There isn’t a day that goes by that I am not in my car, sitting at some god forsaken Valley intersection (Kester/Van Nuys; Burbank/Whitsett; Riverside/Fulton) and witness the sight of someone with their foot on the pedal, speeding through a red light at 40, 50 or 60 miles an hour.
I get furious. There is never a cop around to catch them. I think, “We should have a law that fines everyone $2500”. I thought this until yesterday. I wrote a letter about it:
At approximately 1pm on Tuesday, February 12, 2008, I was traveling about 35 MPH eastbound on Burbank Boulevard.
As I approached the intersection of Van Nuys Boulevard, I prepared to make a right turn on a red light. I observed that northbound cars on VNB had a left turn signal allowing them to turn westbound to Burbank Bl.
I made a decision to turn right on red, at approximately 15 MPH.
At that moment, going s/b on VNB, I heard a police siren go off and looked in my rear view mirror to see that I was being asked to pull over.
I was given a ticket for “failure to stop at a red light”.
I want to plead for leniency and/or dismissal of this ticket for the following reasons:
• I did not speed through an intersection.
• I made an educated decision, based on observation of the intersection, that it was completely safe for me to turn right on red.
• I was not speeding, and the ticket even states in writing, that I turned at 15 MPH.
I have been unemployed for over a year and can ill afford to pay a ticket in the hundreds of dollars and the increase in my car insurance that will come about due to this violation.
I was not driving aggressively, speeding or even endangering the lives of others, as most red light runners do. I did not speed at 50 or 60 MPH through an intersection.
I was stupid, in a split second decision at the intersection, to not stop COMPLETELY. But I used my best judgment to execute a turn SAFELY.
Here in Van Nuys 