[c7scayman]

Hello,

The traffic in the right lane was going slow (probably because they saw a police car) so I went into the left lane to initiate a passing maneuver. I noticed the police car too, but I didn't consider that what I was about to do was illegal. As I was passing I was observing my surroundings to make sure everything was safe. Passing the car took me about 5 seconds, then I went back into the right lane and maintained the speed limit. I was stopped by police about 15 seconds later for speeding.

As stated on Page 46 of the PennDOT Driving manual, you should drive about 10mph faster than the person you are passing.

I asked the officer, "Isn't it allowed to pass the speed limit to pass a slow driver through the passing lane?" She was not sure and said it was a gray area. However she couldn't let me go because it was caught on her dash camera and her superiors would know if she let me go with a warning. I got 4 points on my license. This is the first offense and speeding ticket in my total 10 year driving history and ironically it happened in a slow 100hp economy car.

Can I claim Not Guilty to reduce or eliminate the points on my license? If so, how should I go about it? Should I even mention the PennDot drivers manual or would that make the judge angry?

Checking the speedometer is not something people usually do when they are passing someone, especially when it only takes 5 seconds to pass. So in this case I did not notice how fast I was going, but I do admit accelerating to pass the cars on the right lane.