffic school.) I asked if I could and he said that since I had a clean driving record I could take traffic school. Just when I thought he was being nice, he then tacked a $100 penalty on my ticket costs bringing the grand total to $400. ($250 for speeding, $100 penalty, and $50 for traffic school.)

So that is what all the “damn ticket” references are referring to.

Damn Ticket!

Anyway, I just finished up two, 4 hour sessions of traffic school yesterday. I think I may have learend my (very expensive) lesson.