Hi there,
I live in California and one day (9/11/06) while traveling home from school I decided to take a different route to get to a main street. While following a truck in front of me at about 300ft we came to a hill. The truck in front of me went over that hill and when I went over the hill I did not notice in time that he had put on his brakes to stop for a pedestrain that was waiting on the side of the road. The pedestrian was waiting at their own stop sign and was not in the road. After colliding with the gentleman in front of me and the cops came the cop talking to me said that I would be recieving a ticket in the mail for unsafe speed.
Let me inform you that the hill is steep and the crosswalk is about 400ft from when you can see it after coming over the hill. The weather was clear and it was daytime. I was going the speed limit and even the pedestrian said that the other driver had to brake abruptly.
Well, a couple of weeks went by and I recieved the ticket and I also went and got a copy of the police report. The letter that was sent with the ticket said I had to pay the fine by October 10, 2006 or show up for court.
I decided to show up for court to see if at least I could get the fines reduced due to the area of the accident, but when i got there the person at the front said that the letter meant that I could send a payment off before the 10th or show up and pay the payment on site by the 10th. I thought that you had a right to stand in front of a judge and contest it so i called my friend to ask them. They said I should have the right to contest it so i went back in and asked the lady at the front desk. It seemed that all of a sudden the letter meant different and that i could set up a trial date to contest the ticket. They set me up with a date on October the 30th.
My questions to you guys are the following:
1)do you have to yeild to pedestrians even when they have their own stop sign and are stopped?
2)Is there anyway to get out of the fact that it was unsafe due to the nature of the area and the fact that the other driver had to even stop abruptly.
3)Are they allowed, by law, to set you up with a court date and then tell you that you need to schedule another one? Otherwise I showed up at the court date they gave me and the cop would not have been there to verify.
4)Isn't there such thing as due process and what is it?
Thanks for your help and remarks

