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Comment by balderdash | Hacker News Reader

Putting race aside for a moment - I completely agree, my experience (though not a huge sample set) is that most officers get to your car expecting confrontation, and when they don’t get it end up just issuing a warning / writing a less severe ticket. Given that it’s easy to get out of a ticket afterwards, why argue it on the side of the road?

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It would also be interesting to see reporting on officer's perception of the offenders. Are we seeing the results of "passing the attitude test"?

Then it would be interesting to study if identical actions of racially diverse drivers are perceived differently (i.e. if the same actions are perceived as polite with one race, confrontational with another).

Can you clarify how it is easy to get out of a ticket afterwards?

In my experience from sitting in a traffic court a couple times (in Washington state), the only people who get out of a ticket are those who have squeaky clean driving records for 10+ years, and those who have lawyers. But most people can't afford lawyers for traffic violations.

It’s possible that you answered your own question.

I’ve usually just hired a lawyer, but went once myself, I’ve never paid more for the lawyer than I would have paid for the ticket so it’s usually been a 0%-50% discount to the ticket. But the real cost a speeding ticket is the 5%-30% increase in your insurance which could be hundreds of dollars a year ANNUALLY so it always just seemed cheaper short and long term to pay someone to deal with it (mind you I’m talking a grand total of four speeding tickets)

Pay a lawyer, which genrally is around the same cost as paying the fine, but you don't get it on your driver's record. If you are in Washington State, you have probably seen Jeannie Mucklestone's billboards on the side of the road attesting to her success rate in beating traffic tickets. My experience is that her claims are accurate.

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