A lot of this is common sense, such as not giving the ticketing officer grief. I've personally used many of these in my own experiences and gotten out of tickets, namely I've used alternative means of punishment, defensive driving, multiple times to get out of tickets. Most courts will only allow you to take defensive driving once a year for ticket disposition, however, in Austin (and elsewhere) you can ask the judge and prosecutor to allow you to take it. The rule is, you can take it as many times as the court will allow. In Austin, they are very concerned with moving traffic cases through the court quickly and will not dispute the request in hardly any cases. Highly recommend using this to keep things from your insurance company.

This article covers a lot of similar tips for ticket disputation. From LifeHacker.