But Lott said the department has already begun a citywide inspection of speed limit signs, opening up thousands of work orders to improve sign visibility and trim tree limbs.Galbreath pulled up the intersection on Google Street View and discovered the speed limit sign near 29th Street and Military Road was, as he would later argue in one of his appeals, “mounted extraordinarily high on the pole” and “obscured by tree branches.” Galbreath, who happens to be an attorney, decided to fight the ticket.In D.C. “if you do not know what the posted speed limit is, the law requires you to travel at 25 mph,” the DMV examiner said in the original decision denying Galbreath’s challenge.Galbreath said the idea of simply giving up his legal fight “didn’t even enter my mind … I only have to ask myself one question: What’s the right thing here?” Court’s decision Cases involving simple traffic infractions rarely make it to the appeals court — the written opinion called them “vanishingly rare” — because the time and resources necessary to lodge a challenge are generally more of a hassle than simply paying a fine.But once a speed has been posted, “then that speed limit cannot be enforced against a driver if the speed limit sign is obscured or blocked,” the court wrote, saying that to require drivers to revert to the default speed limit in such cases “gives rise to a host of absurdities.” For example, under the District’s interpretation of traffic laws, if the speed limit on a stretch of road had been posted as 45 mph but the sign somehow became obscured, the speed limit automatically becomes 20 mph."