Good point, Soichiro.
In addition to the chance to reduce your own penalty or have the case thrown out, enough people fighting tickets in court also leads to the implementation of ways to mitigate the effect of those tickets. For example, in rural jurisdictions, where there are relatively few tickets and the judges have plenty of time to hear every case, you may very well have no viable alternatives other than pleading guilty, because your likelihood of the same or worse penalty is high. However, in urban jurisdictions, where a lot of people get tickets and fight them, the courts are overcrowded, and they try to keep the cases out of the courts by offering alternatives such as traffic school. Such alternatives satisfy the courts because they still collect fees without the burden to hear the cases, and satisfy the violators by offering a way (often called "probation" or "supervision") for the ticket to stay off your driving record so your insurance company won't know about it. Several years ago, the courts here in Cook County offered the ability to get supervision by mail, without hearing the case in court, but with a required traffic safety school. Last year the started offering the traffic safety school via the internet, so you never even have to leave home, either for court or for traffic school.
So whenever you get a ticket, if they're not offering you a way out of it, fight it!
Note - supervision by mail is available only for certain specific offenses (e.g. speeding less than 30 mph over the limit) and is not available for serious offenses (DUI) or to multiple repeat offenders.
