A lawyer will cost as much as the ticket. you could get a public defender for free on Long Island. at least you could years ago when my son went to court. It was a long time ago, but I think they were there at the courthouse.
I would plead Quilty with an explanation. you will most likely pay a lower fine. As far as points on your license. you can get them wiped away by taking an online drivers’ safety course. best of luck.
Did it once for daughter, worked out well. Did it once for a ticket I got, speeding reduced tofailuretoobey an officialsign.
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Just my two cents so don’t try and cash the check. A lawyer will likely know the judge and what to say and what not to say. He or she will not waste thr judges time with irrelevant details like you or I would, they’ll just explain the circumstances and your good record and ask for lenience.
Now to me the phrases like you should be more aware, you should have your car under control, etc. are simply ways to catch anyone doing anything. When the first clot shot came available my wife found an opening for her at a town 45 miles away. Problem was it had snowed and the two lane road was ice. We made it but one lady along the way didn’t and went in the ditch. The wrecker was pulling her out and the highway patrol was there. She got a ticket for not having he car under control. I don’t know if she fought it or not but should have.
What you did was obviously against the law, dangerous (can you imagine how bad you would have felt if a 6 year old would have come dashing out) but obviously not intentionally.
You also did the wise thing to hire an attorney.
Judges are people too and your Attorney can coherently present your version and supporting information like your exemplary 20 year driving record for their consideration This would frequently result in a Probation Before Verdict, translating to a fine but no points, no insurance increases, assuming that there’s no additional tickets during the PBV period
OTOH, “Clueless” is no excuse for being a selfabsorbed Butt Head with no knowledge of the traffic laws and thinking only of yourself. If everyone else is stopping, didn’t you think for a moment there might possibly be a reason?
Hopefully this may be a “Learning Experience”. Of course your need to get to wherever you were going is important but is it worth …
I’m sorry 
, weren’t you the one who posted the chart with the big Orange Banner indicating the incarceration rate of New York State is the highest in the nation?
I was just trying to correct that misconception and relieve the fears of the OP being thrown in jail…
How many people on here know every law from every state in detail about driving???
Here is TN 135 page PDF, go ahead and learn them all… lol
The issue still comes to you driving around all those stopped vehicles. You wrote that you thought that a pedestrian might have been in the road, and in spite of that, you still drove around, yet thinking that you might hit that pedestrian did not enter the equation…
I did the same thing. The reason I kept going - Car to left heading in same direction was turning left, so he wasn’t going anywhere. The truck in opposite direction in left lane that was blocking my view of the stopped school bus was also turning left and so he wasn’t going anywhere. I literally was the only vehicle that could move (if there wasn’t a school bus). But I was blocked from it’s view. Didn’t even know it was there until I had passed then saw it in my rear view mirror.
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Around here a school bus broke down and the driver stopped in the road and left the stop sign out for quite some time. I heard that traffic was backed up a long way.
They were short on bus drivers and hiring anyone they could get.
Read it again, mi amigo.
It compared the incarceration rate of NY state with that of The US as a whole, and with a bunch of European nations. I never claimed that NY has the highest incarceration rate in the nation.
And, can we now dispense with needless, totally-off topic, inflammatory statements that don’t help the OP?
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Having a lawyer means that you can take advantage of facets of the law that most of us aren’t aware of. For instance, he might arrange for something like probation before judgement given your good driving record. You might end up pleading to a lesser misdemeanor charge instead of a felony, if that’s what it is, pay a fine, and have all points waived. I’m not a lawyer but I have seen pleas of this nature on TV news. Your situation might offer you a similar outcome.
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Exactly!
I don’t know if NY state has a statute similar to this one in NJ, but… perhaps it does.
For about 20 years, NJ drivers have had the option to plead guilty to “Unsafe Operation of a Motor Vehicle”, rather than pleading guilty to speeding, or passing a school bus, or… whatever.
Why would somebody do this? It’s because that specific plea does not impose penalty points on one’s DL. Yes, the potential fines can be higher than for the original offense, but the absence of “points” on one’s DL can save a lot of money when it comes to insurance surcharges.
An attorney should know whether NY has a plea similar to the one that is available to NJ drivers. Here are the details on the NJ plea:
A first unsafe driving violation is subject to a fine of not less than $50.00 nor more than $150.00. No motor vehicle penalty points are assessed to first time offenders.
A second unsafe driving violation is subject to a fine of not less than $100.00 nor more than $250.00. As with a first offense, no motor vehicle points are assessed to second time offenders.
A third or subsequent unsafe driving violation is subject to a fine of not less than $200.00 nor more than $500.00. However, four motor vehicle points will be assessed to your record.
An offense, however, that occurs more than five years after a prior offense for the same violation will not be considered a subsequent offense for purposes of assessing motor vehicle penalty points.
In addition to any fine, fee or charge imposed by the Court, a person convicted of this unsafe driving offense will be assessed a surcharge of $250.00.
Municipalities tend to like this plea, simply because that $250 surcharge goes into the local coffers, and as a result, most municipal judges will accept that plea.
I’m not sure if I understand. The original post shows a 4 lane road with no turning lane. Was it actually more like this (from NCDOT):
That explanation, and accompaying diagram, makes sense.
But the rules of who on the opposite side must stop for a schoolbus vary by state.
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Did it myself, no problem,no layer fee no court date!
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In Tennessee, the road has to have a physical medium to allow oncoming traffic to proceed past the bus, otherwise all lanes must stop.
Sometimes school bus drivers don’t use a lot of common sense though. There was an incident on a road I used to take to work everyday. Four lane divided with a medium so only traffic behind the bus had to stop.
There was a section, after climbing a short but steep hill, you came out on a flat top. About a 100 yards down from the crest, there was a rural road to the right that curved around a church parking lot and then into a small town.
The school bus driver would stop on the highway to pick up the kids and then turn on the rural road instead of turning onto the rural road first and picking up the kids from the church parking lot. Worse for the kids was that they had to climb up a grassy embankment to get on the bus instead of loading from the entrance to the parking lot.
This backed up traffic for a few minutes every morning. One morning it turned fatal. A truck driver crested the hill to find stopped cars and the bus but was unable to stop in time. He swerved to avoid the vehicles, crossed the median and into a ditch where he died. After that, the bus driver made the turn first.
Ok, I always like to go back to root causes. We all had reasonable bus transportation for rural students. The drivers had other jobs and were competent drivers. Then, and I don’t remember the judge or the year, it was decided that everyone needed to be bused around to equalize skin color. Though it helped not a thing of that target goal, all of a sudden we have a massive need for buses and drivers, which outstripped many school budgets and qualified drivers. I see the signs all over, drivers needed, choose your shift, $21 an hour, etc. I’m 8 to 10 blocks from the high school, grade school, and middle school, yet the bus goes by my house.
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Same in Virginia
The green car on top is my car. The silver car next to my car to the right is a truck, then the red splash on my left is another truck making a left turn into the opposite direction.
As you can see, the red splash ( the truck to the left ) obstructed my view of the school bus.
The trucks look like this:
Ps. I went back to the scene to recalculate what actually happened and realized it was a 5 lane road instead of 4. 2 lanes on my side and 3 lanes on the opposite side.
Doesn’t change the fact that when all the vehicles around you stop, you should too.
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