The situation depends on a number of factors, among them, where and when the offense occurred, the court, and the availability of the ticketing officer.
It varies from State to State. The worst ticket I ever got was for missing the "No left turn" sign. I had insurance, but didn't put the new insurance card in the car. The cop in question was a real bastard, he had a huge collection of offenders waiting for him that day in court. He obviously loved writing tickets and was very rude about it. The judge claimed he had no discretion, and fined me $800, even though I brought proof that I had been insured at the time but simply didn't have the card in my glove compartment.
The outcome generally depends, again, on the state, the court, the locality and the law.
I have had tickets dismissed because the cop didn't show up, and in one case, because the cop did show up, but recommended the case be dismissed because he had something to do. He was actually a nice guy. It involved a fender bender, and he gave both parties a ticket, and he dismissed both tickets. This made the other party happy as well as me, and we both apologized for our roles to one another for our respective roles in the whole thing.
When my wife was young and driving with me, I would sometimes get pulled over for bullshit reasons but not ticketed but "warned." I sometimes thought it was about them wanting to check my wife out, because as a young woman she seemed to inspire a lot of unwanted male attention. (I'm not quite sure she wanted my attention, but she seems to have relented.) I almost never got pulled over like that when driving alone, but when she was in the car, it happened several times.
I haven't had a ticket in many years, probably because I bought my car because of its excellent fuel economy, which is at its best when running on cruise control. I set it to do the speed limit, which annoys a lot of people who don't want to do the speed limit, who tailgate and even go to the extreme lengths to do dangerous passes illegally. I slow down and let them by. A few times I've come upon these people getting tickets when I drove down the road, which I confess leads to some smirking on my part.
My car has that automatic adaptive cruise control that prevents me from tailgating and which stops or slows the car when obstructions or slowing cars in front. This is good because I'm an old fart.
A person who claims to be a friend of mine, suggested that the best way for me to deal with an eye problem I was having was to drive to the ophthalmologist with both eyes closed to allow my brain to adjust. I wasn't quite sure it was good medical advice, but perhaps the adaptive cruise control would have prevented a bad outcome. However, because I found the idea to be somewhat dubious, I drove with my eyes open.
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