Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/769491
January 2017 | Overdrive | 27 tinted window, believe it or not," Stearns says. He subsequently had the window tested by a sheriff in another district to show that it was well within the regula- tions for commercial trucks. "I couldn't afford to get there" for a court date, he says, "so I mailed my evidence in, thinking they might over- turn it. They still took my money" and sided with the ticketing officer. Stearns' case suggests a benefit to using a legal representative familiar with the processes of local courts, which can vary consider- ably. Company driver Jason Lee Wilson of Maryville, Tennessee, also learned that lesson the hard way. He was ticketed south of Knoxville for a violation of Tennessee's emergency-vehicle "move- over" law. The incident occurred at the bottom of a 6 percent grade, where a traffic light turned red as Wilson approached. Loaded, he'd just been passed on his left by a motorist and a tractor pulling a van that were stopping for the light, so moving into their lane and away from a patrol officer on the roadside would have reduced his avail- able stopping distance quite a bit. "I stayed in the slow lane, and I'm on my Jake," Wilson says. "Right at the light is a highway patrolman on a shoulder, off of a shoulder, really. He's two lanes away, essentially. The law says move over for all of these emergency vehicles – if you can't, then reduce your speed. The light was red. I came to a complete stop." Wilson speculates that what really upset the officer, who was on the phone, was the Jake brake interfering with his conversation. Wilson didn't obtain a lawyer, but came armed to his court date with a shirt and tie, a copy of the lan- guage of the Tennessee move-over law, a picture of where it happened and more, which he submitted to the judge. "What's this?" the judge asked. "An addendum to the trooper's affi- davit and a copy of the law," Wilson began, only to be cut off by the judge. " 'I've got the law right here, boy,' he said, and he slapped his big blue book," Wilson recalls. Wilson believes that if he'd had a law- yer representing him, he at least would have had a go-between who knew the judge's temperament. It also might have led to inclusion of video evidence from the trooper's car, which Wilson believed would have been favorable and was not examined during the hearing but was mentioned in conversation between the trooper and the judge. Wilson recalls the trooper seemed to explain away the lack of video as unnec- essary, given this was the first hearing. "I think a lawyer could have better handled that," he says. "If you think you've got a really good case, I think you ought to get a lawyer." Solid evidence can help immensely. Since that incident, Wilson runs with a road-facing dashcam, useful in such instances to better illustrate real-time con- ditions underpinning moving violations. He couldn't discredit the trooper's estima- tion that it would have been safe for him to move over, so "the judge sided with the trooper." Wisconsin-based independent Howard Salmon captured a somewhat similar situ- ation with his dashcam. His fender-bender occurred at high speed, eastbound on Interstate 24 just inside Georgia, at the spot where the southbound ramp to I-59 begins. In his effort to evade a minivan that decided not to exit on that ramp, then stopped, crossed the median between the ramp and I-24 proper and moved into Salmon's lane, Salmon wound up bump- ing a Toyota Prius that had just passed him as he and the hybrid decelerated dramatically. Though Salmon was cited for the safety-serious charge of following too close, his insurance company deemed the accident nonpreventable and paid his damage claim. The Prius driver also blamed the minivan for their collision, but all for naught: The minivan driver drove away as Salmon and the Prius stopped. Salmon called the Georgia authorities about his video evidence of the event and was advised to request a bench trial before a traffic court judge. By the time the Dec. 15 court date rolled around, with Salmon loading down to Georgia for it and planning to represent himself, the prosecutor had seen his video of the incident. By 9:30 a.m. he was on his way with a no-contest plea to a lesser charge and no points on his CDL, though $50 lighter. He called it a "win-win," and one he wouldn't have been able to achieve with- out video evidence, he believes. Jason Lee Wilson: An unusual circumstance left him no safe way to fully obey a "move-over" law. Gary Buchs: Scale house officers did not buy his safety-based decision.