If you can, it's important to keep speeding tickets off of your driving record. Your insurance company will use them as an excuse to send your auto insurance rates through the roof. In Illinois, there are a couple of different ways to do this. The easiest is to request court supervision. Most Illinois courts will allow you to use this option two times each year. Court supervision means that as long as you attend defensive driving school as promised, the conviction won't show up on your record. In order to keep the ticket off your record, you must do three things: 1) Obtain agreement from the court, 2) Take a court-approved defensive driving course, and 3) make sure that the court receives proof that you completed the course within the allotted time.

The other way of beating a traffic ticket is far less reliable: pleading guilty and trying to defend yourself against the charge. If you try to do this, it's important to make sure you have a valid defense-otherwise, you are wasting your breath. To help motorists examine the strength of their defensive strategy, the Cook County Circuit Court's web site provides a list of defense that will not be accepted:

• "The sun was in my eyes."

• "I was keeping up with the flow of traffic."

• "My speedometer was broken."

• "I did not see the sign." (Unacceptable unless the sign was not placed in accordance with state standards.)

• "I was unfamiliar with the neighborhood and was lost."

In fact, if you choose to plead innocent, you may be better of using the services of an Illinois traffic ticket attorney! An Illinois traffic ticket lawyer is much better prepared to argue your case than you could ever be. Lawyers know which defenses are likely the work and which won’t, and they have a better knowledge of the ins and outs of the court system than most people do.