speeding ticket

hello all,i live in the state of south carolina,i am also a state employee,on friday aug.24,returning from a substation[i work for the power company]exiting I-95 at the town of manning s.c.,at 1500hr.s[3pm] i was proceeding down hwy.521,the car in front of me was stepping on his breaks then speeding up,well after 2-3 miles of this i elected to try and pass this car as i approched the designated passing lane.the car was at the time driving below the speed limit of 55,there fore i started to pass,as i was even with said car it speed up ,at this time my passing lane was ending,and quickly becoming oncoming traffic lane ,so i elected to step on it ,just as i did a hw patrolman was going by in the opposite direction,i successfully arrived in my lane with the car behind me that was playing road games,15-20 min.s time pass`s and i see blue lights behind me,it was the hw patrolman,i tried to explain to him,about the behavior of the car in front of me but he said that was not good enough for him[ to tell it to the judge][$150.+6pt.s]this is my first moving violation [last time i was in court was for a expired tag 6 years prior]my question is will i be wasting my time going to court and telling the judge the reason i sped up! any suggestions?thanks[by the way the reason i didn`t apply breaks was due to the previous sudden stopping the car i was passing was doing]

What you did was just as foolish as the games the other driver was playing. And you admit to speeding. Pay the fine.

You're probably nailed, but I wouldn't just pay the fine. Talk to a lawyer and see if you can do something like a deferred judgement. When I've gotten a ticket, (albeit usually 10 - 14 over) usually I could cut a deal. It costs more but means less or no points and thereby less or no insurance hike. If you don't want to get a lawyer, go to court before your court date and talk to the judge after everybody else is done. (By then they'll probably wonder what you're doing there anyway.) Tell him what happened and ask if there's anything you can do that would help. I did this in Arkansas 18 years ago and got unsupervised probation. (enter here if you don't get another ticket in 6 months this one never happened) More recently I've done the lawyer thing and gotten them knocked down to nonmoving violations for twice the fine plus paying the lawyer.