Richmond Speeding Enforcement
If you want to contest a speeding ticket in Richmond, your lawyer can go to court on your behalf without you having to appear in Richmond at all. This is convenient for out-of-state drivers because they don’t have to plead guilty while also avoiding having to come back. Having an experienced Richmond speeding ticket lawyer represent you preserve all the possibilities for you as well as it saves you time and money and possibly a conviction in the long run.
Being unaware of Richmond’s traffic laws is not a defense in Richmond or really anywhere in Virginia. The laws are in place because of safety concerns. It’s not going to matter if someone didn’t realize that going 80 miles per hour or more is excessive speeding and considered reckless driving. They’re going to be charged the same because what they were doing was unsafe.
What Out-of-State Drivers Should Know About Richmond Speeding Tickets
They should know that speeding tickets in Richmond are very serious. Richmond, and more generally Virginia, is very proud of the fact that they have one of the lowest accident rates on the highway in the country. Judges are not going to be very lenient with speeders in general and have heard every excuse in the book. Another thing out-of-state drivers should know is that speeding tickets are so serious in Richmond that they can also be charged as criminal offenses, which is a much more complicated situation than just a traffic infraction.Out-of-state drivers should be 100% informed of exactly what they’re being charged with and what the implications of that charge are.
Excessive speeding is considered a type of reckless driving, but there are also other types of reckless driving which are different moving violations that don’t necessarily include speeding.
How Richmond Police Officers Prove Speeding
In Richmond, there are three common ways that officers use to prove that somebody was speeding. Two of them involve equipment and these are radar and LIDAR instruments and the third is pacing, which is when the officer follows a targeted vehicle and matches the speed with his own vehicle and monitors it that way.
Police officers in Richmond use specialized speed detecting equipment to see how fast drivers are going. This equipment includes different types of paperwork that supports that the equipment was functioning properly. This is how officers can prove in court that not only do they believe you were speeding, but their equipment that has paperwork backing it up, also backs up their opinion. It’s not necessarily your word against the officers. It’s your word against the officer’s word plus the officer’s equipment plus the paperwork that the officer should have present.
If you don’t think that you were going that fast, you’re going to need a little bit more than just your opinion in court to prove this. You and your Richmond speeding ticket attorney can prove this by having witnesses or a video or other evidence to support your position. Unfortunately, it’s not very common for people who are charged with speeding to have any evidence that is going to be stronger than a calibration certificate for the officer’s radar gun.
Richmond law enforcement officers can tell if you’re speeding because they are routinely monitoring traffic using their radar guns and their LIDAR guns as well as pacing vehicles and monitoring traffic with cameras.