It sure sounds like a racketeering conspiracy.

This isn't about being poor, it's about being a really shitty driver, not learning from your mistakes and blowing off your legitimate legal obligations.

I'm poor. Desperately so. This woman can afford a decent car that she can pay for. Not something I can do. And because I can in no possible way afford any frivolous expenditures and have to make those decisions between buying food or paying the electric bill I'm not so stupid as to rack up traffic violations. Hell, even when I HAD a good job and made decent money I still didn't drive like a dipshit collecting traffic tickets even though I could have afforded the fines. And I sure as hell would show up at court broke or not and work out a payment plan since the courts are required to do so those very few times I didn't see the no turn on red sign and got a ticket but mostly because of expired registration or insurance or inspection because I couldn't afford it when they needed to be paid for... yeah, those "poverty violations".

Look, if you can't afford to pay for what's required to be paid for when owning a car then either pay for it, own a bucket of bolts instead of something that you need to make payments on and carry collision insurance, use a bike, moped, borrow someone's car, take the bus/train or downsize your home, cut the cable, the entertainment or other frivolous expenses. If you must have a car - and I'm one of those people that must - and you're poor than you don't get to just ignore the legal requirements of ownership, but like I've had to do nearly all my adult life is prioritize the most expensive expenses like legal financial obligations for owning a car, using your electricity, living under a roof and expect to have to pay for those obligations before anything else that isn't absolutely necessary. And yes, a number of times over the decades I've had to run the risk of driving under "poverty violations" because of not being able to pay for the legal requirements on time and had to go to court for tickets for not having paid for them on time and get a payment plan. That's life.

THIS sickening shit says it all...

"I know I have a heavy foot. I have kids. I have to work to support them. I’ve also been taking classes. So I’m late a lot. And when I’m late, I speed. But I’m still a human being."

Guess what Miss Holier than Thou... WE WHO SHARE THE ROAD WITH YOUR LEAD FOOT ARE HUMAN BEINGS, TOO! Jesus H. Christ eating shards of glass! The big difference between your human beingness and the rest of us is that we don't deserve to have your sick twisted selfishness gambling with our lives so frivolously as if we were of no importance compared to your running late!

No one gets caught speeding because they're poor or doesn't wear their seatbelt because the local authorities have you pegged to abuse needlessly as part of some big conspiracy... they're just bad drivers deserving of the tickets. I don't feel one single bit sorry for this woman, and after reading what's she's done and actually having the gall to say what she did about speeding and gambling with other peoples' lives while ironically crying that SHE is the one that should be treated nicely. She didn't learn from the first time she got a traffic violation and just blew off court as if she wasn't required to pay the fines or attend the hearings like all the rest of us are. Only stupid people looking to get themselves into much more trouble blow off court, and they aren't doing it because they can't afford the fines they legitimately received. Good bloody luck to this piece of excrement whining about not being able to afford the fines when she didn't have any problem coming up with hundreds of dollars immediately to get her ass out of jail!

And worse, after getting hit by a car being driven by a reckless driver NOTHING ELSE is more potent than that in learning that you put other people in harm's way when you drive like a piece of shit. But nooooo, she thinks it's ever so much more important that she gets to put other people in harm's way because she's always late.

My crazy neighbors have spent years doing this same crap, and she sounds exactly like them... it's everyone else's fault. It all started with a $22 parking ticket for the woman and speeding in a school zone for the man which they charge X amount of money for every mile over the school zone limit, and since it wasn't much, the ticket wasn't much either. They didn't pay their tickets, blew off court, racked up more warrants and more fines for not showing up in court about the blown off warrants and fines until the both of them eventually had their driver's licenses suspended... and then racked up even more when caught driving without a license (numerous times... and at this point they'll probably not get them back until they're too old and feeble to drive). They even illogically bought a new car because they believed that they kept getting pulled over because theirs was too recognizable... I kid you not. That worked for exactly 34 hours. Now they're on their next car that is of course more expensive than the last just like the last one was that replaced the first one. When all they had to do was pay a $22 parking ticket and about $150 speeding violation ticket or at the LEAST showed up at court at the appointed hour and ask for a payment plan to pay off these fines.

I've spent more hours having to listen to them blaming the police, the judges, the courts, their cars, their boss, their ex's and their kid's dirty diapers along with every possible absurd excuse that can possibly be invented for all this they willfully and stupidly brought down on their own heads than I can possibly count over the years this epic soap opera of woe has been going on. Oh yes, they also most of those hours whining about CONSPIRACY! THEY'RE OUT TO GET US! I SHOULD BE TREATED WITH MORE POLITENESS! Willfully stupid and pathetic.

Fat chance I'm going to cry the blues over this woman and her led foot who wasn't too poor to bail her butt out of jail being just as willfully stupid. Let's hope that she didn't have her kids in the car those times she was caught speeding and if unwilling to buckle herself in at least she had the kids buckled in.

Bottom line - get caught for a moving violation it's YOUR FAULT. Refuse to show up at court it's YOUR FAULT. Get warrants out on you for failing to pay your ticket or show up at court it's YOUR FAULT. Being poor doesn't have fuck all to do with it, and it's not some elaborate conspiracy behind someone's willful stupidity in being a shitty driver and just blowing off their tickets and court. She bloody well should have thought about what she should do with her kids while she sat in jail the first time she stomped on the accelerator. She not only brought this on her own self she actually whines that she should have the right to speed when she wants to. FUCK her and the slow walking goat she didn't ride in on but should be riding out on in perpetuity.

And GOOD that the police set up a speed trap. Speeders are selfish shits that think they own the road and gamble with the lives of everyone on it. This woman made that utterly clear. A seat belt saved mine when some speeding assbucket turned my car into an accordion though my back, neck and shoulder have been a perpetual problem ever since and why I can't do any job where I can't be freely moving around which there are not many. I can't do a desk job anymore. That selfish piece of shit fucked over my life because she thought she had some kind of right to gamble with MY life and everyone else on the road that day JUST LIKE THIS WOMAN and even had the same fucking asinine excuse - she was running late.

Throw the speeders and reckless drivers in a lion pit in the middle of the Arctic with three dozen poisonous vipers to boot. They should feel lucky they get a cell for playing Russian roulette with the gas peddle vs. everyone else on the road and that's only AFTER they get the chance to pay a fine or go to court to work out a payment plan. What, they expect plush carpeting and a well stocked fridge in a jail cell while the people sharing the road with these scum of the earth have to cross their fingers and pray they live to their destination because of these epic shits playing Mario Andretti on the public roads? Oh sure, just as soon as champion purebred puppies, the Hell's Angels and Tupperware fly out of their asses, and may they take that idiot's "heavy foot" with them.

For the love of all that's holy, this article sounds like that lead footed too-human-for-you piece of excrement wrote it her own unbearably selfish self.

Do you know how police cars work? Cops don't pull over people driving the older model car because of the color of who's in it. Ever seen the inside of a police cruiser? It's like an airplane cockpit. And all that gadgetry picks up on the license plates of the vehicles passing by and instantly picks out the owners that have outstanding warrants, unpaid fines, a list of all their traffic violations, and whether or not they're up to date on their registration, insurance and inspection. Police don't look at the cars or the people in them to decide a) whose speeding and how much over the limit, nor b) the age, make and model of the car, nor c) the color of the person driving it because when a car is passing by at speed they can't tell with their own human eyes. That's why you only notice these things AFTER a person has been pulled over because you can't tell any of that with your ow human eyes either.

That's when when you get pulled over they know everything they need to know about your car, your payment history, exactly how fast you were going, any outstanding warrants or fines, etc., etc. None of that do they or CAN they determine with their own eyeballs. I AM one of those people that gets pulled over more than the people driving the Mercedes or the Lexis because I own a bucket of bolts aging Ford (or Dodge or Chevy or whatever old bucket of bolts I had at the time), and I'm white as snow and female to boot. And I'm not so stupid to believe I was pulled over because of my aging car or my whiteness or my femaleness none of that information they could have been able to see with their human eyeballs. Once on the side of the road and they walk up to my window that nifty gadgetry in their cruisers already told them why I was pulled over, and it was almost always because of those financial obligations of not being able to keep up the payments for registration, insurance or inspection because I don't run lights or speed or fail to wear my seatbelt, etc.

Meanwhile the Mercedes or the Lexus or the BMW went past because the sort of people that can afford to own them can also afford to keep up with the financial obligations of paying for them, and when both me and the Mercedes are passing the cruiser the cruiser doesn't pick up any outstanding warrants or fines or unpaid ownership obligations, so guess why I get pulled over and that Mercedes didn't? Because one of us had higher priority violations and it's never likely to be the driver of the more expensive car because those people can and do pay them.

I see these nice expensive cars getting pulled over all the time particularly at night when there are few cars on the road at all and why people in all sorts of cars of all sorts of races and all sorts of financial status decide that on a nearly empty road at night is a good time to decide to lead foot. And more often than not its the people in the more expensive cars that get pulled over because those of us that can't afford to get caught speeding driving the old beaters are smart enough to obey all the traffic laws during those times late at night when the roads are empty and lead footing doesn't seem like such a bad idea.

And we poor folk pretty much own the roads in the wee hours because we're the ones doing the shit late shifts in our measly jobs shutting down the bar late at night or scrubbing the floors in the hospital or all the other menial labor late shift type of jobs while the people that own the nice cars get to work behind a highly polished desk and make the big bucks and getting to be snug in bed while us poor laborers are just heading out to our menial jobs.

In the wee hours though it's usually the fewer overall number of fancy cars getting pulled over because they don't know where the cruisers are hiding and don't know better than to risk lead footing or running red lights because drivers are a million times more vulnerable to getting pulled over for traffic violations when practically no one is on the road because they usually aren't ON the roads at that time. That's also why you see few of us poor folk in the beaters even using the main drags at all but creeping the back roads to our destinations because the cops are all on the main drags. Watching the main drags one would think that it's all the well healed in the spiffy cars driving in the wee hours, but we poor folk know better because as much as we can we don't use the main drags at that time and know we're more vulnerable to getting pulled over by blowing off the traffic laws and are willing to sit at 10 minute red lights when we're the only car on the road as far as the eye can see because to us blowing off that red light puts us in a world of financial hurt that wouldn't mean spit to the people driving the nice cars.

Yep, the poor are the ones getting pulled over far more often than the well off in the fancy cars because it's our poor folk violations that come up as priority on the police cruiser computer that tells the cops who gets to be pulled over. How is it that your old eyes haven't missed the fact that the cops aren't even looking out their car windows before pulling someone over? Because they're looking at the computer screen telling them who gets it.

Yeah, it's not fair that the poor get pulled over and ticketed more often than the un-poor because we have trouble keeping up with the financial obligations of owning even a bucket of bolts. But the poor always get the shit end of the stick in everything. Nothing new about that. Blame the computers that tell the police who gets pulled over or blame society that makes far more people of color poor or society choosing shit government that just makes things worse for the poor rather than doing anything to elevate us even when it costs them $20 in order to save $5. That's life, and it sucks when you aren't the one who can afford that bright and shiny Mercedes. The fault isn't with the officers who don't get to decide who gets ticketed and who doesn't when they have to pull over who their cruiser computer tells them to. They have to follow rules and procedures in their jobs just like every other average employed person.

A friend of mine once got a ticket for excessive speed for conditions doing 30 in a 35 on a clear dry road in light traffic.

...and cops don't pick on minorities; instead, they use high tech equipment to sniff out wrongdoers - who just happen to be disproportionately people of color?

That's the way I read it.

Again, you're pissed off at the wrong people. They don't GET to decide what goes in their cruisers or how it's used nor do they GET to decide how to do their jobs. Why are you placing omniscience on them when they don't have it any more than the rest of us word-a-day folk?

And it may be a surprise to you but the police are not all white. There's all sorts of minority races within the police departments. You think a black or hispanic or asian cop is pulling over minorities more than whites?

What is it that you don't get about our society having poor people that are more often people of color than not? It sucks. Having so many poor in our society of ANY color is an abomination. And being one of them I can tell you all about just how much it sucks to get the shit end of the stick just for being poor if you've got a few days to hear about it. And I'm probably a more fortunate poor person because I'm not a person of color, so I likely get some kind of advantages they don't that I'm likely not even aware of. For some reason you still seem to think that cops have anything do do with this or have any power to change it. They don't anymore than the rest of us.

Why aren't more minorities becoming police officers? Maybe it depends on where one lives. Around here the local police are more racially diverse than almost any private business. Maybe the education to become an officer is too expensive and out of reach for most poor minorities. Who knows. Somewhere there's likely studies about that or there should be. Who comes up with the technology that police officers have to use? Who buys it? Why shouldn't it disproportionately pick out higher priority traffic violations that happen to be disproportionately pick out a higher volume of people of color because more people of color are in poor sphere? I'm not a person of color yet I get picked out just the same as a higher priority in the system because of the disadvantages of being poor not the disadvantages of being a person of color. The system doesn't KNOW what race these car owners are, so it can't pick out more people of color BECAUSE of it.

It's the disadvantages of being POOR and not always being able to afford to pay fines for basic traffic violations or the required payments necessary for owning a car that bring up a higher percentage of POOR people getting tagged on the system. How is it the fault of the average police officer who doesn't GET to chose the color of the average poor person, or have any power any more than the rest of us to change the fact that minorities in our fucked up society are disproportionately poor? You're blaming the wrong people, and by doing so guarantees that not a damn thing about it is ever going to change. The only way for it to change is to lift up more people regardless of race out of poverty, and change how society views minorities in order to dispel the disproportion of the poor being minorities. It won't happen in our life time, but not doing anything about it now guarantees that it won't in the next generation's lifetime or the one after that and so on.

All your old eyes are seeing is what they WANT to see not how things ARE. Without knowing why more poor people are pulled over and that disproportionately more poor people are of color than aren't you just blame the wrong people who have no power to change any of it. It's a cop out and ever so much easier than understanding what the real problem is, but I'm guessing it isn't you creeping down the back roads at night hiding from the police because your insurance dumped you because you couldn't afford to pay them so not understanding the real problem and how to change it is no skin off your butt. I'm also guessing it isn't you getting pulled over and talking with the police or what they go through to try and help by getting your points waived or writing you up for a lesser expensive infraction than the one you got pulled over for or letting you off with a warning if you can get re-insured or inspected or registered before the court date, etc.

Since the police are the ones that have to use the system they KNOW how disproportionate and unfair it is to the poor and thus disproportionate to minorities. I've BEEN in traffic court numerous times that's full of minorities because they're poor where officers of all colors argue with the judge to let these people off or waive their points or diminish the fine, etc., and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, but they do more than they have to. All you see is a black guy that was pulled over and blame the wrong people. Such an easy cop out.