The best way for a person to get his or her traffic fine reduced is to show the police officer some type of remorse. According to the Seibert Law Firm’s Kevin Seibert, a Charleston, SC, attorney who frequently works with clients on traffic ticket issues, a person who is apologetic and polite to the responding officer is much more likely to be shown leniency in his case.
Seibert says that in South Carolina, police officers are oftentimes willing to work with people who they have pulled over for basic traffic violations on the road if they are not abrasive or argumentative during the traffic stop. “I have had a lot of phone calls from clients who had four-point tickets and the officer told them, ‘If you go ahead and just pay the fine, then we will drop [the ticket] to two points,” Seibert says.
Receiving fewer points for a traffic violation is a major benefit to drivers, possibly even more so than having an officer agree to lessen the monetary fine, according to Seibert. That is because having points on your driving record can lead to increases in the amount you pay in auto insurance, and in some cases may even lead to someone losing a license temporarily.
Of course, officers are more likely to show leniency if a person’s traffic violation is for something minor. If a person is weaving in and out of lanes at a high speed, then it is unlikely that an officer will offer to reduce his fine, no matter how polite he acts while receiving the citation.
Once the citation has been written by the officer, there is a little that an individual can do to get his traffic ticket reduced in Charleston, SC, besides hiring an attorney. Many people will hire an attorney to minimize the damage from a traffic citation, either to reduce to fines they are required to pay or to reduce the points involved.
Doing this is actually a cost-effective practice, according to Seibert, because a client whose attorney is able to reduce the points he receives for a traffic ticket in Charleston, SC, will most likely be saving more money on insurance premium costs than he will be spending on attorney’s fees. “Attorneys usually charge a relatively small fee for [traffic ticket] negotiations,” Seibert says.
Despite the fact that working with an attorney will often lead to traffic violation fines being reduced, Seibert says only about 50% of people will come to an attorney for help in these situations. Many prefer to simply pay the fines rather than to hire an attorney and fight back.
Among people who have been charged with reckless driving, however, that percentage tends to go up. Because of the high number of driving record points people generally get for reckless driving, along with the citation tickets that can cost $450 or more, people who have been charged with reckless driving are more likely to seek out the help of an attorney than those who simply get traffic tickets.
Meanwhile, there are other people who Seibert has seen try to argue their own cases in front of a judge. While it is perfectly legal for someone to represent himself in traffic court, it is not necessarily a practice that Seibert endorses. “The thing is, you can always do anything essentially yourself,” he says. “It is just do you want to have a chance of making a mistake and making it worse?”
If a person in Charleston, SC, tries to defend himself in a traffic ticket case without an attorney, the worst case scenario is he could end up having his license suspended for a period of time. “I have had a couple of people call in saying they want to pay the fine to expedite things,” Seibert says. “But they don’t realize that their license can be suspended for having pleaded guilty to this code section.”
Seibert uses the example of a person who wants to save money by doing his own plumbing work rather than hiring a pro. Although someone might save money in the short run by doing this kind of work on his own, he is much more likely to need repair work done if the pipe he tried to fix ends up breaking a few years later. The same logic should hold true when it comes to hiring an attorney for a traffic violation - you can handle things yourself, but the hidden costs of doing so can sneak up and hit you where it hurts.
This article is for informational purposes only. You should not rely on this article as a legal opinion on any specific facts or circumstances, and you should not act upon this information without seeking professional counsel. Publication of this article and your receipt of this article does not create an attorney-client relationship.
