Traffic Rules & Tickets

(Joerg Schernikau, Germany, 1993)

For those who will make the Californian driver license (it is a nice souvenir!) this article is obsolete, so it is dedicated to those who drive rental cars and have no driving experience in USA.

Traffic Rules

First of all: it's no problem to drive a car in USA if you are used to the European traffic rules. There are some things different worth to mention:

Right-turn on red lights:
You are allowed to turn right even if the traffic light is red. Just make sure that you make a full stop before you turn (for the police) and it's save to do so (that's for yourself!). Watch out for sign indicating that the turn is not allowed; they are really seldom.

STOP signs:
Probably they saved the revenues of the STOP-sign manufacturer, I want to say: there are many of these STOP signs! Mostly in residential area. Make sure either there is no police officer following you or make a real STOP (see tickets). Check also out if it is a 2-way or 4-way STOP sign.
In USA there is the "First-come-First-Go rule". That means the car which arrived at the intersection first, goes first . This is also valid if the traffic lights at an intersection break down. And most astonishing: it really works!

Car-Pool Lanes:
These are lanes, mostly on highways, which are reserved for buses, cabs and cars with more than one or two passengers. There are sign stating how many passengers must be in the car to drive in the car-pool lane. The restriction is only valid for the rush-hours which are also on the signs.
Violations are very expensive: $200 to $500.

Tickets

Personally I had a ticket this year (1995) but I can`t guarantee for the price of all the one`s:

• a STOP sign is $120.00
• driving without papers is $120.00
• speeding on the high-way (75 miles, where 55 miles are allowed) is $109 (so far...)
• driving with the red is $114.00
  

When you get the ticket from the officer he won't tell you how much it is. You will get a mail after a couple of days. If you don't get the mail you have to go to court (see ticket for addresses) and ask for the mail!

Some violations can be corrected, for example driving without papers assuming you have forgotten them at home. Just go to a police officer, show him your papers and he will mark the correction on your ticket. With this correction you can go to the court clerk and pay with a cheque or cash; they don't accept credit cards (at least in Sunnyvale, this may differ from court to court)!