Beat Your Ticket

http://site.aol.com/autos/article/5.adp ^ | 10 13 05 | Edmunds.com Editors

[newgeezer]

Depends on where you're at. When I lived in the metro DC area, I had a friend contest one of those camera tickets that catch people running red lights. He lost and had to pay court costs as well as the ticket.

I gather your implied point is that if he had chosen to pay the ticket without going to court, he wouldn't have had to pay court costs. Other places (such as here), which levy court costs regardless of whether the accused appears in court, make it easier and relatively risk-free for the accused to play the show-up-in-court-and-you-may-get-lucky lottery.

Certainly, the practice of collecting court costs from only those who appear and lose is designed to encourage the guilty to pay their fines instead of wasting the courts' time. The law-abiding taxpayer in me thinks that's the way it should be. But, when I consider how that has great potential to oil a corrupt revenue machine, I'm not so sure.

[EGPWS]

...but I'm sick of agressive idiots on the road.

Aggressive drivers aren't so bad, it's when they swerve while paging to the financial page of the newspaper while holding a big mac in their mouth, and cradling a cell phone on their shoulder, as they are snuffing out a butt in the ashtray when the dog in the back seat is forcing them to shake their head to keep the dog from getting a bite of the big mac that bothers me. ; )