Careless Driving Ticket in Fort Lauderdale or Miami
If you have received a careless driving ticket in Broward or Miami-Dade County, you probably got the ticket due to being involved in an automobile accident where the officer investigating the accident found you to be at fault or the cause of the crash. A careless driving charge in Florida carries a four point penalty against your license. If you pay the ticket outright, these points will be assessed on your license, which will cause your car insurance rates to increase.
While paying the ticket may seem like the easiest and most efficient way to resolve the citation, it’s not. Do not pay the ticket outright under any circumstances as careless driving tickets almost always get dismissed in court. To attempt to get your ticket dismissed or to have the best chance at keeping points off your license, the best thing to do is go to court or retain an attorney to go to court for you.
A Florida careless driving ticket is given after the incident has occurred, which normally means that the police officer who gave you the citation did not witness the accident. If the police officer didn’t see the crash, he can’t testify in court as to what occurred. In order to prove the careless driving infraction, a civilian witness such as a bystander who saw the accident needs to come to court to testify. This almost never occurs, which is why these types of cases usually get dismissed. If you go to court and plead not guilty and then make the prosecution prove their case, in all likelihood you will get off. You may not want to take time off from work or your busy schedule to fight the ticket yourself or you may just be uncomfortable representing yourself in court. If this is the case, it’s recommended that you hire an experienced careless driving lawyer from a South Florida law firm such as Galanter Law to go to court on your behalf and defend you.
Retaining one of our firm’s Miami ticket lawyers or Fort Lauderdale ticket lawyers to represent you for a careless driving ticket or any other civil or criminal traffic violation is very easy. You can do it over the phone, online, or in person. After retaining one of our attorneys, he or she will go to court for you and you will typically not be required to appear in court. Your attorney will enter a plea of not guilty and make the prosecution prove their case. In most circumstances, after the case is over, you will have no points on your driving record, no insurance rate increases, and you will not have missed time from work or school—all for an extremely inexpensive price. The best way to handle a Miami careless driving ticket or a Fort Lauderdale careless driving ticket is to contact a law firm as soon as possible after receiving your ticket. Don’t delay—there are strict time limitations for demanding a Miami or Fort Lauderdale traffic court trial and pleading not guilty.
So remember: don’t pay your South Florida careless driving ticket outright because if you do you will get points on your license which can be very difficult to remove once they have been assessed. Instead, it is in your best interests to contact a law firm.
