If you are given a ticket for a traffic law violation, you must either appear in traffic court or pay the indicated fine. You can plead either guilty or not guilty if appearing in court, while payment of the fine is the same as a guilty plea. Therefore, if you’re going to appear in court and plead guilty anyway, you might as well just pay your ticket and find something else to do with your Tuesday morning.

If you do not pay the fine and fail to appear in court, no one will notice or care, and you will get off scot-free. Psych! The failure to appear will go right on your driver record (which is not good), and your license will be suspended. You’ll need to pay another fee on top of the cost of the ticket in order to have your license reissued. This thing can really snowball, so take care of it while it’s still just a snowflake.