Legal Question in Traffic Law in Illinois

Re: 16 y/o w/speeding ticket

Well, your son is certainly not required under any circumstances to plead guilty, whether the officer shows up to court or not. Although your son may not have the right to request a jury trial (speeding tickets, unless you're into the aggravted speeding category, are generally only punishable by a fine in Illinois), he certainly has as right to a bench trial in front of the judge. Depending on your son's driving record, he may be eligible for court supervision either on a plea of guilty or after a trial. If he really does not want to plead guilty he could conduct a short trial and explain what happened to the judge. There is a possibility that, even if the judge finds him guilty of speeding, he may still give your son court supervision. Court supervision, generally speaking, does not result in a conviction on his driving record and often has no effect on things like insurance rates. Your son may be able to argue that he sped up out of necessity in order to maintain a safe distance between his own vehicle and the officer's vehicle. A question for the officer at trial, should your son choose to plead not guilty, is how does the officer know he was going 43 mph? Did the officer clock your son on stationary radar or is the 43 mph an estimate based on how fast the officer was following your son?

In any event, it is likely that the worst your son faces from this ticket is a fine. If he truely does not want to plead guilty, he can request a trial. Just be aware that if your son has several moving violations within the past year or two (depening on whether he is over or under 21 years old), another conviction for a moving violation could result in license suspension. License suspension can result after 3 convictions for moving violations in a 1 year period (if over 21).