My question involves traffic court in the State of: California (Orange County)
Here's the backstory. I was driving down the 405 freeway and the flow of traffic would be considered medium. I was driving two other friends and decided to take the carpool lane since it would be faster. I consider myself a safe driver who doesn't drive faster than 85mph ever and I typically drive around 70 ~ 75 mph on good traffic on the freeway (the speed limit is 65mph for CA freeways). I barely crossed over to the carpool lane for maybe 5 minutes before noticing the police car behind me turned on his flashing lights. At first I thought maybe he needs to pass me since I was skeptical to think I was speeding. I looked at my speedometer at that point and saw I was driving 56mph but I slowed down as soon as I saw the police so I'm not sure exactly how fast I was driving, but I'm pretty sure NOT 86mph. Another thought I had was maybe I cut him off so I must've pissed him off or something.
Anyways, as soon as I realized that I was getting pulled over, I was undecided whether I was supposed to wait for the double yellow line to end before crossing or cross anyways. My friend in my car advised me that someone he knew suffered a similar incident where he was also getting pulled over for speeding in a carpool lane and crossed the double solid lines to pull over and received two citations. Afraid that this was one of those trick situations, I waited for the solid lines to become broken before pulling over. In the meantime, the officer had his lights on and even drove to the next lane to "encourage" me to cross but I wasn't sure of his intentions at the time.
Once pulled over, officer treated me unkindly. He was quick and harsh with his words, saying that I "led him on a mile long chase." He didn't allow me to express that I was unsure of what to do. I have spoken to many friends and colleagues about this situation and they said they would've acted the same as me.
Fast forward, I went to trial hoping that I could waive my "failure to yield" ticket and maybe get a reduction to my speeding ticket. This was my first trial so I didn't know what the repercussions would be if I lost. Officer showed up (to my dismay)! and the Judge (was also a jerk) ruled me guilty. He laughed at me when I asked if I could still take traffic school. Instead he suspended my driver's license for 30-days on top of additional fees. What the hell! I was polite, in fact, I was scared when I presented. I was not rude and didn't say bad things about the officer. Is that fair that I got my license suspended for 30 days AND had to pay the full bail with additional fees ($900+)? I didn't stick around to see if others were treated unfairly as my trial was first in line. Thank you for your comments and help!

