If you’re charged with a reckless driving ticket in Loudoun County, Virginia, you’re probably getting inundated with lawyer advertising and very confused about what to do. Some lawyers are telling you you’re going to be facing jail time, you’re going to maybe lose your license, you’re going to branded as a criminal.
You’re in the right place to answer your questions about your reckless driving ticket.
I’ve written a book about reckless driving defense in Virginia, and it’s going to answer a lot of questions that you have about your Loudoun County reckless driving ticket. The book covers all sorts of topics that are going to be helpful for you as you begin the journey through your reckless driving charge. Whether or not you decide to hire a lawyer in Loudoun County, you’ll determine a lot about what you’re facing and what to do about your ticket. What sort of information is in the book?
What is Loudoun County reckless driving?
Chapter 1 of the book starts with the first, most important question if you’re facing a reckless driving ticket: what is reckless driving?
As you’ve probably learned by now, reckless driving is a class 1 misdemeanor on the same level of crime as DUI, possession of marijuana and even assault and battery. Reckless driving can be punished by up to a year in jail, up to $2,500 in fines, and up to six months loss of your driving license, but those are just the maximums.
The lawyers that tell you you’re going to go to jail for sure are usually just using scare tactics for the most part. Some people do go to jail, but that is more a rarity than the normal case.
What possibilities might there be in Loudoun County for reckless driving?
Loudoun County falls under the same Virginia criminal rules and procedure as the rest of the state. The Commonwealth’s Attorney has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you were driving recklessly. Every element of the case provides a possible defense.
For example, one defense may be that the officer’s equipment was not calibrated and accurate on the day in question. Chapter 3 of my book gets into that quite a bit in detail about some defenses that may work for a reckless driving by speed case.
One of my favorite parts of the book, however, is the very next chapter, where it goes into defenses that won’t work in most cases. A defense that fails regularly is “I had to go to the bathroom.” Will that help you out of your Loudoun County reckless driving case? You’ll have to read Chapter 4 to find out.
What other outcome might be available for a Loudoun County reckless driving ticket?
In the courts around the Commonwealth, the judges sometimes consider alternate outcomes for reckless driving cases. While it is a misdemeanor charge, depending on the facts of the case, they might consider sending you to driving school, perhaps a reckless aggressive driver education program, or maybe have you do community service to earn a break on the charge.
Whether or not that will be possible in Loudoun County is going to depend upon the specific judge or prosecutor that’s handling your case, and that’s where it makes sense to start talking with a local traffic attorney who handles Loudoun County cases. However, Chapter 5 of my book does go into some of the general types of outcomes that may be possible in different types of reckless driving cases.
What if I lose my Loudoun County case?
Chapter 7 has a lot of great information about what to do if you lose your Loudoun County reckless driving case. If you’ve gone to court already and you lost, you’ve come to the right place as well, because my book will give you options to try to recover from a loss in Loudoun County.
In Virginia, you have the absolute right within ten days after a loss in General District Court to appeal the case for a new trial in Circuit Court, and Chapter 7 gives you the specifics of how to make that happen.
Do I need to hire a Loudoun County reckless driving lawyer?
That’s a great question, and it’s one that only you can answer after studying the possibilities about what might happen with your case. If you decide that you want to talk with lawyers, which I recommend, Chapter 8 will give you a great list of questions to talk with them about. Instead of just asking “how much do you charge?”, you’ll be able to ask them informed, educated questions about their experience, their background and what might be available to you for your Loudoun County case.
In my opinion, one of the most critical questions in the book is on Page 49, where you’ll learn about how some lawyers pass their clients off to other lawyers. Instead of you having the lawyer you think you’re going to have in court, you may end up with somebody completely different.
What are you waiting for? The book is free. All you have to do is fill out the book form below and we will instantly email it to right to your inbox, and you can begin reading right away to learn about your Loudoun County reckless driving ticket.