Please help me understand this New York State traffic ticket

Post date: 2024-09-18 04:45:47

Oy vey, I got a ticket for speeding in a small town in Western New York. My options are to plead guilty, plead not guilty (can't do that; I'm a tourist who lives across the country so I can't appear in court), or "seek a reduction." I am confused about what the reduction is and how it differs from pleading guilty.

Not that it matters, but I'll say that this was a total speed trap and I fell for it. It was a spot where the speed limit declined twice in close succession; I saw and obeyed the first but didn't see the second. The cop was "nice" in that I was apparently going X miles above the speed limit (I forget) but he lowered my speed so it'd be 15 miles over, rather than higher than that.

So here are the instructions for how to ask for a reduction. It's clear what to do, but it isn't really clear why I'd choose this over pleading guilty? Online searching seems to correlate this with a reduced fine for low-income folks, but the paperwork doesn't ask anything about my finances. (And I would not qualify as low-income, I'm guessing.) The instructions say only "IF you wish to argue for a lower fine, you should include an explanation with your plea on a separate page" but does not say that this is mandatory.

So based on the checkboxes on that form, it looks like my option would be to start with: VTL 1180 – Speed less than 20 mph over limit
Which then might be reduced to: VTL 1214 – Opened door unsafely
And the fine would be: $0 - $150, TBD. Plus a fee of $93.

The only other option, to plead guilty, just involves marking "guilty" on the ticket and physically mailing it back, with no info about the fine I'll be receiving.

So does anybody have insight on the best way to handle this? I'm guessing it's better to have "opened door unsafely" on my driving record than "speeding" but is there more to it than that

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