Car Towed After Getting 893 Tickets

Welcome once again to Layto's Law. Here's Steve Layto.

Got kind of a well stored here for you out of D.C. James Senate thanks a lot from Yahoo Finance.

Chris Morris wrote it, a driver managed to get 893 tickets and 260,000 fines before getting their

car toad. 893 tickets and over a quarter of a million dollars in fines. So getting a single ticket

is not that big of a deal. In fact, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics,

your odds of getting one in any given year are roughly one in five. That seems high to me,

but that's what they say. Having more than one, however, is a rarity, but one Virginia driver managed

to rack up 893 violations without paying any of them. The fines totaled over 260,000 dollars before

the car, which is a black Audi with Maryland plates, was towed away by police in Washington, D.C.

on April 8th. So that's the question. How do you get that many tickets before the car gets towed?

So D.C. Police Department wrote in a social media post, repeated disregard of traffic law is

unacceptable. We'll continue to track down scoff law vehicles to keep D.C. roadways safe. And of

course, if they're not going to tell your car to hit 893, it's not a big threat, but we'll see.

The owner of this car managed to elude authorities for quite some time in the district of Colombia,

a vehicle can be eligible for being booted after just two unpaid violations that are more than

60 days old, according to the rules of the D.C. Department of Public Works. Most of the tickets for

this Audi came from speeding and red light violations, according to officials, but police did not

comment on whether the owner could face possible arrest for the long list of violations and the

steep amount. Oh, now keep in mind that the automated tickets are often created automatically

and then mailed to you. So there is no actual interaction live with a police officer.

But the question is out of the 893 violations, was the person ever pulled over and faced

to face with an officer? Because you think that they could then pull it up and go, oh, did you

know you got 890 some odd tickets that are unpaid? Do you know that? The Audi was impounded by

D.C. PD and D.C. Department of Public Works, but not without the public shaming on social media.

Now, fines for speeding tickets vary by region, and of course, how fast you're going. The average

ticket costs between $80 and $1,000, including court fees, depending on which state issues it,

and if you got court costs and all that other stuff. And of course, the faster you go, the more you

pay. That hits the wallet rather hard, but the real pain comes a few months later when it's time

to renew your auto insurance policy. A study by an insurance company tool found that driving

violations can raise premiums by anywhere from 2% to 70% depending on the severity of the

infraction. I'm just here to tell you as an attorney, drunk driving is the one that will cause your

rates to skyrocket, just will. Other ones like reckless driving and of course, excessive speed will

do it too. Because violations, standard driving record for three years, at least those higher rates

can stick around for quite a while. Speeding also leads to a 22% increase in premiums or about

$340 a year for the average vehicle report found. Running a red light, bumps those costs up by 21%

or about $325. Now, few people are defending the driver of the Audi, but there were questions more

about how it happened. The note that most of the tickets came from automated systems suggests that

not all of them were. The question is, did anybody ever lay their eyes on this car realizing how

many outstanding tickets it had? Somebody asked, why do you guys wait for dangerous driver to accumulate

over a quarter of a million dollars in fines before doing something that can prevent someone from

getting killed? How did you allow us to go on for so long? You have cameras all over the city to

catch this another commented. Police did not respond to requests for comment. As for drivers in the

DC area or any other state, there's some very generalized advice. Of course, you can avoid tickets by

doing the speed limit or less, paying close attention to street signs and understand that rules

are strictly enforced, especially if a machine is kicking off the tickets. But if you do find yourself

with a ticket, there's things you can do. Understand that there's a question about whether the ticket goes

to the owner of the vehicle or the driver. Always, of course, make sure that these things don't happen

with somebody else using your car, your car has been stolen. Make sure the signs that are relevant

are there and can be seen. Make sure the parking meters operate. Double check the facts on the

parking ticket to make sure it's accurate. And so on. As for red lights, a request for an adjudication

within specified time frame on the ticket needs to be made. Options do include online by mail or

in person at a DMV adjudication service center. So there's that. But what I'm really wondering about

and here's the thing. They've got these wonderful things called computers, computers. And

computers now can actually, and this is going to sound crazy, communicate with each other so that

if you've got a computer and I've got a computer, there is a way for me to communicate with you

through my computer to your computer to you. And so many entities like law enforcement,

the government, big companies follow me. I know this is complicated. We'll have computer programs

that do things like track. Oh, I don't know tickets. So a police department, if they could want,

if they wanted to, they could set the system up so that it counts how many tickets a particular

car has or that a particular person has. And it could flag that file when he hits a certain number.

Two, two, it turns out that they're allowed to do something different. Two or three or 890.

And now it could be that all of these were kicked up by automatic ticket devices. It's possible.

And if that's the case, well, okay, but my understanding also is that nowadays these police

departments have got license plate readers in their cars. And they just drive around a traffic

and parking lots. And the license plate readers looking for license plates and spots a license plate.

And so if any of these tickets were written by officers standing by the car who chose not to

have the car immediately booted and or towed at that moment in time, then you've got a serious problem.

But 893 tickets, but I'm going to let you know, this does happen all over the place. I remember

seeing an article, somebody did a FOIA request and got a list of all the unpaid tickets out of the

city of Detroit. And sadly, the number one offender was an attorney. I believe, and this is

hazy because a few years ago, but it was an attorney from Ohio who was also licensed in Michigan.

And apparently came up to Wayne County Circuit Court quite a bit. And the parking around the

Wayne County Circuit Court building is, shall we say scarce and expensive and difficult to deal with.

So if you're driving around under looking for a spot and you see a spot on the street, you're

tempted to grab it. But of course, if you go into Wayne County Circuit Court and you're hearing

a set for 830 that morning, you might not get called till noon. And I don't think the meters ran

that long. And so I've gotten a few parking tickets down there myself. I pay them, but I've gotten them

that it happens, you know. And I remember seeing somebody who had, I believe, in the hundreds of

tickets. And that was back at a time when they were being handwritten. And you'd think that you have

some kind of system to let people know the people writing the tickets. We're looking for this car.

If you see it, like they should want to bounty on it, you know, to get that vehicle

into their possession to try to get the person with all the tickets to pay the tickets, work

something out or do something. But it's a crazy story. James, thanks for sending that from Yahoo

finance. And these numbers are quite large. Driver managed to get 893 tickets and a quarter of a

million dollars in fines before the car got towed. Questions or comments, put them below this

talk to you later. Bye bye. Thank you for watching Lato's Law.

The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.