It helped that I was INNOCENT. I stopped at the 4 way stop at Peachtree parkway and Crosstown. It was dark and raining. all 4 cars arrived virtually simultaniously.

The car on my left passed in front of me and I pulled out as soon as he passed me. They have those stupid off set lanes so the car to my right was actually a car lenght ahead of me. One of PTC finest just rounded the curve from Crosstown and saw me "appear" to not stop (since the guy to my right hadn't moved yet.

Bottom line is I went back, took pictures, drew a diagram outlined the sequence etc. I also asked the PTPD for a copy of the dash cam, they said that model car only records when the lights are activated so they had no direct evidence.

The officer also got the light and weather conditions wrong when she testified!

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Fighting for truth, justice and the American way, while ignoring the ignorant!

Hack, I alluded to this earlier in a post last month. Over the Christmas break, one of the snifflespawn cars developed a transmission problem, it kept lurching from 1st gear to 3rd, missing 2nd gear altogether. I tried nursing the car over to the Kedron Goodyear. Over at the stop sign on Georgian Park, a cop saw me lurch forward from the stop sign. He wrote me up for an "incomplete stop".

I was mad about this because I HAD stopped completely. I told my attorney that I wanted to contest this in PTC traffic court and he laughed at me. "Complete waste of time". He recommended two other attorneys who did traffic court cases. BOTH of 'em said the same thing. So I paid the fine...first ticket in 3 decades of driving.

I'd be interested in hearing if anyone actually WON in PTC traffic court.

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Diagnosing Denise

Hope that my fellow aviator is doing well. Thought I'd pass this one along:

Accompanying my son several years ago in PTC Municipal Court after a traffic incident, we were obliged to sit through pretty much the entire caseload before ours came up. One in particular comes to mind that I believes borders upon the ridiculous.

It seems that a lady was charged with harboring a vicious animal within the city limits, and upon explaining the circumstances she was still found guilty and was given the choice of a fine or two weeks in jail.

What happened is that one afternoon her pet cat had found its way out of the house and climbed over the fence into their neighbors yard whereupon it proceeded to do what most cats would do when encountering a rabbit. Of course, the neighbor's child witnessed the demise of its pet rabbit and began screaming which alerted the passing police car. The two officers immediately wrote up the lady for harboring such a vicious animal, thus the court appearance.

What subsequently happened is that since the neighbors were the best of friends, the rabbit was replaced, the cat put down, and all thought the incident could be forgotten. But no, the police (court) would not drop the charge even at the request of the child's parents.

As the lady nervously agreed to pay the fine so as to not go to jail, all I could do was simply shake my head in disbelief.