I’m not a lawyer, and sorry OP this isnt’ much help to you, but your post brings to mind a related incident I experienced. So a tale of caution. Yes you need legal help to get this plead down to a parking ticket or less, if you can. Reckless driving ranks right up there with DUI to the insurance company risk table, and should be taken seriously.
“Reckless driving” is sometimes a catch-all that’s used when an out of state citation does not match up to your home state’s criminal code. This came up during an insurance renewal call.
My agent asks me “Tell me some details about a couple things so I can work the rate down.” I’m thinking commodity lists, that sort of thing. ok.
Agent: “How about this reckless driving charge from Florida on your driver?” Wait, whut? Lemme call you back.
I call my son, the driver, and asked about it. It was a West Palm Beach police scam. Truck stop down the road from Wally World is on the southbound side of a 4 lane on the southwest corner. There’s a “no left turn” sign posted behind some tree cover that cannot be seen when approaching the exit. At 0200, with zero approaching traffic in the area, he pulled out and made a left. No lines or poles came down. No landscaping was damaged, no curbs were violated. Coincidentally a WPB (or whatever village this was) officer was suddenly right there to apprehend him and issue the violation. At 2 in the morning. Just happened to be there crime fighting and keeping the village safe.
Turns out my son had scanned and sent it to me and I paid the fine by mail. It was a municipal notice, that appeared like a parking violation and nothing like a normal traffic ticket. Also noteworthy, nothing on it indicated a commercial vehicle or driver was involved. I treated it as such.
Turns out it was a real traffic ticket and got handled as such. When the “illegal left turn” was reported to Georgia, there wasn’t a corresponding item in the code to assign, so they called it “reckless driving.”
Fortunately, my agent’s diligence avoided any rate bumps from that by providing a narrative and a copy of the original citation. It persisted for 3 years total before insurance companies lost interest.
