>Why do taxpayers have to pay expensive court proceedings, and offenders have to spend a lot of money for an attorney, and waste a bunch of time.

They don't have to. The usual process for something like a speeding violation in the US is:

1. You get stopped for speeding (or get caught on a speedcam).

2. You receive the ticket in the mail.

3. At this point, you have an option to agree with it and pay the fine OR appear in court and hope they will rule in your favor (which could easily happen if you genuinely believe they were wrong; and half the time, the cop himself will fail to appear in court anyway, so you get the ticket dismissed if it wasn't anything too wild).

You don't have to appear in court (if you choose to accept the ticket and pay the fine) or waste money on attorneys (if you choose to contest the ticket in court). You can literally play it the same way in the US as you just described, by getting the ticket in your mailbox and paying it off (for something like speeding). That's it. Contesting the ticket in court is just another option available to you.

What happened to the parent commenter who mentioned failing to appear in court, they basically didn't pay the ticket they received (aka ignored it) and didn't show up in court to contest it either. That's pretty much it.