Author:
This is quite similar
|
[
Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message
]
Date Posted: 15:17:08 11/19/07 Mon
In reply to:
Fed Up
's message, "Have you ever received a speeding ticket in Massachusetts? It may have been ILLEGAL" on 14:48:17 11/01/07 Thu
Monday, November 19, 2007
Justice isn’t always on the radar
Clive McFarlane
cmcfarlane@telegram.com
T&G STAFF
Mike Galante wouldn’t mind running into a throwback police officer once in a while, or at least on the occasions when he is caught — as he was in October — going 50 in a 30 mph zone.
“There used to be a time when a police officer would stop you for speeding, and they would want to know why you are speeding,” the West Boylston resident told me last week.
“They would ask, ‘What is the problem today? Why are you in such a rush?’ You might have an emergency. Maybe you are trying to get to the hospital. But do they care? No.
“There is no conversation today. They just walk up, take your license, write the ticket and leave.
“How is that supposed to make people feel?”
Unloved, I would imagine.
But Mr. Galante didn’t exactly call to bemoan the decline of civility in the city’s traffic department. He called to say he was the victim of a highway robbery.
He had received his October speeding ticket on East Mountain Street, not far from the Worcester Country Club entrance. A police officer, manning a speed trap, he claimed, illegally zapped him with a radar gun.
The posted 30 mph limit on East Mountain, according to Mr. Galante, is illegal. Any sign establishing a speed limit must be approved by the Massachusetts Highway Department, and the speed limit signs on East Mountain Street, he said, are not so approved and are, thus, unenforceable.
He is correct, according to Richard Wilson, an MHD traffic engineer.
“According to our records, no special speed regulations exist for East Mountain Street in Worcester,” he wrote to Mr. Galante.
“In other words, there should not be any signs purporting to establish a speed limit on this roadway.”
Erik Abell, a spokesperson for MHD, noted, however, that drivers are required to slow down in areas such as school zones and thickly settled areas or business districts.
According to a law called the prima facie speed limit law, a motorist — even without a posted speed limit sign — cannot, for example, exceed 30 mph on roadways that run within thickly settled areas or business districts.
An officer, however, must follow a motorist for a specified distance (1/8 of a mile in a thickly settled area or business district) to determine whether the motorist is exceeding the 30 mph limit established by prima facie law.
This means, according to Mr. Galante, that even if the city claims East Mountain Street is within a thickly settled area, which it has claimed, speed traps — use of hand-held radars — are illegal.
Robert L. Moylan Jr., the city commissioner of public works and parks, said East Mountain Street satisfies the state’s prima facie law requirement as a 30 mph zone.
“I think it is a moot point whether the posted signs are approved,” he said. “The police officer has great discretion — taking into account the condition of the roadway, the weather, children walking by — in citing someone for speeding.”
Mr. Abell claims that if the state “learns of a roadway that is improperly signed, we will ask the community to remove the sign.”
But Mr. Galante notified the state Highway Department about the illegal signs on East Mountain Street early last month and Mr. Moylan has yet to hear from the state on the matter.
The state can withhold highway funding from communities that erect and maintain unapproved speed limit signs, but I don’t see anyone sweating over this at City Hall.
The only person sweating here is Mr. Galante.
“These illegal speed limits are damaging people’s driving records and driving up their insurance costs,” he said.
“There is a difference between public safety and raising revenues.”
His only recourse, he has been told, is to appeal his ticket. He has, but he’d better make sure his record is otherwise spotless when he turns up at court.
I don’t think the city, or the state for that matter, will take too kindly to someone trying to break up such a lucrative speeding ticket racket.
[
Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message
]
|
Feedback: 