Defending drivers against traffic violations
Sooner or later, if you drive enough miles, there’s a good chance you may wind up with a traffic ticket. While they generally aren’t life changing events, traffic tickets can sting your wallet for a few years to come. If you’re a repeat offender, then multiple tickets are eventually going to add up to multiple and costly headaches.
At Calvino Law Associates, we know that it’s easy to get distracted or preoccupied with other events of the day while you’re driving. And from our experience, we also know that while tickets are given out with the honest intent to keep you safe from driving in a way that endangers you or others, just because you got a ticket does not mean that you are actually guilty of the infraction of which you are accused.
Sometimes, you’re ready to accept guilt, just roll over, and pay the ticket. We get that, at times it’s just easier to pay the fine and move on with your life. However, if you feel you’ve been unfairly accused of a traffic infraction, whether it’s speeding, an unsafe lane change, or even running a stop sign, our speeding ticket attorneys can help you fight the ticket, doing our best to keep your record clean and your pocketbook intact.
From the many years of experience that our Rhode Island traffic ticket lawyers have, fighting on behalf of our clients, we have several possible strategies we can use.
One of the most common is to argue that your actions were justified or that you took them to avoid harming either you and the occupants of your car, the occupants of another car, or pedestrians. We don’t deny guilt we attempt to justify it instead. For example, if you are threatened by another driver in an instance of road rage, then driving at a high rate of speed to get away from them may make complete sense. If you swerve into another lane recklessly or unexpectedly, it might be to avoid debris on a roadway or to avoid hitting a pedestrian.
We can also argue on our clients’ behalf that the ticket was a mistake of fact. We can use this defense when there is a legitimate misunderstanding about conditions that caused the violation to take place. An example of this might be if a person rolls through a stop sign because it was hidden by an overhanging tree branch or dense shrubbery. You can’t obey what you don’t know about!
At other times, tickets are given based on judgment calls by law enforcement officials. In these instances, we may be able to introduce enough reasonable doubt about that judgment so that the presiding judge will dismiss the ticket.
Calvino Law Associates serves clients in Providence, North Kingstown and nearby Rhode Island communities.
