While nobody likes to get pulled over and get a traffic ticket at any time, these things invariably happen, because police officers are basically compelled either formally or informally to issue a “quota” of traffic tickets each and every day. Those that have money see these traffic tickets and fines as simply the cost of doing business, and for the most part do not pay any real mind to it, of which, most of those with the ready money to pay such tickets do so in the convenient way of paying their fine through the internet or via mail and then just get on with their life. Those though, that are less organized, cash strapped, and perhaps intimidated by just about anything involving the justice system, are subject to faring rather poorly by not fully comprehending that fines that must be paid by a certain date, have consequences if so missed, and often do not comprehend how bad a given situation can thereby devolve, for not having dealt forthrightly with a traffic ticket to begin with, irrespective of whether they have the money or not.
While it is true that different States have different laws and hence different consequences for unpaid traffic tickets, the bottom line is that in some situations people that have failed to initially pay their traffic fine, will thereby have issued against them, an actual bench warrant for having failed to appear in court, so generated, by virtue of their non-appearance and of having failed to paid their fine. Once a bench warrant is issued and a fine not paid, one’s driver’s license is subject to suspension and when that happens that will incur yet another monetary fine as well as probable incarceration when caught driving on a suspended license which will thereby necessitate another mandatory court appearance as well as the expense of the towing and subsequent storage of one’s car.
A significant amount of people, really don’t have the extra cash to pay traffic fines, especially in a day and age, in which those fines have gone up considerably from where they once were, and of which, these fines so issued should be seen for what they are, a form of taxation, in which, that taxation is in itself, a regressive tax, for no matter the income of the person so being ticketed, the assessed fine is exactly the same. Then there is the issue that lower economic areas of cities have been documented to show that they receive a higher percentage of traffic tickets so being issued, which is indicative in all likelihood that the poor and disadvantaged are specifically targeted, because the monies to be made off of them, typically will end up exceeding the amount that would be garnered from those with means, as well as it also being a tool to keep the indigent and powerless in their place.
Regrettably, a traffic ticket, can for the indigent, be the downward spiral that makes that which is already a difficult life, even more problematic. The fact that such an initial ticket, can morph into something far worse from a monetary standpoint, as well as the possible incarceration, isn’t fair, and it sure isn’t right.