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This varies from state to state, and I am not a lawyer, but basically: - About a week (maybe less) after the due date on the ticket, if you haven't paid or called them up to arrange a court date, they issue a warrant for your arrest. They also know your license plate number since they wrote it down when they pulled you over. - Your name and your license plate go into the police computers. The next time you're pulled over, (or, if you run from the cops, when they manage to ram you off the road or run your tank dry) the cop runs your license and finds out you have a warrant. You are cuffed, taken to the police station, and thrown in a prison cell. You stay in that cell - no exceptions, period - until your bail hearing. Might be as long as a couple weeks. - At the bail hearing, the judge tells you that you may go home if you promise to come back for a trial and you give them $150,000 as an act of good faith. You get the $150,000 back when you show up to court. (Note: $150,000 is an estimate. Might only be $50,000. Might be $500,000.) - At the trial, you get ass-reamed because you were too cheap to pay a $150 speeding ticket, and too dumb to call the court and ask if you could get more time to pay it. You go to jail for two months. You lose your job, your wife starts sleeping with the neighbor's dog, and your Z is cut up for scrap metal after you can't pay the fine to get it out of the police impound lot. Well, that's the rough version, anyway. I probably have some of the details wrong.
-Ben "Life's a bitch, innit?" Cantrick
Ben Cantrick, mackys@dimensional.com
The Z Shrine |
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