"Racing Citation" for going less than 40 in a 35

[hopps01]

"Racing Citation" for going less than 40 in a 35

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So this is pretty f'd up and I saw someone else in these forums with a similar but very different situation who had posted and gotten a fair number of responses so I thought I would see what you guys thought. I will note early on that I am 22 with a perfect driving record, no accidents, no speeding tickets, and no parking tickets in 7 years, yet with roughly 50-70,000 miles under my belt.

I was designated driver for the evening and behind the wheel of my friends 2007 BMW 335i (he trusts me... alot apparently). We pulled up to a stoplight that an early 2000 mustang had been waiting at for a few seconds. The mustang started revving its engine. My friend and I had a good laugh. The light turned green and before the mustang even had time to reach the floor pedal, we were a good 4 car lengths in front of him. At this point I stopped accelerating. I never hit 40 mph, in fact I stopped accelerating as soon as I hit second gear. The mustang turned left after a block, maybe two. We laughed about how quickly my friends car could accelerate and continued driving down the road doing the speed limit. This is when I noticed the unfriendly headlights and the slight glimmer of a roof rack in the dark on the car behind us. I sighed realizing it was a cop and hoped that I hadn't done anything that appeared wreckless. Since I had not reached excessive speeds by any means and since the mustang had immediately turned off the road, I was not worried too much about any kind of ticket, so I started hugging the speed limit and following every good driver habit possible. The officer continued to follow me for about another minute and what amounted to about 8 blocks going exactly the speed limit before turning on his lights.

I was cited for "racing" against a car I did not know that turned off the road immediately and to top it all off, the road we were on merged together which also gave me the excuse of accelerating ahead to get in front of him and merge over. Unfortunately the cop heard the stupid mustang revving his engine and decided that one of us should be pulled over for racing.

My question is, how well will I be able to defend myself in court? It seems like such an absurdly outrageous accusation given the circumstances that I would hate to spend any money on a lawyer who would be given the easiest case he has ever seen in his life. The police officer did not have another officer riding with him while I had a witness in the car who had not had a drink in 3 hours and was paying astute attention to my speed as we accelerated. I would even be willing to go as far as to request the police cars dash cam to prove that the mustang immediately turned. I can see how a car that does 0-60 in under 5 seconds would appear to be moving pretty damn fast but since I was not clocked or even paced going at any excessive speeds and I have a witness, not including myself, who can vouche for never going over 40, how much can this racing charge really hold up? 'Racing' by definition is a contest of speed. If any contest happened, which it clearly didn't, it would have been a contest of acceleration over the course of less than two seconds. That doesn't sound like any kind of race I have ever heard of.

Thanks for reading and for any helpful input. I haven't received the citation in the mail yet so I am not positive what the 'exact' charges are, or I may not even get a citation in the mail at all, the cop seemed to feel bad after I pleaded with him that I was not racing and never got over 35. It seemed more like he wanted to teach me a lesson for buying into the mustangs revving.

 

[Maestro64]

I read your friend post on the BMW forum and he too is pretty upset about this event. I did not chime in there since he had a load of feedback already.

Anyway, you got caught in a catch all law. It is hard to prove one way or another if someone was racing since it all subjective in the first place, what constitutes accelerating too fast or what constitute a race. In your case the 335I go 0 to 60 in 4.8 seconds and first gear if you do not shift too early tops out at 42MPHs, so the car hit 40 in about 2 seconds.

So is 4.8 seconds considered accelerating too fast thus constitutes racing, if it is then what is the cut off, 5 second or 10 second. No law clearly states what is too fast, also the officer was comparing your acceleration to the car next to you, what if that car acceleration was half of your does not mean your racing.

As far as I know, there is no law that says you are not allowed to accelerate as fast as your car can go to the speed limit.

In your case it looks like the officer saw two cars side by side on a road and one accelerated to the speed limit and the other did not so base on the fact one car was ahead of the other it was considered a race.

Obvious with a subjective law a lawyer would have a much easier time of getting this thrown out, however, if you want to challenge this, remember on thing, the officer has to prove you were racing, you do not have to prove you were not.

With that in mind and what I explained above you need to attach what the officer if going offer as proof or evidence. I would focus on that fact there is no law saying you are not allow to accelerated to the speed limit. Also ask him what law defines at what rate of acceleration is too fast to be consider racing. Asking if poker runs where a group of cars try to get to point A to point B as close to a predefine time is consider racing, by all definition it is , but they are legal.

I think you got the idea. most likely the only evidence the officer will offer is two car side by side one making loud exhaust noise and other pulling away. He never caught the other one, so there is no evidence that car ever existed. If he said he heard loud exhaust noise show the judge the 335i does not have loud exhausts.

Most likely the it be the officer's opinion not facts you will have to deal with and you need to make the court realize it opinion not facts you were ticketed for and you can not be found guilt based on opinions.

 

[CdwJava]

What state and what code section were you cited for?

Engaging ina speed contest does not generally require a high rate of speed - swift acceleration could be sufficient.

But, we would need to know the state and the section cited for anything further.

- Carl