I went to court today to contest the ticket I received last month for misusing a special left turn lane (you’re only allowed to turn left from left turn lanes under very specific circumstances, it turns out).

After sitting through a rousing hour of cases, mine was the last to be heard. I thought the officer could have injected a little more emotion into his testimony, maybe made it a little more exciting, but I suppose it got the job done anyway. He did draw a pretty picture of the crime scene, though, which was a lot of fun. Sadly, despite having seen far too many episodes of Law & Order for my own good, I wasn’t able to trick the officer into contradicting himself, so my case was pretty much shot.

In the end, I managed to come across as a good, law-abiding citizen who just made a simple mistake, so the judge knocked the $175 ticket down to $85 and gave me a short lecture on how turning left from a left turn lane is a dangerous thing to do and should probably be avoided at all costs.