Get a lawyer. Pay twice the amount of the ticket in legal fees. Get found guilty and still have to pay a fine. Then you'll be $1000 invested and just paying the fine will seem cheap :)

We'll all see more of this happening as the cops become more and more revenue oriented. The economy drives this and where you might have gotten a friendly "We'll let you go this time", I would suspect the cops will be quick to ticket. So us cycling lawbreakers need to accept that when we break the law and get caught, we have to pay the price.
Ride safe!

Has anyone ever tried to pursue a "nullification" style of defense? For example, arguing that red lights shouldn't apply to bikes the same way as they do to cars, citing that the enlightened state of Idaho allows cyclists to treat them as stop signs? Seriously, running red lights is a way of life in NYC for cyclists (not all, but I'd say easily most). It's far, far safer to run lights in many situations than it is to wait for a green (this has been argued a lot on BFs, no doubt).

I once got what I believed to be a BS red light ticket while driving. I had a perfect driving record, never having even been pulled over before. I beat the ticket in court. It can be done.

I've been wondering how difficult it would be to export Idaho stops?

Please, don't do this. This is one of the reasons that the U.S. justice system is so slow and inefficient. Sure, you might get out of the ticket, but not without cost. It costs money to employee the judge, prosecutors, bailiffs, and other court officials to hear your, frankly, unethical legal challenge; money that comes from the pocket of every U.S. taxpayer. If you ran the light, then you know you are guilty. If you know you are guilty, then it is most definitely unethical to plead otherwise. And it wastes the system's time to have to hear your spurious challenge, time that could have been used to address another citizen's possibly reasonable challenge.

We all have the right to challenge the justice system, and it's a right we must have to ensure that our justice system remains just and our citizenry remains free. But, as citizens responsible for keeping our society both orderly and free, we also have a responsibility to use that right wisely; not just for our own personal gain, but for the good of our society as a whole. Every one of us that wastes the court's time creates a little more drag in the system, a tiny twig in the dam of waste that slows the flow of justice.

By weaseling out of a ticket, by taking advantage of our communal rights for your own personal gain, you cost all of us. You cost us in misspent tax monies. You cost us in safety and order; how can laws be enforced if everyone can avoid the consequences of lawbreaking? It might suck to get a ticket, but it surely would suck worse to live in a city where stopping at red lights was a suggestion rather than a rule. And you cost us a efficient justice system, which robs us all of our right to an expeditious trial.

OP, do the right thing. Pay the fine, learn your lesson, get on with life. Too many people avoid their responsibilities in our society, and we all suffer as a consequence. Sure, they have the right to do so, but that does not make it the right thing to do.

+1000

Unfortunately, I think it will not be heard...

I'm in the plead not guilty camp. Have a reasonable explanation and most of the time the fee will get reduced.

We're all guilty of something - some are just better than others at not getting caught or weaseling our way out of it...

Options; Go to court yourself... plead your case (what case, though-- you ran the light, right? what mitigating factors do you have?), perhaps you plead guilty, and implore the mercy of the court to get your fine reduced, but still have the 'moving violation' on your record (do you drive a car? This ticket may affect your car insurance!)

Hire an attorney, plead the case down to a non-moving violation (legal fees around $700 to $1000, I'd expect), possibly pay a higher fine, or plead for lower fine, and accept some other cost.

Find out if there is any sort of 'traffic school' or 'pre-trial diversion' program for clean driving records (presuming you have one).

Pay the fine, take your lump and don't repeat.

The odds that the cop won't show up? Slim and many judges will continue your case, unless the cop isn't excused. Defenses? Maybe if an ambulance was behind you, or some other emergency.

$270? If it were up to me I'd charge a lot more. This stupidity needs to stop. Red lights are there for a reason. How much would it really cost you to just wait for a minute until it turns green?

I wish the police were more willing to ticket cyclists for this.

If I pay the fine, do I still get the 3 violation points? I don't have a NYS diver's license i have a learner's permit. Does that matter?

Keep your eye on the sparrow!

I hope my first ticket is speeding. That would be one that I would be proud of. LOL

As far as your fine goes, if you broke the law you should pay.

Ride safe,

Jeff

I wouldn't want to gamble between alive and dead. Nor would I brag about how I had cheated the grim reaper.

Here is how it works, if you're oblivious enough not to notice a cop car then you are not situationally aware enough to be running a red light!

Pay more attention - more so if you're going to run a red.

Hope this is a lesson to you that you can't see everything, something to think about next time you decide to run a light.

No, that's correct - that's the max red light fine in NYC. Unless it was red light camera, then it's like $50.

Adam

Four glorious seasons worth of irony!

Anyhoo...I have always stopped for red lights but never for stop signs, until recently. It was just one of those things that ate at me until I finally rolled to a complete stop one day. Never put my foot down, mind you, but I did stop. Now it's no big thing. I please the jealous cagers at the intersections and keep my conscience clear at the same time. Win, win.

In the vernacular, that translates to, "Your laws shouldn't apply to me."

Good luck with that.

You can take your chances in the court. Like others said you can get either the fine lowered or avoid getting points. See how much a lawyer would charge you. They can do this without you showing in the court. I'm not sure how that affects your learners permit. It's like these guys, they charge you a bit but pretty much always will get your parking ticket slashed at least by half. You have better chances if a lawyer takes care of it.

Go to court - you don't need a lawyer. It will either get abjudicated and dismissed as it is a first offense, or it will be reduced to a lesser ticket (non-moving violation - say missing a taillight), or the fine will be greatly reduced. Sometimes the DA talks to everybody before they see the judge and just does it himself. Courts are overcrowded. This is all from my own personal experience in New York and in Florida. Remember - these tickets you get on your bike go against your drivers license and can raise your insurance premiums.

You weren't really expecting any sympathy were you? One of the problems with society today is that people fail to take responsibility for their own actions and have been molly coddled into thinking actions have no consequences. Little Johnny doesn't do his homework - does he fail, hell no. Some genius gets drunk on Friday night and kills someone while driving home - his fault, no it's the bar's responsibility.

Suck it up, pay the fine and move on.

Right, but that reason isn't to prevent a cyclist doing 13 mph on a 26 lbs bike from barreling into a school bus and killing a dozen children. Red lights exist to prevent 2,500 lbs cars moving at 50 mph from doing that...

It doesn't make it right. For some cyclists this is a way of life and death. I've seen many cyclists hit by car or hitting pedestrians while blowing a red light. An ironic accident happened when a cycling activists was killed on Queens Blvd when riding through a red light. I myself narrowly avoided being hits by cyclists blowing lights. Really, this needs to stop.

Funny, I thought that traffic lights existed to facilitate the smooth flow of traffic, and that people run them because they think their time is more important than everyone else's at the light.

No its to prevent a 26pound bike from veering in front of that school bus and causing it to crash killing a dozen children....

Red lights exist to regulate vehicles from conflict.

+1000