Yet another reason to move to Estonia

Then came (compared the the States) a lot of paperwork. A document showing my rights under Estonian law (form was in Estonian, English & Russian by the way) which I was to sign that I read and understood. Then he informed me of my options regarding the ticket, the easiest being that he could issue it on the spot (but I could dispute it and go to court, etc). I chose just to take the ticket right then because I knew that in Estonia a ticket doesn’t affect your insurance rate. It’s simply a fee to pay with no long term repercussions so to speak (unless you rack up tickets weekly I suppose.) In the States for example a traffic violation can greatly increase your car insurance rates or in some cases make it almost impossible to obtain car insurance.

Before writing out the ticket there was another document showing that he calibrated his radar gun that morning and that his vehicle was not moving when he took the speed reading. He also filled in some boxes showing it was a clear day with dry roads and that I was otherwise driving properly. The strangest bit was at the end of that form I had to write in the explanation box why I was speeding. I just jotted down that I wasn’t paying attention to the speed limit at the time and he was satisfied with that. Then I signed and dated.

Finally he got to the ticket and said that while the maximum fine could be 3000 EEK ($295), he didn’t find in my case this was necessary and wrote the ticket for 900 EEK ($88). Not too bad I thought so I happily signed on the dotted line. Like everything else in Estonia, payment could be made online through my bank simply referencing my ticket number which I did that evening when I got home. Couldn’t have been any easier.