看重点 In just the first half of the fiscal year, D.C. issued more than 485,000 tickets based on images captured by speed cameras — generating more than $47 million in revenue. About 4,800 tickets — and more than $517,000 in fines — came from the camera on Military Road at the center of Galbreath’s case. Under the District’s interpretation of traffic laws, if the speed limit on a stretch of road had been posted as 45 mph but the sign somehow became obscured, the speed limit automatically becomes 20 mph. A driver going 51 mph could be ticketed not for going 6 mph over the limit, but 31 — a traffic offense that could result in 90 days in jail. Md. man fought his $100 DC speeding ticket. Now it’s easier for others to challenge theirs 一位马里兰男子因为限速牌被树枝遮挡，打官司到DC高院，终于打赢了DC 100刀罚单的官司。DC的speed camera好多都是在桥墩后面，很阴险。DDOT抓紧砍树枝，继续收钱😄。 Galbreath pulled up the intersection on Google Street View and discovered the speed limit sign near 29th Street and Military Road was, as he would later argue in one of his appeals, “mounted extraordinarily high on the pole” and “obscured by tree branches.” Galbreath took his case first to the D.C. DMV, then to a three-member review board that hears ticket disputes, then to D.C. Superior Court. (Technically, he wasn’t representing himself but his company, to which the car was registered.) Each time, though, he lost. The DMV, it turned out, had an automatic fallback for quashing potential challenges: The default speed limit. Under D.C. traffic regulations, officials are not required to post the speed limit on every street — and where no speed limit signs are posted, drivers have to abide by the default speed limit. (At the time, the default was 25 mph; it has since been lowered to 20 mph). DMV officials argued, and the D.C. Superior Court judge agreed, that even if the sign on Military Road was obscured, Galbreath should have observed the default 25 mph speed limit. According to their reasoning, an obscured sign was the same thing as no sign. In D.C. “if you do not know what the posted speed limit is, the law requires you to travel at 25 mph,” the DMV examiner said in the original decision denying Galbreath’s challenge. After losing in Superior Court, Galbreath had only one more chance to challenge the ticket: the D.C. Court of Appeals, which is the District’s highest court. Galbreath said the idea of simply giving up his legal fight “didn’t even enter my mind … I only have to ask myself one question: What’s the right thing here?” According to the court’s decision, D.C. can continue to rely on the default speed limit on streets with no signs posted. But once a speed has been posted, “then that speed limit cannot be enforced against a driver if the speed limit sign is obscured or blocked,” the court wrote, saying that to require drivers to revert to the default speed limit in such cases “gives rise to a host of absurdities.” For example, under the District’s interpretation of traffic laws, if the speed limit on a stretch of road had been posted as 45 mph but the sign somehow became obscured, the speed limit automatically becomes 20 mph. A driver going 51 mph could be ticketed not for going 6 mph over the limit, but 31 — a traffic offense that could result in 90 days in jail. The bottom line, according to the court decision: If drivers ticketed for speeding can show a speed limit sign was somehow unreadable, they have grounds to have their ticket dismissed. The District has been steadily adding speeding cameras across the city over the past several years. There are now 92 of them, with plans to add more. In just the first half of the fiscal year, D.C. issued more than 485,000 tickets based on images captured by speed cameras — generating more than $47 million in revenue. About 4,800 tickets — and more than $517,000 in fines — came from the camera on Military Road at the center of Galbreath’s case. During oral arguments, Mary Wilson, an attorney with the D.C. Office of the Attorney General, told the three-judge panel that the issue at the heart of Galbreath’s case — enforcing the default speed limit as a fallback — didn’t regularly come up at the D.C. DMV. “You’re telling me I can’t find another speed limit sign in this town that’s obscured?” an incredulous D.C. Court of Appeals Associate Judge Joshua Deahl said. Wilson replied, “This case is about one ticket —” “No, it’s not! No, it is not,” Deahl interrupted. “It is not about one ticket. It’s about whether or not the District can use a default regulation to say if you can’t read a sign, the speed limit is 20 mph.” The D.C. lawyer also came in for withering questioning over a surprise move. After the case had already been set for oral arguments, the District suddenly moved to have the case dismissed and refund Galbreath’s fine, which he had since paid, in an attempt to “moot out” the case. That would have prevented the Court of Appeals from taking it up. The three-judge panel of judges — all former public defenders — declined to drop the matter, concluding the District’s lawyering was an attempt to avoid having the court issue an unfavorable opinion. “The rarity of these challenges in this court gives the District a strong incentive to try to evade review,” the court said in its written opinion. “There is little upside if it wins ($100) and potentially enormous downside if a precedent-setting loss upsets its established enforcement practices on a grand scale.” What now?D.C. officials said they’ve already kicked off a major effort to make sure signs are visible.Last fiscal year alone, DDOT responded to more than 17,000 service requests “for various tree-related matters related to sign visibility,” Lott, the DDOT director, said in the statement to WTOP.During the initial round of citywide inspections that began last summer before the court had even handed down its decision, crews opened up 4,000 work orders to make speed limit signs more visible, including replacing signs and trimming tree branches.
Under the District’s interpretation of traffic laws, if the speed limit on a stretch of road had been posted as 45 mph but the sign somehow became obscured, the speed limit automatically becomes 20 mph. A driver going 51 mph could be ticketed not for going 6 mph over the limit, but 31 — a traffic offense that could result in 90 days in jail.
Md. man fought his $100 DC speeding ticket. Now it’s easier for others to challenge theirs
一位马里兰男子因为限速牌被树枝遮挡，打官司到DC高院，终于打赢了DC 100刀罚单的官司。DC的speed camera好多都是在桥墩后面，很阴险。DDOT抓紧砍树枝，继续收钱😄。
Galbreath pulled up the intersection on Google Street View and discovered the speed limit sign near 29th Street and Military Road was, as he would later argue in one of his appeals, “mounted extraordinarily high on the pole” and “obscured by tree branches.” Galbreath took his case first to the D.C. DMV, then to a three-member review board that hears ticket disputes, then to D.C. Superior Court. (Technically, he wasn’t representing himself but his company, to which the car was registered.) Each time, though, he lost. The DMV, it turned out, had an automatic fallback for quashing potential challenges: The default speed limit. Under D.C. traffic regulations, officials are not required to post the speed limit on every street — and where no speed limit signs are posted, drivers have to abide by the default speed limit. (At the time, the default was 25 mph; it has since been lowered to 20 mph). DMV officials argued, and the D.C. Superior Court judge agreed, that even if the sign on Military Road was obscured, Galbreath should have observed the default 25 mph speed limit. According to their reasoning, an obscured sign was the same thing as no sign. In D.C. “if you do not know what the posted speed limit is, the law requires you to travel at 25 mph,” the DMV examiner said in the original decision denying Galbreath’s challenge. After losing in Superior Court, Galbreath had only one more chance to challenge the ticket: the D.C. Court of Appeals, which is the District’s highest court. Galbreath said the idea of simply giving up his legal fight “didn’t even enter my mind … I only have to ask myself one question: What’s the right thing here?”
According to the court’s decision, D.C. can continue to rely on the default speed limit on streets with no signs posted. But once a speed has been posted, “then that speed limit cannot be enforced against a driver if the speed limit sign is obscured or blocked,” the court wrote, saying that to require drivers to revert to the default speed limit in such cases “gives rise to a host of absurdities.” For example, under the District’s interpretation of traffic laws, if the speed limit on a stretch of road had been posted as 45 mph but the sign somehow became obscured, the speed limit automatically becomes 20 mph. A driver going 51 mph could be ticketed not for going 6 mph over the limit, but 31 — a traffic offense that could result in 90 days in jail. The bottom line, according to the court decision: If drivers ticketed for speeding can show a speed limit sign was somehow unreadable, they have grounds to have their ticket dismissed.
The District has been steadily adding speeding cameras across the city over the past several years. There are now 92 of them, with plans to add more. In just the first half of the fiscal year, D.C. issued more than 485,000 tickets based on images captured by speed cameras — generating more than $47 million in revenue. About 4,800 tickets — and more than $517,000 in fines — came from the camera on Military Road at the center of Galbreath’s case. During oral arguments, Mary Wilson, an attorney with the D.C. Office of the Attorney General, told the three-judge panel that the issue at the heart of Galbreath’s case — enforcing the default speed limit as a fallback — didn’t regularly come up at the D.C. DMV. “You’re telling me I can’t find another speed limit sign in this town that’s obscured?” an incredulous D.C. Court of Appeals Associate Judge Joshua Deahl said. Wilson replied, “This case is about one ticket —” “No, it’s not! No, it is not,” Deahl interrupted. “It is not about one ticket. It’s about whether or not the District can use a default regulation to say if you can’t read a sign, the speed limit is 20 mph.” The D.C. lawyer also came in for withering questioning over a surprise move. After the case had already been set for oral arguments, the District suddenly moved to have the case dismissed and refund Galbreath’s fine, which he had since paid, in an attempt to “moot out” the case. That would have prevented the Court of Appeals from taking it up.
The three-judge panel of judges — all former public defenders — declined to drop the matter, concluding the District’s lawyering was an attempt to avoid having the court issue an unfavorable opinion. “The rarity of these challenges in this court gives the District a strong incentive to try to evade review,” the court said in its written opinion. “There is little upside if it wins ($100) and potentially enormous downside if a precedent-setting loss upsets its established enforcement practices on a grand scale.” What now? D.C. officials said they’ve already kicked off a major effort to make sure signs are visible. Last fiscal year alone, DDOT responded to more than 17,000 service requests “for various tree-related matters related to sign visibility,” Lott, the DDOT director, said in the statement to WTOP. During the initial round of citywide inspections that began last summer before the court had even handed down its decision, crews opened up 4,000 work orders to make speed limit signs more visible, including replacing signs and trimming tree branches.