Seen on the AP wire:
A man with a penchant for speedy driving has come up with an unusual tactic for beating speeding tickets — raise the limit. So far this year, Larry Lemay has been ticketed four times for speeding.
Rather than slow down, Lemay is suing the state Department of Transportation to study traffic and speed limits across New Hampshire, to see whether limits could be raised. Lemay’s lawsuit, filed in Strafford County Superior Court, also asks a judge to order the Transportation Department to pay for his legal fees and the cost of the study, an estimated $1,853.
Lemay said he believes many speed limits are set intentionally low so the state can cash in on drivers.
I can believe that frequently speed limits are set more as a result of politics or local whims, rather than via surveys and engineering studies. I can also believe that on occasion, a local entity might use creative speed limit designations to augment municipal revenues. However, something tells me that suing the state DOT might not be the most successful legal tactic ever concocted to fight a speeding ticket.
Sometimes the law is the law, even when it’s arbitrary or just plain silly.
1 response so far ↓
1 Larry Lemay // 26 Oct 2007 at 4:43 pm
Just wanted to say that I’m not suing the DOT to fight a speeding ticket. I beat the ticket long before I filed the lawsuit to force the DOT to conduct an engineering and traffic survey that will surely rid this section of Route 155 of an obvious speed trap.