Traffic Violations

Beverly Hills Police Lt. Michael Hines knows the sinking feeling officers get when they pull someone over for speeding only to see other drivers go roaring past. He can't be everywhere at once. The dozen traffic officers who patrol this wealthy burg say they've watched it happen for years. While they work the city's busier streets, motorists are short-cutting on quiet residential roads, often tearing along in what Hines calls "wonderfully high-performance vehicles." Scottsdale, Ariz.

As of July 1, a police officer can pull you over and give you a ticket for DWT -- Driving While Talking. On a cellphone, that is, if it's held up to your ear. Talking on cellphones in cars will still be allowed (otherwise, life as we know it in Southern California would come to a halt), but drivers must use a hands-free device while gabbing, according to a California law ratified in 2006 and finally about to take effect. The law applies to drivers 18 and older.

The Los Angeles plastic surgeon who operated on rap star Kanye West's mother before she died last year was arrested in Solano County early Thursday on suspicion of drunk driving and driving on a suspended license. Dr. Jan Adams was stopped by the California Highway Patrol after it received calls about 2:41 a.m. of a car traveling south in the northbound lanes of Interstate 680 near Benicia after using an offramp to enter the freeway, officials said.

As he waited in his cruiser near a 605 Freeway offramp in Santa Fe Springs, California Highway Patrol Officer Joe Zizi swore that the stretch of road had been a "cellphone mecca" just one day before. Zizi was expecting the 14 officers operating from his station to have a ticket field day on the first day of a law requiring drivers to use hands-free devices to make cellphone calls. But driver after driver either wore an earpiece or resisted talking on a cellphone.

As with most people who land in traffic court, Dae Lee, Denise Milton and Felix Arellanoramirez were defiant. Lee indeed was impeding traffic, Milton did pass through that stop sign, and it was true that Arellanoramirez was driving without a license, they told the judge. But, they argued, they still did not deserve a ticket.

Fines for most red light camera tickets in the city of Los Angeles more than doubled to nearly $400 under a newly ordered change, The Times has learned. The change, which takes effect immediately, will affect thousands of motorists each year who make rolling right turns against red lights -- dubbed "California stops" by police -- at 32 camera-equipped intersections. About eight in 10 camera tickets in the city are for those violations, officials have said.

It was the kind of move that would usually mean a ticket for a young guy in a tricked-out BMW: unsafely zipping around a truck and another vehicle -- which happened to be a CHP cruiser -- while zooming down the road. But rather than getting slapped with a fine last year on U.S. 101 south of San Francisco, Nick Palefsky was let go with a warning. "He said, 'Next time, be a little bit more cautious,' " Palefsky recounted in a recent interview.

R&B singer Usher has been found guilty of speeding in a July 4 incident in which he was pulled over on Interstate 75 in Georgia for driving 103 mph. Usher, 28, appeared in Bartow County court Tuesday to face a speeding citation. He was fined $425 and told to perform 20 hours of community service.

The streets of Los Angeles are becoming more dangerous for city traffic officers. Appalled by a growing increase in assaults against the 550 civilian employees who write parking tickets and direct traffic, city officials Monday endorsed state legislation to increase penalties for attackers. Last week in Hollywood, for example, someone took a baseball bat to the windshield of a traffic enforcement officer's vehicle. Three other cars had their tires slashed.

Automated speed and red-light cameras might be catching traffic scofflaws, but they're also busting police rushing to respond to emergencies, a union representing District of Columbia officers says. The officers are spending months writing letters in an attempt to get out of the tickets from the cameras, which snap pictures of speeders and those running red lights, said Kristopher Baumann, chairman of the D.C. chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police.