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Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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I have only gotten one parking ticket, and that was in Quebec City in 1971, because I didn't read French on the sign "Defense de Stationner". Now speeding is another story, I probably got 15+ from age 16-30, then one in the late 1990s, but have been doing better lately, including the last year with no tickets driving a red Challenger.
I've lost count. My lifetime speeding ticket total is probably between 15 and 20.
My last one was a speed trap in Colorado on 285 going up the hill from Denver in a rental car. That showed up on my insurance 3 years ago. I was kind of bludgeoned into submission about speeding in New England and hadn't had a ticket in quite a while.
Virginia - passed an unmarked car on the interstate highway. I looked over. He put his smoky bear hat on.
Quebec outside Montreal - The cop made me pay cash on the spot or I'd go to jail. I fortunately had US dollars that would cover it.
84 mph in a 55 in Danbury CT.
81 mph in a 65 zone in Manchester, NH
I got one in RI I failed to pay. A decade later, I had to drive a few hours to appear in court so my out-of-state license didn't get suspended.
I had a bunch of others that were all pretty vanilla. These days, I use adaptive cruise control and go the speed limit or a couple miles over on the secondary roads and speed limit + 9 on interstate highways. I don't get over 80 mph very often and it's by accident when I have the cruise control off.
I don't live in a city so I don't get parking tickets very often. I got towed a couple times in Boston years ago.
Since 1986 I've had two speeding tickets. Only one parking ticket from a parking meter running out of time too fast. These were mechanical meters and my digital stop watch said I had several minutes to spare.
I've probably gotten about 10 parking tickets, all within the last two and a half years. Parking in Philadelphia is terrible and the PPA is ruthless (just watch Parking Wars on A&E).
I've gotten pulled over for speeding 3 times. The first time I was 21 and I was going 80 in a 65 (on the interstate), and had my elderly grandmother with me. I think the only reason the cop let me off was because she was with me.
The second time I was headed to work early one morning and I was going down a hill at 65 in a 40. My dad has the same first and last name as a police lieutenant in my hometown, and because my car was in his name at the time, the cop let me off with a warning because he thought my father was the cop with the same name.
The third time I got pulled over for going 87 in a 65 (again on the interstate) on Easter Sunday. I think the cop was pissed he had to work the holiday and told me that if he wanted to he could throw me in jail for aggravated speeding. He wrote me a $300 ticket. I decided to fight it in court (even though I was completely guilty), knowing that the prosecutor didn't want to waste time on a traffic ticket. I got it reduced to only $100 after refusing to accept her first offer of $150. I don't think she liked me very much after that, lol.
I seem to get a ticket every three or four years. I drive fast where it is safe to do so, but I am pretty cautious. Never the fasted driver in a crowd, always otherwise drive correctly (use turn signals, seat belt, no zipping back and forth from lane to lane in a stupid attempt to get five cars ahead). still sometimes they care going to pick you out for their ticket of the hour.
In California, you could just go to traffic school and they woudl go away. If you were not eligible for traffic school, you could usually talk them out of issuing ticket. In Michigan if you get a ticket, you can usually get it changed to a non-moving violation that has a higher fine but no points. All they want is money. thus you might have a speeding ticket with a $150 fine but agree to plead guilty to double parking with a $250 fine and you are good to go. No points no insurance increase. Stupid, but that is how it works.
Our insurance is odd. They do not increase your rates for getting a ticket, but the policy we have, you can only keep if you have no tickets. Get a ticket and they cancel you and you have to buy the next level of policy from them (which costs more). Get another ticket and get cancelled again, and move to ten next more expensive policy. For whatever reason, they apparently want or need to avoid raising your rates for getting a ticket, so they create this odd way of doing the same thing without technically raising rates on your policy.
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