Court Appearance Required when it shouldn't..

Last month i got two tickets. One for throwing debris from a motor vehicle (It was one of my friends who threw it out the window, but i got the ticket) and one for having too many people in the car because i'm on a provisional driver's license and only allowed one other person in the car (NJ law requires it for one year prior to getting a regular license.) Well the ticket for having too many people in the car is an automatic court appearance required but the cop also marked throwing debris from a mv as a court apperance too. Tonight a friend of mine got the same ticket for throwing something from his car and he just has to pay a fine and he doesn't have to go to court (he questioned the officer.) What gives?

Edit: Also the reason the cop pulled me over was it looked like i was going to fast out of a parking lot. My friend being an idiot threw debris out of my window AS the cop was pulling me over. She didn't clock me with a radar, she eyballed it, so...shouldn't I have gotten a ticket for reckless driving or speeding as well? Can i use that to my advantage in court?

...shouldn't I have gotten a ticket for reckless driving or speeding as well?

If you want one, I'm sure they'd give you one :grinyes:

Seriously tho, cops have to have a reason to pull you over. It can be a made up reason (as long as you can't disprove them), however it cannot be becuase the cop thinks you look to young to be driving. I'm guessing that may be the case if you're just getting your license. Cops don't have to give you a ticket for a violation, if you bring it up in court, it probably won't help you any, and may end up hurting you.

When there's one ticket that has a mandatory appearance, any other tickets are usually made mandatory appearances also.

He probably just put both offenses down as court appearances since he wanted the judge to know the whole story.