Seat belt violation, first offense. Questions?
The seat belt law came about because the emergency services are sick of having to scrape people up off the road and sorting out the dismembered body parts into the correct body bags, and because although there will be accidents where being in the cab is the worst place to be, there are a great deal more potential accidents when you are thrown through the windscreen. The policeman was right, there is no seat belt so you shouldn’t have ridden in the cab. Be adult about it, accept you were wrong and pay the fine in good grace, thankful that you met the cop at the time of a potential accident rather than an actual accident.
The fine is $20, but there are assessments on top of that, which brings it up to a whopping $130. However, unlike other traffic offenses where you have to pay the fine if you go to traffic school, going to traffic school for this offense eliminates the assessments, making the fine and fees $25. However, even though that is a substantial savings, you may want to save traffic school for a moving violation since this offense is not a point and will not affect your insurance. BTW, the rule is that there must be a seatbelt for every passenger, so if there are seatbelts for only two, there cannot be three. The driver could have been cited for this as well.
For the first offense the fine is something like 22 dollars. For the second and subsequent violations the fines are substantially more. h) Notwithstanding subdivision (a) of Section 42001, ( )1 a violation of subdivision (d), (e), or (f) is an infraction punishable by a fine of not more than twenty dollars ($20) for a first offense, and a fine of not more than fifty dollars ($50) for each subsequent offense. In lieu of the fine and any penalty assessment or court costs, the court, pursuant to Section 42005, may order that a person convicted of a first offense attend a school for traffic violators or ( )3 another court-approved program in which the proper use of safety belts is demonstrated. What kind of truck was it? Just curious. I’ve got a 1984 Toyota pickup, while I didn’t think it came with three sets of seat belts at first closer examination proved it did. The previous owner removed the center set because he thought it made for a cleaner appearance.
