Vino Wong/vwong@ajc.com

Well, I’m back from Traffic Court.

Back in early December, I got ticketed for running a red light that turned red as I passed through it. Dumb me–but I’ve been hit from behind on several occasions when I stopped on a yellow light so I tend to speed up and scoot on through.

Anyway, I was instructed to wait at least a week and then call the number on the ticket to pay by phone unless I wanted to go to court and plead not guilty. I waited a month and then did as instructed and was informed that my ticket was for $0.00 + $5.95 handling fee. That freaked me out, so I spent the next few days trying to get a live operator to pick up the phone with busy signals at all times. Finally, I made it through and then waited on hold for 45 minutes, only to be informed by the clerk when she finally picked up the phone that I needed to wait another week. I waited until it was getting close to my court date and called again. The amount due was still $0.00. So I paid that and the handling fee. And I called back the next day to hear that my ticket was paid and my account was now closed.

But still I worried. So I went to traffic court today. It had warmed up to 40°F and was a nice sunny day, so it wasn’t too bad waiting outside DeKalb Recorders Court with the crowd of other unfortunates. Then a police officer told us all that we had to turn off our cellphones, take off our belts and watches, take our cameras and recording devices back to our cars, remove any metal, etc. and then put our stuff through an x-ray machine.

We were herded into courtrooms depending on our last name. A clerk came in and told about the benefits of going to driving classes at $90, which would take off the points from our driving record. Then we were to line up to pay in one line and plea in another. I got in line to pay, fortunately toward the front.

I got up to the clerk at her desk and told her about the problem I had with the system. She looked me up and said I have already paid. I said I really didn’t pay anything and I was willing to take care of my fine but she said to get out of there, I had already paid. So I left. Sweet.

You better believe I obeyed every traffic law on the way home.

Dwight thinks somehow I managed to somehow work the system to my advantage, given that there has been an ongoing scandal with DeKalb Recorders Court as cited here and here. It’s probably a problem with their system’s database, where once an account has been closed, it cannot be reopened. As someone who has worked for companies that have discovered some time after the fact that they invested in really poor software, I agree with this assessment.