One easy defense to avoiding speeding tickets and their costly fines is that the police officer did not appear in court to present the evidence against you. Many statistics show that a police officer does not appear in court for a hearing on a traffic citation at least 30 - 50% of the time. Police officers often do not appear because they are on vacation, they have to be elsewhere at the time of the court hearing, they have been transferred elsewhere, or they simply are not notified of the court date. The bottom line is that if the officer does not appear in court to testify against you, then there is no evidence that can be legally presented against you, and your ticket should be dismissed. In order to help determine whether the officer in your case will show up in court, keep in mind that no-shows happen more frequently in the summertime, when more people take vacations. The more serious your traffic violation, the more likely it is that the prosecutor will ensure that the police officer appears in court as needed. Finally, in a larger jurisdiction, it is worth seeing how far the officer must travel to get to court; if it is a rather long distance, the officer may not take the time to appear in court.