Southern Maine Criminal Lawyer Blog
There is no easy answer here. It depends on your situation and why you got the ticket. When we talk about tickets in this blog, we mean civil traffic violations such as failure to signal, speeding (under 30MPH over the speed limit), failure to stop at a stop sign, and other minor traffic infractions. We are not referring to more serious criminal driving charges like Operating Under the Influence, Criminal Speeding (over 30MPH over the speed limit), or Illegally Passing a School Bus. For any criminal charge, you should always have an attorney.
If you have a Commercial Driver Licenses (CDL), drive for a living, or have any concern that the ticket could cause you to lose your license, you should absolutely speak with an attorney. Any person whose driving record shows an accumulation of 12 demerit points for convictions or adjudications within a one year period may have his or her license, permit or privilege to operate suspended for a period of up to 15 days.
Here is a short list of examples of some of the demerit point values for common traffic tickets:
Last Friday Maine passed a law to ban texting while driving. The new law, which goes into effect on September 1, 2011, prohibits reading or manually composing any written electronic message while driving. The penalty is a $100 fine. It is not a crime for which jail can be imposed. It is a traffic violation.