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Originally Posted by Old Mechanic
The judge will take every effort you have made to convince him you are innocent of any intentional offense, especially something like the time and energy to do a traffic count. DO NOT criticize the officer, COMPLIMENT him on his diligence in observing your erratic driving. Explain the the judge that you are a safe driver who generally goes slower than the traffic flow and gets astounding mileage out of your huge truck, probably twice the average, and something you are proud of and have spent time to perfect.
"Your honor, I was performing and experiment to determine if it would improve my mileage. I was very cognizant of my not interruptiong the flow of traffic and I was not aware of the minimum speed limitation on that particular stretch of road. Had I known ANY of my actiuons could be interpreted as illegal, I would never have considered such actions. Thank you for the time to allow me to explain this."
When you say this look him squarely in the eye, don't blink rapidly, don't flinch, and don't sweat.
Explain to him that you did not realize that there was a minimum speed, since none was posted. The officer corrected that mistake on your part. HUMILITY will go light years towards your charges being reduced, you declared innocent, or some other more positive result. UNDER NO circumstances show the least amount of respect for the courts time or towards anyone.
I'd bet you win, if you want to call any time spent in court a win.
regards
Mech
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Thanks. I like most of what you've said here, especially about respect and humility.
I'm not sure about this part, though:
Quote:
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"Your honor, I was performing and experiment to determine if it would improve my mileage."
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I'm not sure a judge would look too kindly on me "performing experiments" on the public roads.
One thing that has occured to me recently is this. The question of "why" is bound to come up. Not that I technically need to have a reason, but it doesn't look good if I don't have one. I've thought about the "I was performing and experiment" reason (which is true) and don't really like it too much. What is true is that I was almost out of fuel and was trying to stretch it too make it into town (where I live) and fill up. That was mostly the reason I did the EOC (which I don't normally do)--I was reasonably sure I could make it into town without running out of fuel but thought I probably should do everything I should to conserve fuel to be safe. When the cop pulled me over I was about a mile from town. I have my reciept from my fillup in the morning (less than 2 miles from where I got pulled over) showing I put 35 gallons in my truck with a 34 gallon tank. I wanted to make it back to that station because I had a $.60/gal discount on 1 fillup (discount is shown on the receipt. I think I like the "I was trying to save fuel because I was on empty" reason much better than the "I was performing an experiment" reason. Both reasons are true, BTW.