The administrative fees and higher penalties for traffic violations, which California intended to be a source of additional revenue, may be a zero-sum game.

Motivated by high "penalty assessments" added to tickets, as well as fines that have quadrupled in some cases, more Californians are taking their tickets to court: in 2011, courts heard 383,000 traffic ticket cases, a figure that has nearly doubled in the past eight years.

Fifteen years ago, it may not have made much economic sense to retain a Bakersfield traffic ticket attorney to deal with a stop sign or red light ticket. But the skyrocketing fines and penalties, coupled with the tight economy, has changed the math considerably.

All these cases means that more of the state's limited resources are going to traffic ticket fine collection:

There may have never been a better time to hire a traffic ticket attorney. A busy prosecutor is more willing to make pretrial deals, and a busy judge may be more willing to dismiss cases. By being both an effective negotiator and a zealous advocate, a Bakersfield traffic ticket lawyer can use both these things to your advantage.