I Was Pulled Over for Doing 67 in a 40, HELP

Jurisdiction
Pennsylvania
I'll try to make this brief, but I'm a 20 year old who has never been pulled over or received any citation prior to this and I really need some help. I was driving back to school and on the last stretch of divided highway where the posted limit is 55 mph, I may have been going closer to 65. The highway ends and approaches an intersection where I make my turn, also where the speed limit changes to 40 mph. I believe I could have been speeding, but I was slowing down anyways to make the turn and certainly did not have to slam on my brakes, which would of been the case if I was in fact going 67. I was then pulled over, was very polite to the officer, had all my information ready before he walked up and informed me I was doing 67 in a 45, which he then said "well its actually a 40 mph zone but nobody goes 40 there", and my citation says 67 in a 40. The officer that recorded my speed is not the officer that pulled me over. He said he realizes this is a bad citation and told me to show up in court and he could help me out. Looking over my citation, I see that out of the speed recording options of " Radar, Clocked, A.O.V., ESP, Vascar, and Other", OTHER is the box that is checked. I do not know how they would have measured my speed then. Also in my citation, there is a box that reads Miles Followed which is blank, Miles Timed which is hard to read but it really looks like it says 3 ft, and Seconds Timed which is blank. I do not know exactly how they do it, but if they were to use a stopwatch to measure the time it took me to travel 3 ft and if I was doing 67 mph, the officer would have had 3 hundredths of a second to push the buttons on the timer which is in no way accurate. I really need some help here as my license could get suspended. If it matters, my home town is spelled wrong on the defendant address box. Also under the Nature of Offense box where Speeding the checked, the other box is checked and FNRADO is written in the lines provided. I do not know what this means. PLEASE HELP. Thanks in advance.
 
A lawyer in your county is only person who MIGHT be able to help you.

FYI, spelling errors don't matter.

Facts matter, which derive from the officers' testimony.
 
You do understand, don't you, that an experienced police office can tell the difference visually between someone going 40 and someone going 67? And that rarely if ever are stopwatches used to determine speed? And that it doesn't matter one whit whether anything is spelled wrong on the ticket - that does not invalidate it?

Tell me, other than the inconvenience to you (which does not matter one whit either - it's SUPPOSED to be inconvenient) explain to me exactly why you should be allowed to exceed the speed limit by almost 30 miles an hour and not pay any penalty for it?
 
I'm not letting the next year of my life be determined by one guys visual estimation of my speed.


The next YEARS of your life will be determined solely by your decision to ALLEGEDLY violate the posted speed limit. and what a judge decides after due process has transpired.

The good news for you is you don't have an excessive speeding violation (over 31 miles per hour or more over the speed limit), because you'd then be required to attend a Departmental Hearing at PennDOT and could lose your license for 15 days.

However, as a 20 year old, you are also facing significant PennDot retribution if you are convicted in court.

You desperately need an attorney, because such a conviction will also drive your auto insurance rates through the roof of a domed stadium.

If your license is suspended, by law in PA you have 30 days in which to appeal the decision.
 
You will find out how the officer determined your speed in two ways.
The first is by opting to go to trial and obtaining the officer's notes in discovery.
The other is by showing up to the trial and hearing the officer's testimony and questioning him.

If the officer did not determine your speed himself, as you suggested, you might be able get your citation dismissed if the other officer who did determine your speed does not appear in court because you would be expected to have opportunity to question that officer.

I assume you are not eligible for traffic school because you are too far over the speed limit. However, at trial, if found guilty, you may get the judge to reduce the offense so that traffic school is an option.
 
You're not letting it? My, my, we do own the world, don't we?

Keep to the speed limit and you won't have to worry about such things.

(and that's ma'am, to you)

I'm really not as concerned about this situation as you're making it seem, I only came here to try to clear up a few questions I had. I know they're not taking my license away, the officer himself asked me to please come to court because he felt bad. The fact that it was a two lane divided highway with no lights and no sharp turns convinces me that yes, the speed limit should be higher than 40 mph, of which the officer agreed with me. I found out through my own research that they used ENRADD, so my question was answered elsewhere. I'm more than capable of paying a fine and taking a citation, just one of that extent will hurt me a lot this summer so I might as well learn something out of it. As for the stopwatch, Vascar is essentially that, and a very common speed measuring device for local police. I'm not in school for law, but it is possible mistakes on the citation invalidate it. I did not come here to argue, so please ma'am, if you're going to offer your "advice" to me and others on the site, do so in a less rhetorical and arrogant way.
 
The officer that recorded my speed is not the officer that pulled me over.

This is important. Is the other officer named on your citation?
I have not seen any other information you have provided that offers a way out out of this citation.
If you intend to fight the citation you need to find out the trial process, how to subpoena information from the police, and prepare appropriate and relevant questions to who ask of the officer.
You will have a few months or more to work all this out. Otherwise pay your fine and be done with it. I assure you that arguing what the speed limit should have been will get you nowhere (although you could research the legal requirements for traffic surveys and see if the one for that location is current).
 
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