Failure to Obey the Directions of a Police Officer

My question involves a traffic ticket from the state of: North Carolina

I was on my way to a meeting when I came upon an intersection near my house. It is a two lane road. The left lane after the intersection was blocked by a parked police car. My lane, the right lane, was clear. There was an officer digging around in the back seat of the vehicle. No one was directing traffic.

The light turned green. I thought what was happening was that there had been some kind of accident and the police were just arriving. It was rush hour traffic and I did not want to hold up traffic.

I slowed down, and proceeded through the intersection carefully. After passing through, another officer flagged me down and was VERY angry. He told me I had driven around a road block. I tried to tell him that the road was not blocked, and no one had instructed me to stop or turn. I had obeyed the green light.

He wasn't hearing it. He was still really mad. At that time another officer approached and said, "Get his license and registration. I'm writing him a ticket." Half an hour later the officer writes me a ticket for "Did fail to obey the directions of a Law Enforcement officer at the scene of an incident."

This is General Statute GS 20-114.1 (a)(b)

What do I do here? I think this is bogus, but I'm not sure how to contest it or even if I should bother. Help appreciated.

While typically the actions of other drivers have very little impact on the validity of one driver's citation or alleged violation, I'm still going to approach this from that direction simply to clarify one "fact"... You say the officer's vehicle blocked the left lane however, the right lane was, in your opinion, "clear"... This is the part I am looking to clarify or qualify better.

"Clear" is fairly subjective, I am sure you will agree. And so is "reasonable". What I'm trying to establish here is:

Would a reasonable driver, and having been placed in your exact circumstances, have considered that right lane to be clear or would he have to somehow navigate his way through to get by?

This may be easy to determine if we can be lucky enough... So before you answer, here is a fairly subjective way to -possibly- find out...

You say you were in rush hour traffic; You also say you were there for approximately half hour.

In that half hour, how many other vehicles did you see come through the same way you did?

Good question. There were no other cars, but the officer moved his car to where I eventually stopped almost immediately. I don't know what happened in the intersection after that.

However, I did not have to navigate around his car as I passed. No steering changes at all, in fact.