Real Cost of Missing Court on a Traffic Ticket in Texas
It all starts when you sign the bottom of your traffic citation, promising to appear in court to answer to the charges on your citation at a specific time & date. If you happen to miss your initial court appearance, you have now committed a new criminal offense in Texas, labeled as "failure to appear" and warrants are issued for your arrest as a consequence. These warrants allow any peace officer in the state of Texas to arrest you.
A failure to appear charge results in a new citation being added with your original offense. A failure to appear offense has a fine range between $1- $500 plus court costs. This is what you'll be facing when you attempt to later appear and answer to your original offense and the additional charges from the citation. Further, if those warrants remain active when it's time to renew your driver's license, it will cause your renewal to be denied and your privilege to drive to be suspended. If you are caught driving with that suspended driver's license, you have committed yet another offense for which you can be arrested or issued a citation.
As for your original traffic citation, the court has now added a 30 percent collection cost and additional warrant fees. At this point, you're likely to have incurred around $500 in costs between the fines and court costs on both citations, warrant fees and collection costs. Further, you also have warrants for your arrest to deal with. Some police agencies in Houston and surrounding areas actually send their peace officers out to serve these traffic warrants by arresting you at your home or even at work. One of the more common ways people often get arrested on these warrants is during future traffic stops after they have forgotten about the citation and failed appear in court. Of course, these arrests often happen at the most inconvenient of times.
To avoid getting arrested on these warrants before a peace officer is knocking on your door, there are three basic options to remove warrants:
1. You can either post a cash bond with the court that is roughly equal to the window fine on both of your charges, which would likely be over $300.
2. You can save a little money by posting a bond with a bonding company or attorney's office.
3. Another option to remove your warrants would be to appear at the court on a day and time when walk-ins are permitted and speak with the prosecutor. This would allow you to try to resolve your charges or enter a not guilty plea with the judge. The court would have the right to serve the warrant in court and take you into custody but not all courts have an interest in doing that and simply want the warrant taken care of.
In the end, missing your initial court date on a traffic citation can easily result in fees in excess of $500 and possibly your arrest.
