Traffic lessons

Wow, it's been a learning experience of a day. Please note, for the state of Arizona:

• The information phone number on photo tickets does not necessarily dispense accurate information. They outright lied (through ignorance, I suspect, but it doesn't change the end effect) about why I had been ticketed. If you have to speak to these people, take down the names of the individuals you speak with. Apparently, the fact that two entirely separate people gave me the same wrong information does not indicate to the traffic camera people that they have a problem.
  
  
• You are not considered to enter an intersection at a stop line. You enter the intersection at the prolongation-of-the-curb line. If you can stop safely behind this line, you should, even if you're fifty feet past the stop line. If you pass this line, you will be ticketed. This applies at all intersections in the state of Arizona, regardless of whether they are policed by camera or not.
  
  
• Stop lines are, apparently, decorative. You're not meant to stop at them. You're meant to stop at the prolongation of the curb line, according to the nice prosecutor.

No one I've talked to has ever heard that the intersection doesn't start until the prolongation of the curb line or that you're supposed to stop there, not at the stop line. Even the wrong information given to me by the information line was based on the idea that you enter the intersection at the stop line. No traffic class I've ever taken has told me to stop anywhere but the stop line. If you're actually trying to judge whether you can safely stop at this prolongation of the curb line when the light turns yellow, and you're wrong, you're endangering a whole lot of people. But apparently, this doesn't matter to whoever decided to change the law. RH pointed out that if you're in the left lane of the particular double turn bay near our apartment, and you safely stop just before the p-o-c line, you're well into the lanes used by oncoming traffic.

What's more, if you actually stop with your nose 40 or 50 feet past the stop line, people honk at you and do not go anywhere until you pull through the intersection. I've watched it happen before.

I can't challenge the rationality of this law without becoming a test case, and real honestly, I don't have either the money or the constitution for that. I'm pissed enough that I wasted half a day based on false information and will still have to attend traffic school, on my dime, for following rules taught to me by traffic school itself fifteen years ago. What I can do is tell everybody I know, so that nobody else is driving ignorant. Maybe, if there's enough pressure from enough people, somebody eventually will decide to be a test case.