Best Damn Letter I Ever Read

I wish all speeding tickets were this easy to beat!

Below you will see an actual letter written by someone in New Zealand in response to a speeding ticket he received. After the police got his letter, they dropped the charges.

Very entertaining to say the least.

Keep in mind that this is from New Zealand, so some of his grammar may not make total sense

Justin Lee
46 David Ave
Manurewa
Auckland

27th January 2004

New Zealand Police
Infringement Bureau
PO Box 9147
Wellington

Good morning,

INFRINGMENT NOTICE NS3135700

Yesterday, I was presented with the above infringement notice (copy attached for your records) while returning home from the Parachute Music Festival at Mystery Creek near Hamilton over the long Auckland Anniversary weekend.

I had a most excellent weekend, but that is not why I am writing to you at this time.

Unfortunately, there are a couple of irregularities with the infringment notice that are causing me some consternation and hopefully you can clear them up or, preferably, forget about the whole thing entirely.

Firstly, the 'date of offence' is listed as the 23rd of June 1974 with the time being at or around half past six in the evening. This is of grave concern to me because I was not issued a drivers license until sometime in 1990 and I have no desire to be charged with driving while not legally licensed.

I do not have a clear recollection of very much at all before I was three and a half years old, so I rang Mum to see if she remembered what I was doing around that time. She said that - coincidentally - I was born that day!

Mum mentioned that I was born at around five o'clock in the evening on that day in Porirua, which is not far from Wellington. She also said Porirua was a bustling suburb of young, low-income people who were trying to get ahead. Back in the 70's people were coming to terms with oil shocks, high-inflation and wage freezes, but that's not important right now.

For me to have traveled from Porirua to the foot of Bombay Hill just out of Auckland by six thirty, I would had to have crawled into the first car in the hospital parking and headed for Auckland at around 1,000 km/h.

For this reason, it is entirely possible that the constable who clocked me back in 1974 was holding his laser equipment upside down and instead of doing 116 km/h as per the infringment notice, it was more likely that I was doing 911 km/h.

This is where it starts to get really strange. The car that I must have crawled into had the same license plate number as the one I have now - AEH924 (according to the infringment notice). However, my car is a dark gray Nissan Bluebird SSS, with dual cupholders, 1800cc's of Grunt, air-conditioning abd electric windows.

You will notice that a time-travel option is not included on this model, so that rules out any 'Back to the Future' issues and the car I was driving back then could not have been the the one I drive today.

This is clarifed by the infringement notice which states that the vehicle was a Honda Saloon. How this relates to my Nissan Bluebird, I cannot fathom.

I can only hypothesise that, back in 1974, the first range of proto-type Hondas had an automated number plate changing mechanism (like on the A-Team) which were used to avoid parking tickets and facilitate safer getaways from burglaries, armed hold-ups and the like.

So to recap, it appears that on my birthday on June 23rd 1974, I crawled out of the maternity ward, hijacked a seriously high powered Honda saloon with an automated number plate changing mechanism, drove to Auckland at close to Mach 1 speed, was pulled over approaching Bombay Hill and unwittingly changed the automated number plate changing mechanism to show the same number as a car I would own almost thirty years later! (The chance of selecting the same number plate is a mere 1 in 308,915,776 - so quite conceivable)

I am currently residing at the address listed at the top of this letter. I expect that you will want to apprehend me fairly shortly now that we've established I may have committed the following offences:

Grand theft auto (I probably stole the Honda as my parents drove a white Ford Cortina at that stage)
Driving without a license
Driving at a ludicrous speed using a motor vehicle
Evading the law using an automated number plate changing mechanism.

If you could provide a clearer indication as to why the 'date of offence' is the same as my birthday, and why the vehicle make and type bears no resemblance to the number plate listed on the infringement notice, it would be appreciated.

Mind you, I wouldn't be too disappointed if we agree to let this one go. I could really use the $120 dollars as I'm lowering my Nissan, installing excessively noisy waste-gate and boring it out for better performance in the street drags down to Irirangi drive around the Weymouth.

Thank you for considering my submission, I look forward to hearing from you.

Regards,

Justin Lee

The Result:
After receiving his letter, the police responded by telling him that because of the mistakes on his ticket, they have decided not to pursue the charges. The ticket was dismissed!

Unfortunately, all speeding tickets aren't this easy to beat. That's why Beat the System was written.