Originally Posted by
Milton Keynes
I really don't think any court is going to go through that trouble, unless maybe if it's a dangerous driving resulting in death case. If it's a simple moving violation, say violating the 3 ft. passing rule, they're not going to bother.
Violating the 3-foot (or 4-foot in some states)law does not usually warrant a court date on its own. That's a ticketable offense, and a court date would only result if the ticket went unpaid or if the driver were sanctimonious enough to try and fight it in court. Neither of those things are very likely to happen, but then again, the police writing tickets to enforce the safe passing of cyclists is even less likely to happen.
And yes, the "reporting" site exists for when a driver has done something serious, i.e. caused injury to someone and/or killed someone, and is already facing a court date. The idea is that these organizations spend some time monitoring court cases so they are aware of when someone from their database is in court for something major. Then, the reporting group alerts the prosecutor(s) to the information they have. In an ideal world, the prosecution would be motivated to do the right thing and make sure justice is served against the dangerous driver, but like we already agreed, there's practically no chance of that happening in reality.