My status as a driver. Good, bad or othersise.

Big day today -- court day. For weeks I have been amassing evidence, consulting lawyers and printing up code so that I could go into court and tell the judge-person about:
1. how the cop was in no position to observe my driving
2. how what the cop wrote on the ticket bore no relationship to the code he cited
3. how the actual law demanded that I did exactly as I did on the road

full of righteous rage I showed up today, undaunted by the lady at the information booth who told me that I came in the wrong door. I found my way to the hall outside the courtroom and waited. At 8:40, I and all the people collected in the hall were called into the same anteroom I was in last time. People were told to sit and wait to go in and talk to the prosecutor. I thought, "hey, I've done this already...am I in the right place? Should I have gone right into the court...I AM here for the trial, not the plea arrangement." I figured I'd wait till I went in and the prosecutor would tell me if I was in the right place. He made clear that he wasn't answering any questions from people not in line so I played the game.

When I got in and tried to explain that I wasn't sure that I was in the right place he didn't want to hear it. He was overweight, his collar was flipped up and his jacket was too tight. He refused to hear me and kept saying "just show me your ticket!" I was holding my ticket out at the time... He finally yelled "how many times do I have to ask for your ticket?" So I said "three times." When he finally spoke with me, not at me, he figured that I was there to have a trial. He asked "how many trials have you done." I admitted sheepishly that my experience floated somewhere between 0 and 1. I didn't feel particularly ashamed by that number. I'm not a lawyer so it would be strange if I had any higher number as my answer. He told me to sit int he back row in the room from which I had come. Shades of Alice's Restaurant and Bench W flashed through my head. He tells me that he does 20 trials a week (good for him, I think) and that I'm risking a $240 fine and 2 points. I'm not sure where he got $240 from for an $85 dollar infraction plus $33 court costs, but I assume he was either rattling his sabre or had some advanced math degree to go along with his position as a civil servant. I demurred and chose the trial option and he sent me to the back row.

So I sat. After 20 minutes, a friendly policeman announced "everyone in the last two rows -- you have signed something after meeting with the prosecutor so move to the next room." Thing is, I hadn't signed anything. So I didn't move while almost everyone else left. I asked the cop what to do and he said "I don't know...maybe he's working on something." So I sat. And I waited.

another 15 minutes elapsed. People filed in and out and I sat. Eventually another cop...young, blond...heck, I am confident enough in my masculinity to say "good looking" (Maddie should get so lucky as to bring this boy home), comes over and says "are you the gentleman who is waiting for the trial." I say "yes" and he says "we're really backed up," and he points to all the people waiting, "has the prosecutor discussed this with you?" I told him yes, but that the offer was 'unsafe driving' and a $450 dollar fine. He goes to talk to the prosecutor and tells me that because of the volume of cases on that day he can offer me "driving in a way that obstructs the flow of traffic" -- no points and a fine of 56 dollars.

Now at this point I should say that I truly feel I have the law on my side. Not only does the code simply demand that the driver ascertain that a lane change is safe (which I did) but that nothing in my behavior or in the behavior from the car I passed would indicate that I didn't fully ascertain it. And that the cop's claim that I "cut off" a car by switching with 1/2 of a car length (10 feet between me and a car - measured when exactly? - while I am going 52 and he is decelerating from 47...right) as measured from at least 300 feet away while I am going 73 feet per second with the sun rise behind me was not only unprovable but not proscribed by the legal code. So maybe I could have thought that they were blinking -- seeing their position as unprovable etc. and should have pressed for a trial but I knew that without a lawyer I'd have to wait and ultimately, I don't have much trial experience so I took the deal. He made me wait for a bunch more minutes, then he brought me some paper to sign. My god, but he was good looking...so I signed and he told me to go to the court room next door.

In the next room the judge was hearing cases (if you have a lawyer you get to go more quickly, because who wants to wait to be assessed a fine when your lawyer can get you to plead guilty so quickly) and moving through all the defendants. I got to see one full fledged trial. The prosecutor with his ugly collar and tiny jacket and "may it please the court"s called the cop to the stand and went through the whole "where do you work, for how long, what do you do" and he did everything in this incredibly uninteresting, formal and forced way. After watching the role playing and mindless stupidity of a trial (with a Russian interpreter so everything took way long and the defendant didn't actually have anything to ask...he just wanted to make the statement that "it wasn't so bad") I realized that I had made the right choice. And yet I still had to wait. Another 20 minutes and my name gets called. I stood before the judge (Tracey Zur..a nice looking woman actually...I wonder what would happen if she and that cop got together...I imagine their kids would be safe, good looking drivers) and when she asked if I entered the plea agreement of my own will, I said "yes" and when she asked if I was admitting to driving in a way to obstruct traffic, I said "yes."

Now the fact is, I didn't obstruct traffic. And I could certainly have stood on principle and said "your honor, the legal system is asking me for its own convenience to admit to an action which I did not commit for its own convenience; this type of corruption must be rooted out." But then I realized that she was probably in on the whole system, working there and all so I said "yes, your honor." She charged me the $56 plus $33 court costs (if I had gone through a trial and been found not guilty, would I have had to pay court costs? seems like a scam to me. $33 for nothing) and I waited on line to pay.

When I got to the front of the line, I learned something new. Apparently, those employees who graduate the DMV course on "how to be unhelpful and offensive" get promoted to the courthouse. Here I am, ready to pay and she's micro managing exactly where I stand. While I'm waiting fro her to make change she calls the next guy. He happens to have a strong Indian accent. But because I am listening to him, I understand precisely what he is asking -- basically, he isn't sure he is in the right place and at the right time and just wants to get some clarification. She does the whole "I don't understand a thing you are saying" and then the mumbling "people come in here and don't know what they are talking about." Then she counts my change wrong. Irony, thy name is "clerk."

So I paid. I came home...and what have I learned? It was a lot more glamorous on Night Court.