If you are the first catch of the day (scheduled for 8:30 AM), you all show up about 30 minutes early, and sit around outside the court room. The court room finally opens at about 9AM, and everyone goes in (my group was about 30 people). There are some officers that show up as well, and they have their own special assigned seating. Then, you sit around and wait until the judge decides to show up – in our case, he walked in at 9:27AM.

He explains the rules and gets to work. The first cases he dealt with were those where the defendant had requested a trial (not a plea guilty hearing, which is an option they added last year). Names were called, and people came up. If no officer was present, the case was immediately dismissed and that person got to sit down. If the officer did show up, there was a quick statement by the officer (about 2 minutes) and a quick statement by the defendant. In the cases I saw today, even when the officer was present, the penalties were generally reduced. So, this seems like the way to go if you want to contest a ticket.

I had elected to do the other option, plead guilty and have a hearing. This puts you in the second batch of people, so once all the trials are done, these start. Almost all of these carried reduced or waived points, and almost always reduced fines. Yet, there was a $33 court fee, so if your fine wasn’t reduced enough, you could have paid more. Anyway, I managed to get mine reduced from $140 and 2 points to $100 and 0 points given my clean driving record and my explanation of the circumstances. So, $133 later, I was finished and I drove home.

Out of all the testimonies I saw today, even the really bad ones had their penalties reduced.

Tip 1: Make sure to pay your parking meter for at least 2 hours. The judge can apparently take his sweet time, and even though you show up at 8:30, you’re actually scheduled for 9:00. You could also arrive just before, but that might be bad planning. Parking at Montgomery County District Court is right across the street, and it’s cheap – like $0.75 an hour.

Tip 2: Don’t over-prepare. I made color copies, wrote a few pages of text, etc. This probably will not help you – I didn’t use any of this – my case was decided in less than 1 minute. I’m sure you can press the issue if you want, but at the risk of upsetting the judge by making him work longer. He has the power to increase your fine to up to $500 if he wants. Just go in there, say your piece, and be done.

Tip 3: You probably don’t need to dress up, but it might be a good idea. Don’t go in there looking like a slob, but if you just wear something nice, it seems like it doesn’t matter. I wore a full suit and tie, and I don’t think he was any more generous to me than to anyone else wearing sweat pants and a shirt.

Tip 4: Don’t be nervous. Generally, if your judge is lenient, you’ll get your penalties reduced. It’s not a formal affair – just go up there like you’re on Judge Judy and talk. If you want to know if your judge is cool, ask the police officers on the bench. They generally know who’s a hardass and who’s not. This can influence how you present your case.

Tip 5: Have cash. All fines are due right after your hearing is over, and they charge you extra for debit and credit cards. Luckily, I had $133 in my wallet.

Tip 6: You can leave as soon as they hand you a piece of paper. After you’re sentenced, you get a paper. Take it and go.

Tip 7: This is the most important thing: Make sure to request a trial rather than a guilty hearing. There is no reason why you shouldn’t unless you’re really afraid of seeing the officer(s) that ticketed you, and the only reason you’d be afraid of that is if you were going to lie. If the officer doesn’t show, you walk away scot-free. If he does, just plead guilty and it’s basically the same as the other option, except you get out faster because you go first.

All in all, it’s a thing to be avoided, but there’s almost no reason you shouldn’t go contest a ticket in Maryland.

When it comes to electricity in Maryland today, coal is king. It fuels 58 percent of our needs and is used at plants such as Constellation Energy’s Brandon Shores and H.A. Wagner plants in Pasadena. Behind coal is nuclear power from Calvert Cliffs in Lusby, which satisfies another 26 percent of the state’s needs. Oil is used to generate 7 percent, natural gas just 2 percent. The rest comes from minor alternative sources.

So, getting some more data from here, we end up with this:

There’s an extra 7% from “minor alternative sources” that I’m just going to estimate is an average of 100g/kWh of CO₂, coming out to 7g/kWh contribution to the whole. That means for Maryland, for every kWh of power produced there are CO₂ emissions of 661.25g. That’s actually really good compared to the 8,788g of CO₂ per gallon of gasoline, as calculated here.

Another point to take into account is the Transmission and Distribution losses in the power grid, which are substantial:

The transmission and distribution, or “T&D” system includes everything between a generation plant and an end-use site, i.e. a residential home or commercial business. Along the way, some of the energy supplied by the generator is lost due to the resistance of the wires and equipment that the electricity passes through. Most of this energy is converted to heat. Just how much energy is taken up as losses in the T&D system depends greatly on the physical characteristics of the system in question as well as how it is operated. Generally speaking, T&D losses between 6% and 8% are considered normal.

We’ll stick with 6% in this article (look on the bright side). This means that rather than our original figure of 661.25g/kWh, we have to adjust for 94% efficiency, which means we need an extra 6.38% (100/94 because we cut into our principle…) emissions to get the power to the customer. This makes for a total of 703.46g/kWh.

So, in the Volt, that’s 6,190.43g of CO₂ per 40 miles. Now, remember a gallon of gas is 8,788g of CO₂. That means that in 30 miles my Civic creates 8,788g of CO₂. That’s 292.93g/mile. The Volt comes out to 154.76g/mile.

So, even today, on mostly coal power, you can cut your CO₂ emissions basically in half with a Chevy Volt provided you don’t use the gas part of the engine. That’s a larger margin than I was expecting, and it’s actually quite impressive. Of course, as I discuss at length in the previous article, the initial production cost of the Volt makes it a worse choice than a used Civic initially, but the Volt would have a much lower angle for BTU production than the Prius, so I assume it would become worth it in quite a few less miles (maybe like 50,000, but I don’t know). When it comes down to cost, forgetting the initial cost of the Chevy Volt, let’s see what happens.

A gallon of gas is right around $2 right now, which gets me 30 miles. That’s 6.66 cents/mile. Power from the grid is 11.82 cents/kWh. So, to go 40 miles, I pay $2.66 in gas. I would only pay $1.04 for that distance with the Volt.

All in all, it’s a very impressive vehicle, and it and other electric cars like it seem like a very viable option for the future. The biggest problem is cost, at about $32,500 in the US after subsidies. You’d have to drive it 679,012.35 miles to make up for the fuel price difference vs. a 2000 Honda Civic. If you want to feel good about carbon emissions, and you’re rich or ready to be in debt, get one. If not, get a Civic and save money.

Now if we just make more of the grid nuclear, we’d have a pretty tight infrastructure.

As one who drives a 2000 Honda Civic, which in many real-world driving tests gets almost exactly 30 MPG consistently (I keep pump logs), I wonder if I would actually create a net reduction in gas consumption by buying a Prius or other car. Now, I’m assuming a new Prius, but buying a used one is perfectly valid, and is outside the scope of this article. If you want to do that, more power to you – that’s a good choice hands down. Yet, most people I know would opt for a new one. Based on various seemingly valid estimates, it takes 113,322,000 BTUs to create and import a brand new Prius. It takes 0 BTUs to park a used Honda Civic on a lot until someone buys it.

So, for the data used to obtain this, I looked all over for real road tests of the Prius fuel economy.  This one seemed to fit well with everything else I’d been reading, giving an average range of 42.6-45.2 MPG.  So, I’m going to say 43 MPG.

The Prius uses enough gas to create 2639.53 BTUs per mile.  The Civic: 3783.33.  At these rates, and coupled with the initial component of the BTUs used to manufacture and import the Prius, we come up with the following:

$latex 2639.53x + 113322000 = 3783.33x$

$latex x = 99075.01$

Graphing this in gnuplot, we get the following:

So, one would have to drive almost 100,000 miles to get an advantage over simply buying a used Civic.  Interesting.  Here’s the GNUPlot Plot File for anyone that’s interested.