Is the idea that people who want to contest traffic tickets should have to actually ask for a court date, as is the case in 47 states, simply too obvious for Maryland? It's hard to grasp otherwise why this proposal, now being considered in Annapolis for at least the second time, didn't become law years ago. The Sun's Michael Dresser reported today that of the 1.2 million traffic citations in Maryland last year, 343,387 resulted in the alleged offenders failing to show up for their automatically scheduled court date. That's a colossal waste of time for judges, clerks, bailiffs and other court personnel, and especially for police officers, who have to sit in traffic court, often on overtime, waiting for people who don't show up.
A similar bill died last year in the House Judiciary Committee, which has a reputation of being dominated by defense lawyers. But it's hard to see how this legislation could be considered an abridgement of defendants' rights. Yes, it would require a recipient of a traffic ticket to take some action to schedule a court date, but as it is, anyone who wants to contest a ticket has to take some action to show up in court. The added burden of calling to schedule an appearance -- or, perhaps one day, of scheduling one online -- does not seem so great. Anyone who's concerned enough about a traffic ticket to contest it ought to be able to do that.
There are two legitimate concerns about the bill. One is that it would cost about $250,000 to reprogram the court system's computers. That cost would be more than offset by the savings to state and local police departments and is relatively minor in the grand scheme of the state budget, even at a time when every penny counts. The other objection, voiced by the Maryland Judicial Conference, is that the courts are now in the process of replacing an old computer system, meaning that work to convert existing computers to the new system would be wasted. But that is a technical objection; surely the effective date of the bill could be set to accommodate the court's concern.