Whether you choose not to show up, throw the ticket away or not pay the fine, ignoring your traffic ticket can be costly, haunt you for years, and maybe even get your license suspended.

Traffic tickets are annoying and bothersome, and you may think you simply must pay them in order to make them go away. In reality, that's just an option. When you receive the ticket, it looks very official and intimidating. Don't let it scare you.

What is scarier is if you choose not to pay it or don't show up in court, you could lose your license and maybe even your job if your work depends on your driving record.

In our past blog of What are the Consequences of Unpaid Traffic Tickets, we set out the penalties the court can set for an unpaid ticket, including suspension of your license, a trial in abstentia with conviction, and sending your ticket to collections possibly resulting in thousands of dollars in extra fees.

In another blog, What Happens If I Get a Ticket and Don't Show Up to Court?, we warned of the serious consequences of having a Failure to Appear (FTA) assigned to your driving record, which nearly always results in license suspension and carries a risk of a fine of a few thousand dollars. A FTA can affect your criminal record.

These consequences don't have to occur. Just because you receive a traffic ticket, it doesn't mean you have to pay it, but you do have to defend it in order to NOT pay it. That's when you need an experienced traffic ticket attorney to fight for you.