LAW OK’S HEADLIGHT-FLASHING WARNINGS
Lawyer Warns of Other Provisions
Associated Press
TALLAHASSEE — Flashing your headlights to alert oncoming drivers that police are lurking on the roadside ahead will no longer be illegal in Florida, though a lawyer who has represented ticketed motorists says a new law legalizing the practice still has loopholes.
A provision legalizing such speed trap warnings is part of a wide-ranging motor vehicle law taking effect Tuesday with the new year. Other changes range from allowing homeless people to get free state identification cards to creating a pair of new specialty license plates.
Oviedo attorney J. Marcus Jones, who has helped headlight- blinking motorists get their tickets dismissed, said the new law doesn’t go far enough.
By the time the law was passed in March, the Florida Highway Patrol already had ordered state troopers to stop issuing tickets for high-beam flashing after being hit with a lawsuit Jones filed on behalf of Erich Campbell.
The St. Petersburg College student from Land O’ Lakes was cited for violating an existing law that says “flashing lights are prohibited on vehicles” except for turn signals.
The lawsuit contends the Highway Patrol had been misinterpreting that provision in Florida’s traffic code because it was meant only to ban drivers from having strobes or officiallooking emergency vehicle lights on their cars and trucks.
A Pinellas County judge dismissed Campbell’s $115 ticket, but his lawsuit is in trouble.
Another judge in Tallahassee ruled it’s a moot issue because of the new law. Jones, though, has asked Circuit Judge Kevin Carroll to reconsider because of the loopholes he believes it contains.
Jones said police still can use other sections of the traffic code to ticket motorists for flashing their headlights. Those provisions include prohibitions against using high beams within 500 feet of an oncoming vehicle. The new exception for flashing headlights doesn’t apply to those parts of the traffic code, Jones said.
Rogue
Motorcycle Hall Of Fame Member 2005