yea, it's nice to have CARB. not alot of cops are trained in the street tuning aspect, so naturally they will think alot of these modifications are illegal and unsafe. and also, when you sign the promise to appear, you can still FORFEIT and pay the bail (fine) and you don't have to appear. at least in california, it would be silly to show up in court for a fix it ticket
and if you really wana get picky, each state has a pre-defined DB (decibel) level of noise that a muffler can reach before it is deemed a nuisance and required to be removed. something to think about.... check your state laws, there are plenty of ways out of this one.
from my experience, the cops only seem to have a problem if the catback is removed. this can make any 50-state legal muffler not legal anymore just because of the damn noise.