Unless things have changed lately on your first day in court you will only make a plea and the cop will not be there (but his ticket notes will be there before the judge). If you choose not-guilty you will get another court date at which the cop is supposed to show. Your other options will be guilty or no-contest. You should chose the no-contest option since you are not admitting guilt and you will get to put A FEW words in on your behalf before the judge makes his decision.

When you get to say what happened keep it close to the facts (since the judge will have the notes) and short and sweet about how you and some friends were goofing around in traffic but you were not having a full acceleration race to high speeds.

If your record is clean and the judge is nice he might drop the charge and just give you a fine. If he orders you to go to traffic school, not only will that keep the points off your ticket, but that school will not come out of your 5 voluntary school optiions since the judge is ordering you to go to school.

The judge could be a real bastard and let the ticket stick AND throw hundreds of dollars of court fines on your too.

Good luck.