After reading the 21 page order, I do tend to agree with the judge
The judge frames the red light camera scheme as a revenue generating scheme, not a public safety measure.
Additionally, "A distinctive feature of the statutory scheme is its assignment of guilt to the registered owner rather than the driver of the vehicle". and "If there are multiple registered owners, the citation is issued to the 'first' registered 'owner'". and the person whom the citation was issued to must sign an affidavit that includes the name, address, dob, of the person who was actually driving. The judge says this "...abandon(s) centuries time honored protections of hearsay as substantive evidence.".
"It is a foundational rule of constitutional due process that the government must prove every fact necessary to constitute an offense beyond a reasonable doubt before a person may be adjudicated guilty of a crime".
"Although nominally civil, traffic infraction proceedings retain every substantive hallmark of criminal prosecution..." "under Feiock, such proceedings are sufficiently criminal in form and function to invoke the full protections of due process..." - that's probably the core of the reasoning here.
"Section 316.074(1) provides in relevant part that "The driver of any vehicle shall obey..."" - the driver, not the registered owner.
I highly recommend reading the order. It's easy to follow and aligns with my understanding of the law within the USA.
California's new speed camera pilot (AB 645) explicitly solves for this.
Tickets issued by these cameras are civil penalties issued to the owner of the vehicle, like parking tickets, rather than a criminal moving violation. This means the tickets are just as constitutional as parking tickets. It also means penalties are limited to fines and can't impact your driving privilege or insurance.
Hopefully other states can follow this pattern. Consistent, low-impact enforcement is better at preventing unwanted behavior than the rare and severe but also capricious enforcement performed by human police.
Consistent, low-impact enforcement is better at preventing unwanted behavior than the rare and severe but also capricious enforcement performed by human police.
It can also give permission for unwanted behavior. Cf. the Haifa study, where the rate of late pickups increased when daycares added a fine. One explanation is the fine turned a complex moral obligation into an ordinary financial transaction.
The Haifa daycare study can’t be used to extrapolate much.
They fined parents (IIRC) ~$3 per late pickup. Rerun the study with a $300 fine and let’s see how it pans out. It’s an interesting finding, but that then people take it to mean that fines don’t work (no matter their size) is insane.
I grew up in Fremont, CA, which pioneered the use of red-light cameras and terrible red-light camera practices (e.g. shortening yellow light times to increase revenue and giving a cut of the fines to the companies installing cameras). I hated cameras, the idea of speed cameras felt like big brother, and the basic principal of attributing a violation to a car and not a person (and thus requiring a person to rat out the driver) felt like a huge civil rights issue.
I then moved to Amsterdam and became the biggest fan of continuous, always-on ANPR speed cameras. On some freeways, your car is recorded at certain checkpoints and EVERYONE driving over the speed limit ALWAYS gets a fine.
Why? Because they are properly implemented (only high-risk areas), very well communicated (tons of signage), consistently applied (no crying your way out of a ticket, no racial profiling), purpose targeted (you get a speeding ticket, not a bunch of other fines at the whim of a cop), and correctly incentivized (ticket revenue does not immediately go to the local police or city).
Sure. Then the bill requires that all those fines you pay go towards street calming infrastructure, eventually making it physically impossible (or at least very uncomfortable) for you to continue speeding.
Kind of like if enough parents paid the late pickup fee, eventually the daycare could afford a van for dropoffs.
> One explanation is the fine turned a complex moral obligation into an ordinary financial transaction.
Income proportional fines solve the problem. The fine should be a deterrent, but not create crippling debt. That is impossible without taking into account the income of the infractor.
> It can also give permission for unwanted behavior. Cf. the Haifa study, where the rate of late pickups increased when daycares added a fine. One explanation is the fine turned a complex moral obligation into an ordinary financial transaction.
You know what they say: a fine makes something legal for an amount of money.
And for daycares, I think a lot of parents saw it just like that: a cheap way to keep the kid away from them for longer.
Hopefully other states don't follow this pattern; I don't think the government should be installing surveillance arrays, even if it's "for the children" or public safety.
Trading a little liberty for a little safety and all that.
These cameras are by definition still cameras triggered by radar or laser systems, they're inactive unless a speeding vehicle is present. Hardly the surveillance array you're imagining.
You raise an interesting counterpoint. What if the red light violation ticket issued by an automated camera remains a civil penalty, but it is very large, like 1,500 USD? At some point, the number gets so high that it effectively impacts your driving privilege. Of course, I would expect these new civil penalties to be challenged in court as being "dual purpose".
In the UK, speeding fines are also backed by "points" added to your license - get enough of them and you lose your license altogether for a while. It's similar in at least some other European countries.
That is a definite punishment for anyone that cares enough about driving that they were doing it in the first place, while also clearly not being revenue generating (in fact it prevents future fine revenue). I'm not sure that would wash in the car-centric States though (but it would make it an even juicier punishment). But since you don't get banned immediately, it's potentially low-impact on a per-ticket basis.
Australia has this too. It helps with the problem that a fine alone is negligible enough for the wealthy that the road rules would effectively not apply to them.
PA did this with construction zone cameras. I'm not sure where that landed because its been a while since I've seen one. I successfully appealed my ticket to the magistrate. It initially started as a pilot program and the law requires signage which during the pilot was quite inconspicuous. After the launch the sign was changed to a tiny little thing, about 1/5 the size of the pilot program.
I was going 5 over the reduced speed limit, in the slow lane with rush hour traffic. That thing must've issued thousands of tickets.
But AB 645 is designed to punish and deter rather than compensate, which creates a genuine constitutional vulnerability under California's Article I, Section 16 jury trial guarantee.
The structural problem is that revenue goes to program costs and traffic calming, not to anyone harmed by speeding, which makes the fines punitive in character under any substance-over-label analysis.
The lack of DMV points and criminal record weakens the argument somewhat, but under California's substance-over-label approach those omissions aren't dispositive. They merely show the legislature knew how to stay on the civil side of the line, not necessarily that it succeeded.
If a court finds the penalties punitive in character, the owner-liability structure becomes a compounding problem: California's state due process protections are arguably more robust than federal, and imposing a punitive fine on a registered owner without proof they were driving, while burden-shifting exculpation to them looks increasingly difficult to sustain.
Everything you've said applies to parking tickets too. You can't prove that the owner parked the vehicle.
Tha owner is ultimately civily liable if the vehicle is parked in a way that it shouldn't be. Extending that same civil liability to the active operation, as opposed to only the consequences of active operation, seems perfectly reasonable.
>It also means penalties are limited to fines and can't impact your driving privilege or insurance.
If this is the case, what are the consequences of not paying the fine? I interpret your statement to mean that they can't prevent registration of your car. Can they tow you in SF for unpaid fines?
I assume they meant you can't lose your license (or get "points" that your insurance company can use to charge you more). I would fully expect that any unpaid fines would be added to next year's registration, and if you don't register and pay, you're driving an unregistered vehicle.
There's the timing aspect of it as well. As it stands, you only find out about your 'offense' weeks after the fact. If it were a human interaction (eg speeding/police stop) you'd know right away and still have the relevant information in mind to understand the charge and maybe defend. The ability to know and defend should be critical to any charge. K
> California's new speed camera pilot (AB 645) explicitly solves for this... like parking tickets
That makes the Florida judge's framing of red light cameras as a revenue generating scheme even more applicable. More than that, it ambiguates the crime.
That sounds fine except the part where private companies have cameras everywhere surveilling us, directly tied into dmv records to identify us, and then do whatever they want with that data. And not on a random store front or a persons front door but the major roads we all must use.
Even forgetting that, all this means is people that don't care about getting a ticket, either because they won't pay or it's a such a small amount to them that they don't care. just do what they want. Nothing is being "enforced", just taxed.
I don't this is is as cut and dry as you're making it seem. See SEC v. Jarkesy. The Supreme Court decided that, when the SEC seeks civil penalties for securities fraud, the defendant has the right to a trial by jury pursuant to the Seventh Amendment.
So to work around civil protections in law, California now does not consider speeding to be an offense that should impact one's driving privilege or insurance? Just so they could collect that sweet fine money?
These systems are still often too expensive to operate safely. Over and over again these systems have been seen as needing to break even rather than being treated as a public service. But if they actually work then incidence of red light violations should go down, and hopefully substantially. So whatever fines you expect to receive in the first months before drivers adapt are more revenue than you should see at one year or more.
So when you start worrying about it as a cost center, then there is a perverse incentive to do things like shorten yellow lights. Short yellows have been proven to create more vehicular fatalities than people running red lights intentionally. And so the person who makes that decision to shorten yellows to boost tickets is effectively committing murder to keep the system “working”. Which is disgusting. Ghoulish, even.
It is literally better in such situations to simply dismantle the system than keep it running.
That said, the bill addresses this category of abuse directly: if a speed camera fails to reduce 85th percentile speeds or violation volumes within 18 months it must be removed.
Yup. Cameras "improve" safety in intersections--but not overall. It's just displaced. I would have thought the displacement reduced the severity but the injury data says otherwise. It's a case of removing the top and bottom stair.
As you say, it encourages short yellows. I am aware of having "run" one red light in my life--got ticketed for it. The yellow timing was set as short as legally permitted--a driver had a narrow window to decide go or stop. Unfortunately, what happens when neither is an option? I was in the left turn lane and past the decision point. I was already slowing when the light went yellow, I saw it and knew there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
There's also the problem that a huge number of red light tickets are issued to people who "run" red lights in a completely normal and safe manner: making a right turn on red. Car #1 stands as far forward as they can without being in the cross traffic path, the other cars line up behind. First car goes, the rest move forward. Nobody pays attention to the stop line--but the camera does.
In the real world, neither speed nor red light cameras pay for themselves except when something about the situation causes a problem--and it would be better addressed by fixing the true problem. Likewise, I have never seen a cop watching a situation for offenders unless there was something out of sync between the law and the road. Half of the traps I've seen over the years have disappeared when the root cause was fixed.
Interesting that your use of "solves for this" is with regards to the end result of being able to write more red light tickets. In my view, the courts solved this by deeming at least certain uses of red light cameras illegal.
Automated traffic control is objectively one of the most pro-social things we could possibly ever create. Yes it is good if more red light cameras exist and face fewer legal challenges.
> the courts solved this by deeming at least certain uses of red light cameras illegal.
This is incorrect. The court in Florida said certain arrangement of the statutory basis (a different one than in CA) for red light cameras is illegal.
No, their use of “solves for this” is with regards to disincentivizing an incredibly dangerous habit that randomly kills the most vulnerable bystanders in the vicinity at the rate of many thousands per year
I understand your criticism and it is fair, but this represents and improvement over the current state which is effectively no enforcement.
They're speed cameras, not red light cameras, and the revenues go towards street improvements to reduce speeding. So you could speed as much as you can afford, but eventually you'll have bought enough traffic calming infrastructure it'll be prohibitively difficult to keep getting tickets.
What's the alternative? No rules at all? Immediate death penalty for anyone who runs a red in front of a cop? Seizing and auctioning off the car? Deporting the offender to Texas? Something else? Revoke their license?
>Tickets issued by these cameras are civil penalties issued to the owner of the vehicle, like parking tickets, rather than a criminal moving violation. This means the tickets are just as constitutional as parking tickets. It also means penalties are limited to fines and can't impact your driving privilege or insurance.
So what does this say about the legitimacy of having those fines affect your license and insurance when issues by a real flesh and blood cop?
Sounds to me like that by default they shouldn't be affecting squat because there's an implicit "the cops will mostly only pull people over if it's unconscionably bad" filter going on.
Or maybe not have automated surveillance robonannies playing gotcha games and pocketing money, often impacting those who can least afford it, over technicalities and arbitrary rules made up to benefit the people doing the collecting.
The idea that AI enforcement won't be just as corrupt and capricious as any other form of government run extortion is bonkers. You're talking systems with less oversight than openclaw being run by people whose entire goal is to make as much money as possible, no matter the source. Private, unaccountable companies with effectively no oversight with the legal right to send you invoices for things you might or might not have done, and the cost for disputing it might well exceed the cost of just paying it and getting it over with.
Why are Californians so hellbent on giving their money to the government, given the absolute shitshow that is their budget and track record? The only good things that have happened in California for decades comes out of private enterprise, but all the crazy nonsense is fostered and maintained, apparently quite vigorously, by elected governments.
I'm furious that 10% of my federal income taxes end up going to California's bullshit, I can't imagine what it would be like having to live there.
Seriously, it's bordering on levels of insanity right up there with thinking that Jefferey Epstein would make a great babysitter. Do people just not pay attention? Does the weather just make everyone complacent and docile?
Speed cams and automated gotchas allowing the government to raid your pocketbook are a bad thing. There's no framing or circumstances where that's good.
> The idea that AI enforcement won't be just as corrupt and capricious as any other form of government run extortion is bonkers. [...] Private, unaccountable companies with effectively no oversight
In the specific case this thread is about - that of red light cameras - presumably the camera produces a photograph showing a red light, a vehicle going through it, and the vehicle's license plate. Plus a video, showing the light was orange for the legally required amount of time, and showing the absence of any exceptional circumstances (e.g. ambulances).
As law enforcement goes, that really seems like the least capricious, highest oversight law enforcement I can imagine.
I'm furious that 10% of my federal income taxes end up going to California's bullshit, I can't imagine what it would be like having to live there.
Your taxes getting evenly distributed is one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is that removing California from the US would either increase your taxes or require reductions in federal spending.
>"The judge frames the red light camera scheme as a revenue generating scheme, not a public safety measure."
In my own experience, when they took down the red light cameras in my area now people are not afraid to run red lights ~2 to ~3 seconds after it's red. See this kind of thing on a regular basis. Every now and then there's a serious accident.
The objective evidence indicates that accidents tend to go up after red light cameras go up, generally because the operators lower the yellow light time to increase fees.
> generally because the operators lower the yellow light time to increase fees
I'm skeptical of this claim because the red light camera operators are usually contracted by municipalities. They don't have any direct control over the light cycles.
(Yes, obviously they can be in cahoots with the municipality, but I would be surprised if that was common and not the exception)
I feel like when these tickets are struck down it's still smart to send notices to the homes of the cars doing this in more of a shaming way - even if the fine itself isn't legal. I suspect it would increase safety a small amount just by doing that.
I've followed a few cases surrounding traffic cameras that have been ruled unconstitutional on the grounds that individuals have the right to face their accuser.
The question in those cases came down to if the operators of the cam can be considered "accusers."
They widely considered that of course the cam itself didn't count as an accuser, but the question was how "automated" the system was. If there was a human who flagged it, the system was fine, if it was fully automated, they were unconstitutional.
Many states don't share this opinion, but an interesting argument nonetheless.
Couldn't you say the same of drug testing spectrometers etc? The end operator of the equipment has to appear in court to testify to the proper operation of the machine. [0]
[0] Unless the defendant waives that right and stipulates to the prosecutor's statement about the machine.
This literally occurs; one of the reasons that the drug testing lab is usually somewhat local. The prosecution called the individual who ran the test as a witness, and he had clearly been called for similar things many times before.
They started putting them up in the midwest where I live. The interesting thing is if you get a ticket and just pay it? Nothing. If you get a ticket and you challenge it, the judge will immediately throw it out for the reason you pointed out or just dismiss it before it even gets to court by sending out a form letter saying they nullified the ticket, no reason to pay it.
So in essence, if you know this is what they're doing, you're good. But they're not telling people so the money grift continues unabated and in place.
So if it's established as unconstitutional, couldn't you file a criminal complaint of official oppression against the members of whatever government approved the cameras since they are levying unconstitutional fines?
I don't have much meaningful info to contribute to this, but it is interesting to observe how the rollout of the red light cams happens in different places, and how it eventually turns out.
IIRC there was a point in time roughly around ~2017 when it happened in Redmond WA (i.e., in the town that the Microsoft HQ is in). I might be off by a year or two, but it doesn't really change the overall point.
TLDR: in under 2 years, that whole red light cam initiative got canceled and reverted, because the local stats showed that it just made things more dangerous on the roads (by significantly increasing the rate of rear-ending accidents at traffic lights).
I went and read the section about Feiock. It's page 11 in the PDF for those interested. Section IV.B
It states "while these offense are labelled civil they remain fundamentally quasi-criminal in nature: punitive, adjudicative". Later it states "the State may not employ presumptions or burden-shifting devices that relieve it of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt"
The judge stops just an inch short of saying "this is a kangaroo court where guilt is stated rather than proven"
possibly, although I suspect the quote from above:
> Although nominally civil, traffic infraction proceedings retain every substantive hallmark of criminal prosecution...
Is going to matter here. A moving violation (ex: red light) is quite different from a non-moving violation (ex: parking) in how they're handled, and often how they're classified.
Ex - my in state, a moving violation is a criminal misdemeanor, while a non-moving violation is entirely civil.
Idk how Florida handles it but several states citations issued by red light cameras and those issued by officers are handled entirely differently for the exact reason you mention. Camera citations are entirely civil, you don't get points against your license. If a cop issues the ticket it does become a misdemeanor moving violation.
there is no state where a moving violation is criminal misdemeanor. some moving violations may be CM but there are myriad of moving violations whose class/degree is not CM. CM is serious class/degree that if you are charged with it you better get yourself an attorney.
Almost, except parking tickets are still typically civil “owner-liability” citations tied to where the car is parked, while red-light violations are intended to target the driver’s conduct
No. Parking is leaving your possession somewhere and should apply to the registered owner. It is not illegal to own a car that someone else used to run a red light.
Surely the framing is "we the people allow you to operate this (otherwise illegal) dangerous vehicle on public roads, on the condition that by default you are responsible for whatever transgressions".
If someone used the car without permission, they are guilty of theft.
If they used the car with your permission, you should either be responsible for what they do with it, or be able to point to the person who was using it.
So this has been a thing in Germany since forever. The driver must pay the penalty, not the owner. So what they do is take a picture of the driver and send this to the owner. They have to either pay up, or state the name of the person who drove. If the driver claims that they did not drive and do not know the person on the picture (and if a cursory investigation fails, not sure how much time the authorities will invest in finding the driver), they will be told to record all rides with that vehicle from now on. If they fail to do that, I guess they get a greater penalty the next time, I'm not sure.
So yeah, in some cases you might get out of it by feigning ignorance, but it seems to be a sensible compromise between facial recognition and giving up.
"under Feiock, such proceedings are sufficiently criminal in form and function to invoke the full protections of due process..."
This makes me question many existing civil things. Obviously child support, as in the case law. But also, things like red flag laws. It seems like any civil law that would apply criminal-type contemt penalties is unconstitutional.
If the core of the reasoning is the fines and penalties then surely the remedy is to temper the punishment to just fees that need to be fulfilled upon renewal or registration.
A speeding ticket is not a criminal charge. Criminal procedure and the rights for criminal defendants don't apply.
The court says that criminal rules should apply because points are at stake, while civil penalties are usually restricted to fines, but I don't buy that argument. We have plenty of non-money civil remedies. Code enforcement departments can require changes to property. Family courts can make all kinds of requirements. It's not outside of constitutional bounds for a traffic rule to result in forfeiting a license without criminal proceedings.
>but I don't buy that argument. We have plenty of non-money civil remedies. Code enforcement departments can require changes to property. Family courts can make all kinds of requirements. It's not outside of constitutional bounds for a traffic rule to result in forfeiting a license without criminal proceedings.
All of which are an affront to people's rights.
The fact that we use a "special word" (civil) for the category of laws where we won't throw you straight in prison if you don't comply, we'll add the extra step of waiting for noncompliance and then charging someone with contempt doesn't fundamentally alter the relationship between the enforcers and the people, so why should the people have to put up with their rights being ignored in those cases?
As someone who lives next to an intersection where cars routinely run red lights, this truly sucks and I hope it gets overturned. I understand the judge's reasoning, but running red lights is dangerous and we need much stricter enforcement.
If people routinely run the red light, it seems like an easy case to post an officer to do traffic stops and issue tickets. AFAIK, tickets issued by a sworn officer are broadly constitutional.
I people are routinely running a red for a particular intersection, it seems likely that there is a design problem with the intersection or the signaling. Improving safety would be fixing the underlying problem.
It's actually pretty common for some people to just run red lights when the road is really clear, especially at night. Best that could maybe be done would be to reduce visibility of cross traffic, so that the drivers can't tell from afar that the road they'll cross is clear - but this is likely to cause other kinds of risks.
Lol most of radars become mainly revenue stream, regardless of country or continent. Even mighty orderly Switzerland has some of that shit and its growing.
Where I live, there is one nasty radar placed so that people have to break rather hard, when leaving town as in few meters before end sign, on a steeply downhill slope, when there is just straight empty road ahead. Those who don't know get flashed frequently. There is no pedestrian crossing, no buildings, just empty fields. Locals complained and municipality said - sorry, we know, but its generating too much revenue and municipality needs that cash and became dependent on that. Basically FU. I know about few others in either Switzerland or France which have very nasty locations, in order to trap as many as possible, in places with 0 actual risk to anybody.
They also love putting temporary radars in some train underpasses which also go steeply down, so its trivial go few kms over the limit if you don't constantly brake and ie actually watch traffic around. Since they are well hidden and people see them at last moment and slam brakes hard, it properly increases risks of accidents, especially with mixture of cyclists or scooters/motorbikes. But that doesn't seem the priority anymore.
I am not saying they don't make sense in some places especially around pedestrian crossings, but its trivial to get 'addicted' to steady cash flow and then friction to change situation is maximal. Thats the point where it stops its primary purpose and becomes self-serving bureaucracy self-feeding loop.
Seems the fact that it was a "red light camera" is completely irrelevant? The relevant part:
> The defendant argued the statute unconstitutionally requires the registered owner to prove they were not driving — instead of requiring the government to prove who was behind the wheel.
Bit like having to prove you weren't the one breaking in, rather than the police having to prove you were guilty.
In light of this, seems like a no-brainer no one could disagree with.
Not the same. They know the car was yours so, by extension, you should be aware of its whereabouts at any given moment. If it wasn't you driving, you know who. An illegal activity was committed using your tool and you know who did it. They have every right to question you. If you do not know, you testify as such, but then again you need to plausibly explain why was someone operating your car while you were not aware of it.
> In light of this, seems like a no-brainer no one could disagree with.
If someone shoots a person with your gun, you gonna say it wasn't you and expect them not to question any you further? Not very no-brainer, is it?
This is how it works in Poland and, I assume, most/all of EU and the rest of the world.
Actually, the fifth amendment only protects your right not to incriminate yourself. So you may be called upon to testify against your will against some one else (With some limited protections for spouses and such). However, if you were in fact the one driving, you can plead the fifth, and they cannot use that fact against you to prove it was in fact you driving- they have to prove that independently.
(EDIT: I should note that you also have a right to remain silent when questioned by the police- and since they won't know who to charge, there will likely not be a court case to call you to testify at)
In reality the way it would work is the prosecutor and police would use every bit of circumstantial evidence to construct a claim of motive, means, and opportunity. Then threaten you with a lengthy prison sentence if you are convicted.
You're not going to roll on whoever really did it (assuming you know), and trust your fate to a jury understanding presumption of innocence, and being convinced of "reasonable" doubt, without you saying a word in your own defense? Most people would not unless they had an iron-clad alibi, but if they did, they wouldn't be getting charged in the first place.
AFAIK Fith Amendment only protects against self-incrimination, you absolutely can be subpoenaed to testify against someone else and failing to produce truthful testimony is a crime.
> If someone shot a person with my gun, I would invoke the fifth amendment, and ask the government to prove who did it beyond a reasonable doubt.
Sounds nice on paper, but unless you have an absolutely airtight alibi that's a great way to end up in jail. Oh, you were alone at home all night? Well, your neighbor is pretty sure they heard you come home unusually late, and a witness saw someone who kinda-sorta looked like you run away from the crime site, and the victim was sorta-kinda involved in your social circles, and there's video of victim bumping into you a few weeks ago in a bar and you reacting in what could be interpreted as an aggressive way - and it is your gun...
Or you could tell them who you loaned the gun to. Your choice.
Note that in civil cases, such as a traffic ticket, the fifth ammendment doesn't apply to the same extent, and the standard of evidence is typically not "beyond reasonable doubt", it is "a preponderance of the evidence".
Now, per the judge's ruling in this case, red light tickets are actually quasi-criminal, not purely civil, so the standards of criminal law might need to be applied.
> It is enough to say absolutely nothing, and request the government to prove its case.
Only in criminal contexts. In civil contexts your silence can absolutely be an adverse inference. Usually these red-light cameras are civil penalties, not criminal (fines with no points). The judge here seems to be saying that these are "quasi-criminal" because, uhh, I guess there are penalties.
You don't need to explain anything to the government, that's why we have the 5th amendment. It is the government's job to bring charges against you and prove them beyond reasonable doubt. The government is right to investigate and ask questions to accomplish that and I am right to refuse to answer anything.
It's basically "innocent until proven guilty". Red light cameras turn that assumption around since if your car gets ticketed it is assumed you are "guilty until proven innocent".
I think the argument is generally: nobody has a right to drive a car, it's something we permit by issuing a license and other regulations. One of the conditions is that the owner of a vehicle is ultimately responsible for it.
The judge in this case disagreed, because the red light infraction was not a simple civil fine but quasi-criminal, e.g. points on drivers license, possibly resulting in suspension, etc.
The 5th amendment with regard to self-incrimination only applies to criminal cases. When I represented myself in court for a speeding ticket the judge threatened me under pain of contempt that I had to testify against myself.
Most camera tickets are either civil moving, or civil non-moving. Civil moving are against a person and civil non-moving are against the vehicle. Neither of which case does 5th amendment protect you from incriminating yourself, and neither of which does it require prove beyond a reasonable doubt.
Please don't project the laws and norms of Poland onto the US.
The US is a very big place. And in this place, we have fifty (!) different states. That's fifty different sets of rules relating to owning and driving cars -- nearly twice as many as the EU has member nations.
A Florida judge might decide that red light camera tickets are unconstitutional, while an Arizona judge might decide that they're completely OK. These two very different rulings can co-exist, without conflict, potentially forever.
Each state doing their own thing independently of the others is just how we roll here.
A sane and rational person might reasonably conclude that this situation is literally insane -- and they may be right! -- but it is this way anyway.
I don't believe the founders intended as much federal oversight as we currently have. It was supposed to be self-governing states with a few exceptions. So much of the constitution is to limit the feds.
Sure, that would be sufficient probable cause for police to ask questions. But it’s not sufficient evidence on which to write a ticket because we specifically wrote into our Constitution that the police must know and be able to prove who the guilty party is _before_ they write the ticket (or make an arrest, in the case of more serious crimes). Poland doesn’t protect its citizens to the same degree, so what is acceptable there is not acceptable here.
Most of the world also doesn't have the same degree of protections against self-incrimination that the 5th amendment provides. If someone shot a person with my gun, while the police can obviously ask questions, in the US I have the right to not answer and force them to prove beyond a reasonable doubt who fired it.
I had some family friends and their two (adult) sons come in (from Poland!) and loaned them my car for a week while they were driving around the states. They were all licensed and it could have been any one of them driving at any given point.
I've even been on road trips in my own car where figuring out the question "we got a ticket from nowhere, montana. Who was driving when we went through there?" Would be met with "that was over a month ago, I don't even know where that is much less who was driving then."
My husband and I and our kid take each other's cars for various reasons and trying to figure out who was driving on any given hour of the day over a month later when the ticket arrives in the mail would be an impossible task.
> They know the car was yours so, by extension, you should be aware of its whereabouts at any given moment.
This is an absurd assumption. I own many cars. Often, I'll borrow a car to a friend, I'm generally totally OK if they borrow it to other people. I don't care, and should not have to care, who those people are.
Also, for what it's worth, the government has no idea who owns any of my cars. EU registration certificates are typically not proof of ownership (are they in any EU country? I suspect quite possibly not). At best a government might be able to figure out the registered keeper of my vehicle, but they're not going to know anything about who drives the car.
>If someone shoots a person with your gun, you gonna say it wasn't you and expect them not to question any you further? Not very no-brainer, is it?
If I say "it wasn't me" and refuse to answer further questions, I would expect them to stop asking me pretty quickly. Being excessively bothersome about asking further questions would be a clear violation of the ECHR.
The standard for this in the UK is that you should make a reasonable effort to work out who was driving.
e.g. checking your calendar/diary, looking through receipts or bank statements to work out where you likely were.
There's also a requirement that a request for information is sent within 14 days for minor incidents like speeding or red light violations, so it's not like you have to work out who was driving on a Tuesday morning three years ago.
Your car, your problem. Either get someone to fess up, or take responsibility yourself and stop loaning it out.
There really is no difference between "who drove through a red light" and "who scratched the bumper while parking" here - how do you currently solve the latter one?
> you should be aware of its whereabouts at any given moment
Says who? If the car is mine, I am free to do with it whatever I like (of course, excepting criminal acts). I do not owe anybody an account of what I - or the care - did at any particular moment. If the car was used in the commission of a crime, it's up to the prosecution to prove I had something to do with it. If they think I know who did it - prove it and prosecute me under the law. You can't just prosecute because you think I should know, that's not how proper law works - otherwise every cop in the country would be 100% sure who they caught is the criminal - because why not, if it's enough for conviction, why work harder!
> If someone shoots a person with your gun, you gonna say it wasn't you and expect them not to question any you further?
They can question all they like, but to secure a criminal conviction, they must prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that I was the person who did it. Otherwise you get no conviction. If they strongly suspect I did it, they would find a proof - but the fact that I owned a gun is not that proof (for one, guns can be easily stolen, and frequently are).
But couldn't you then have the same argument for speeding tickets (or parking tickets)? Like, "I don't know who drove my car too fast or parked my car on the curb, so it's not my problem. The state should prove who did it.".
In Europe the law argues that cars are dangerous, and if you loan your car to a habitual bad driver, that's on you. You can either get the person who drove it to fess up, or the judge can fine you (because you lent out your car against better judgment) and impose a drivers log, so the circus doesn't happen again.
The arguing about having a constitutional right to drive bad boggles the mind, road deaths in the US are high, compared to civilized nations. Wikipedia states it's 14.2 deaths per 100000 inhbitants, that's between Sierra Leone (13.8) and Angola (15.0). For comparison, India has 12.6 traffic deaths per 100000 citizens and the worst country in Europe is Greece at 6.1.
The right metric is death per citizen, not per mile, because it's about the number of people who have lost a family member or friend.
When you get around exclusively on two wheels (motorcycle and bicycle) bad drivers are a direct safety threat. Even cagers ought to be careful about being permissive with red light running, side-on crashes are remarkably deadly for the one who got hit in the door because there is not much structural protection or space on the side of the vehicle.
Sure, but they have no right to issue you a ticket without proving you broke the law. Same as in the gun case: they have every right to question you, but they can't convict you for murder based solely on evidence that it was your gun that killed the victim.
A ticket (citation) is a promise to appear before a court, not a conviction of anything. Law enforcement can cite anyone with only reasonable suspicion than a crime or infraction has been committed.
Of course they are going to question you further. But they still do have to prove it to convict you. If the prosecution provides no evidence that you were the shooter other than the fact that you were the owner of the gun, then you are going to get off.
Speed camera tickets show up in the mail weeks after the fact. Say your entire family uses your car. You know who was driving the family car at 2pm on a random sunday five weeks ago? I'm guessing not...
I think it's like this in the UK, you are required to either admit to it or inform the police who was driving at the time.
For speeding there's a website where you can view photos and a certificate showing the equipment was calibrated recently, and you can admit or nominate another driver (or you can do it via paper forms)
In Poland, ticket enforcement from speed cameras is about 50% (because if you don't accept it voluntarily, they need to file court case and burden of proof is on the government here, as with any other criminal case).
Then you pay the ticket yourself or ask the family who did it so they can do it. This is normal across the world and really isn't a stretch to expect vehicle owners to figure out who's been driving dangerously with their car.
You are missing a nuance. It is simply a separate offence (a misdemeanor) to not identify who was driving when the car was used to commit a violation.
But also traffic cameras here generally take frontal pictures, so typically the only way you can get away with claiming it wasn't you is if they are very lazy / not interested in investigating further.
> They know the car was yours so, by extension, you should be aware of its whereabouts at any given moment.
People's spouses and kids drive their cars. I've lent cars to friends before. Unless you've got some kind of log book, you might not know (or even remember) who was driving at any given moment or location.
> you need to plausibly explain why was someone operating your car while you were not aware of it.
This is the point of the judgement, under US law it seems that you don't need to plausibly explain anything, the authorities need to be able to show who was driving as the penalty is pseudo-criminal.
> I assume, most/all of EU and the rest of the world.
Under UK law which is much less definite about the state proving who was driving, one must make a good faith effort to identify the driver. But my Father got into a situation that took months to resolve when a speeding ticket arrived. The photograph of the driver didn't capture the head and was otherwise too blurry to identify from the body. It's a month after the fact on a road they both drive down frequently, and they only have one car. Was it him or his wife driving? Nobody knows.
The primary vehicle owner is not allowed to just assume responsibility for the ticket, because the liability for the offence is with the specific driver. Giving the wrong information is an offence itself, because people have tried those sorts of tricks to (for example) give penalty points to their spouse and avoid a ban.
So ... what do you do?
It's possible to take such cases to court in the UK and receive a not-guilty verdict if the vehicle owner can show a good faith effort has been made to identify the driver but there is no reasonable way of doing so.
I don't have to prove who was driving. I don't have to prove I wasn't the one driving. The state has to prove that I was the one driving.
>If someone shoots a person with your gun, you gonna say it wasn't you and expect them not to question any you further?
I don't expect them not to question me further and that's not what this is about. This is about whether your car running a red light is proof, in and of itself absent any other facts, that you ran a red light in your car.
>This is how it works in Poland
This is not how it works in the US
>I assume, most/all of EU and the rest of the world.
Let's say your friend borrow your car and drives through a red light. You don't have to tell the court that it was them, but as the car owner you'll be held responsible for what the car was used for if you don't.
They have the right to question, but I don't have to testify to anything, that's what the fifth ammendment is for.
As usual, Europe doesn't care about internal consistency when it comes to rights. They just legislate (or rule) whatever 'works' for the current definition of 'works'.
> If someone shot a person with your gun, you gonna say it wasn't you and expect them not to question you further? Not very no-brainer, is it?
> As usual, Europe doesn't care about internal consistency when it comes to rights.
Sure. And you advocate that in exchange in US you get havoc on the roads because anyone can say "it wasn't me speeding 50 miles over the limit, bite me"? Is that the freedom you want?
Florida must be using cheap cameras. My daughter got a red light ticket in Beverly Hills a couple of years ago. They mailed the ticket to her as the registered owner of the car, including the photographs from the cameras which showed that a) she entered the intersection on a red light, b) her car front and back showing the license plates and c) the face of the driver, establishing it was her. From her expression on the photograph you could tell she was saying "oh, shit!" She just paid it.
Same here; tickets always include the photo of the driver. If the photo is unclear or differs from the registered owner, tickets are easily dismissed.
However, I agree with Florida on this; the onus should be not be on the accused to prove innocence after a citation is issued. Feels like a 'call us to unsubscribe' time-wasting dark pattern.
I see your point, but these are civil tickets rather than criminal charges. And since there’s already many laws and regulations around owning a car, such as registration… isn’t it trivial to say “you are responsible for a car that you register by default”
In the same way, if your car fails emissions tests, you can’t register it and it’s the responsibility of the owner to ensure that their car meets emissions standards.
If you read the article, you would see that issue addressed. The claim was that it wasn't civil, it was quasi-criminal which is why they had to follow due process.
But the risks that running a red light pose aren’t civil in nature, so it feels like a perversion to use civil infractions as an excuse to get sloppy with enforcement.
Sort of. Basically you can fine the owner of the car and revoke the privileges of driving that car in a given state. Where it gets to be a problem is if the charge is against the 'driver' of the car and the state's not able to prove that. Normally, in courts we can face our adversary and cross-examine, etc. We hit this problem in NJ during the red light camera pilot program, I can remember a guy I worked with getting a ticket because his roommate borrowed a car and the front was hanging out a bit into the intersection.
Some other thoughts: An illegally parked car can be fined, impounded, booted. Car with outstanding parking tickets can also have all of the above. But typically the driver wouldn't see points or a moving violation for any of these offenses. For example: NYC you can get blocking the box tickets written by parking enforcement but they don't carry the weight of a moving violation like a police officer's ticket would. (and if you don't pay it, it's not the driving privilege that's suspended in the state, it's the car itself that would be targeted for booting/impounding, etc)
>I see your point, but these are civil tickets rather than criminal charges.
Yeah that's what they said when ICE was unilaterally kicking in doors.
The way I see it anything that would prompt the government to use violence upon you without you taking action to escalate deserves the same level of protection for the accused as a "real" criminal matter.
Yes I'm aware this includes just about everything beyond library late fines and would break the system at least for awhile. Worth it. The government shouldn't be able to assess the same penalties (fines) and threaten the same enforcement actions (forfeiture of property, arrest for nonpayment, etc, etc) as they do in criminal matters and side step people's rights simply because they say it's civil. The rights and procedural protections are what they are not to prevent the application of a label, but to prevent abuse at the hands of the government.
No more lending your car to a friend in need, no more letting your children learn to drive on your car or borrow it ever. Families must now own and insure a car for every individual driver because we can't be bothered to find robust solutions for traffic enforcement
Shift the problem onto individuals, make it a burden for the public. Typical HN attitude
Yeah, keeping this would be a dangerous precedent. If the state can presume you're guilty in a traffic case, why not extend it to other cases? Stuff like that is routinely used in legal arguments, "we are doing X so why can't we do Y which is essentially the same?" So say they'd go for "we have your phone located within the vicinity of where murder is committed, now prove you're not a murderer!" or "your license place was tagged next to the store that was robbed, now prove you didn't rob the store!"
And yes, very likely some people would abuse it to get out of traffic tickets. I'd rather have that than constitutional due process protections eroded. We're not doing super-great on that anyway, we don't need to do worse, and if some scoundrel occasionally not paying traffic ticket is a price we have to pay to avoid that, I am fine with it.
Yup. Camel's noses should always be shot. Otherwise they creep in more and more.
Some examples that come to mind:
Look how the exception for searches at border crossings has expanded.
The use of actions against licenses for behavior that has nothing to do with the license.
The use of permits to get companies to do things only marginally related to the purpose of the permit.
The encouragement of universities to expel those accused of criminal acts--just because the punishment isn't jail should not mean the state can hand it off to a kangaroo court.
Pressuring financial companies to cut ties with disliked things. (For example, getting Steam to remove games with any whiff of incest. Either declare them illegal or don't take action against them!)
If it's their vehicle and the vehicle wasn't stolen, the owner should know who was driving it. Courts do compel people to testify sometimes (when it is not self-incriminating).
The relevant part is that the judge declared traffic ticket proceedings “quasi criminal”:
> In the order, the court found that red-light camera cases, although labeled as civil infractions, function as “quasi-criminal” proceedings because they can result in monetary penalties, a formal finding of guilt, and consequences tied to a driver’s record.
Which seems to just relabel any fine from the government as a criminal matter?
IMO when you register the vehicle for the right to drive on public roads, you are entering into an agreement that you will be responsible for following the rules of the road, and for lending the car to people who also do so.
Similarly, if I register a firearm legally, and then lend it out to anyone who asks, regardless of whether they follow the law, I don’t think it would be crazy to hold me financially responsible if a shooting happens with my gun.
Seems untenable because I can just lie to you about my intended use. I borrow your hammer to build a cabin. Oops, I actually used it to murder people. Enjoy the millions in damages.
>I don’t think it would be crazy to hold me financially responsible if a shooting happens with my gun.
States have had to write laws for this to be a criminal matter. Before then it was a civil matter, but it was individuals against individuals and not state against individuals.
>Which seems to just relabel any fine from the government as a criminal matter?
It wasn't exactly about the fine, but points on a license I believe.
In California at least (I'm not sure about Florida law), you can go to court and state "the state hasn't proved that I was the driver," and if the photos are too blurry to show who the driver was, the state loses. You don't have to tell them who the driver was, just show that they don't have enough evidence that it was you. I believe this approach is more consistent with the constitution.[1]
The logic is fine, but hit and runs just became a lot easier to get away with then no? Especially with tinted windows being so prevalent you very well might not even be able to give a description at all of the driver, and they can just later say they found their car like that.
Probably a lot of other issues arise from that. If your car gets towed for being illegally parked, what if you just say you didn't park it there? Seems like a similar violation to a red light ticket.
Hit and run is different; the car is insured, regardless of the driver. If criminal, they will interview to see if the owner was driving, who else had access to the car, and so on.
I don't see why the government should have to prove who was driving to issue a ticket, it's not like they have to prove who parked the car to issue a traffic ticket.
In Finland there is fun thing on that. There is both tickets by municipality where the ticket goes to keeper. But as private parking fines are contractual violations they need to track down or at least reasonably prove the person who parked...
Still, seems to me that it is reasonable to prove who did such violation. Maybe photo could identify person. Or maybe other data could be requested like phone location data. Doesn't seem unreasonable or high hurdle. Probably not cost effective in every case.
This is such a strange argument, as any reasonable person should know or be able to find out who was driving their car at a specific point in time. But also easy to solve such absurd positions - Change the law to say the owner is responsible for any and all infractions and loses the right to ride and own a car for such infractions unless they identify another driver. But I don't see who wins in this scenario, it is much more logical and fair to go in with the aim to penalise the driver, and for this purpose ask the owner to confirm the driver.
I think that administrative charges do not need to clear the "beyond a reasonable doubt" bar -- that is reserved for criminal cases only. (So indeed, breaking in or killing.)
"Preponderance of the Evidence" which is probably used for traffic cases means only "more likely than not" (or about 51% certainty).
There are plenty of laws where you do nothing and are still considered responsible.
For one, that was Florida. In California there's the "Permissive Use" rule which means you are at least partially responsible for who you lend your car to. If they get in an accident, you can be held partially liable.
There's also "Negligent Entrustment" if it can be proved you knowingly loaned your car or gun to someone intoxicated, unlicensed, etc...
Businesses are generally supposed to take responsibility for their employees. That might sound obvious if the business is FAANG but it's far less obvious to a single person coffee-shop or flower stand who hires their first employee who then spills hot coffee on a customer.
Parents are liable for their kids on many (most?) cases
I think another is where a someone goes to bar, drinks too much, the bartender gets charged.
Rather than just fight the cameras, what solution would you suggest? Just saying "more officer enforcement" doesn't seem valid as budgets are shrinking, applicants are shrinking, and people are dying from reckless drivers.
> seems like a no-brainer no one could disagree with.
I disagree completely. This is how speed and red light cameras operate in my country. If you weren't the one driving, it's straight forward to show that. The other party can admit to the offence or you can present evidence including the camera itself. The burden is low. Camera infractions do not carry license demerit points because of this ongerent uncertainty.
What's the alternative? Use even more valuable police resources to issue these tickets? Or just not penalize dangerous infractions?
One interesting point is that the Judge also spent some ink criticizing the law because paying the ticket removes the ticket from your driving record. This means that habitual bad drivers can get away with the same infractions over and over again as long as they pay the fines quickly. This bypasses the State’s points system that was designed to punish repeat offenders by taking away their license.
I wonder how other state’s red–light camera laws hold up? Do they have the same flaws or are they written better?
Same flaws. It was all designed to make up for budget cuts and stayed when it made a dent. Once they got used to the money from it, they got complacent with how effective it actually was. This is Law Enforcement in America in a nut shell. They only care when they can’t make their pension plan payments. Rather than go out there and police, they have staffing shortages and rely on the private sector to provide services that allow them to “police” from afar or by an algorithm.
There is a driver in NYC who gets almost 300 speeding tickets per year. They've paid their fines, so they're allowed to keep driving. Apparently, since the fines come from speed camera, they can't revoke their license.
Coming to the part about issuing fines to the registered owner, you can nominate a different driver online here, when replying to the fine. The person nominated need to accept this as well before it is taken off the person to whom the vehicle is registered to.
Right, many other countries let you point the finger at someone else. The problem is that in the US the government is not legally allowed to even issue a ticket unless they can prove that the person they are prosecuting is the guilty party. Merely being the owner of the car is not enough.
New Jersey abandoned their red-light camera laws after ticket challenges involving yellow-light lengths. The length should be proportional to the posted speed limit (e.g. 5.5 seconds for 50 mph), but many lights were found to have incorrect timing (e.g. 2.5 seconds for 50 mph).
Also, I think at that time some questionable arrangements surfaced between the operators of the automated ticketing system(s) and the towns and/or counties involved.
My city seems to be fixing this by having yellow lights extend when it sees a car reasonably close to the intersection. And also helps by switching lights quickly based on car presence.
> the Judge also spent some ink criticizing the law because paying the ticket removes the ticket from your driving record
Weird thing to point out, as in Florida, if you get any traffic citation, you just hire The Ticket Clinic for ~$80. If they don't get your ticket expunged or points eliminated, you get your money back. They don't lose often. You can keep racking up tickets, but not get any points, as long as you've got $80.
That's by design, and that's a good thing. Anything where the person actually driving the car can't be identified (i.e., tickets given by camera as opposed to in-person) shouldn't have any long term affect on anyone's personal records.
Wow, that's a huge problem with that red light camera program then. The drives that run red lights around me clearly don't care much for minor consequences. The point needs to be to identify the sociopathic drivers and get them off the road.
You mistakenly believe that these camera systems are not functioning exactly as intended: they're a revenue stream. If they ended up shutting down the offenders that revenue stream would dry up. The sociopath you've identified is called a whale instead.
NYC government has thought about the legality of red light cameras. What they made it legal is to have human law enforcement officers review ever single computer flagged speeding footages with zoom out license plates, putting enforcement officer's signature into the tickets mailed out. In the same ticket they also provided a signed affidavit from the red light camera technology vendor's technician who performs weekly technical maintenance to certify that the red light camera is functional proper at the designed technical specifications (violation speed was far exceeds the margin of errors of reported speed etc.) Thus, both signatures satisfied the legal due process in NY state law. And the red light camera tickets mailing out are legal and enforceable.
Sources:
1. yes I got them before when I was driving a lot in Queens, New York City had legal counsel regarding fighting these red light camera tickets.
2. NYC government is quadrupling those cameras as it's a really cheap way to increase municipal revenue and reduce traffic speed. It's working if you drive in Queens NYC you will notice most traffic obey to the speed limits.
https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/1q8fm89/nyc_to_quadrup...
> What they made it legal is to have human law enforcement officers review ever single computer flagged speeding footages with zoom out license plates, putting enforcement officer's signature into the tickets mailed out.
Sound like, in typical NYC fashion, its also a great way to pad time for the NYPD and get some quid pro quo from their Union.
Surely the obvious next step is to charge the car itself with the crime of moving through a red light? Isn't that what civil forfeiture was supposed to be for? You're not getting a ticket, we're just impounding your car until someone bails it out...
Besides, it neatly solves the whole responsibility problem for self-driving car!
It’s a common practice to avoid penalties like losing your driving license due to traffic violations by declaring that you haven’t been driving the vehicle during the incident and it was somebody else which has to agree to this and let’s say gets a monetary compensation. It works like that here in Germany, it sounds like it works in a similar way in the US.
Penalizing the owner of the vehicle regardless of the driver would be less ideal for society in my opinion.
>"I've been ticketed here twice, and it's ridiculous because they it's just not fair," one driver said who didn't want to be identified. The person that does the determination when you ran the light, it's just a random. Whoever they want to pick, pick you to say, okay, you're gonna pay the ticket."
This is the opposite of my understanding of red light cameras. I always considered the supposed impartial application of the traffic law as the main benefit.
I suspect this is some light with chronically-bad timing that gets run by tons of people every day. The camera is taking a photo with a bunch of vehicles in the frame and it's ticketing the one that had the license plate unobstructed, even if a few of the vehicles in the frame technically entered the intersection when the light was yellow.
Sometimes lights are just so poorly implemented, and drivers pass through them so often, it feels like whoever designed the intersection was actively goading drivers into running the light.
If someone is using your car they cant legally give you a ticket. If the picture taken doesnt clearly show you theoretically it needs to be dropped but of course thats not how it works in reality
In North America, from what I understand, the issue is that the authorities need to verify your identity in order to ticket you and traffic cameras don’t do that whereas a police officer does.
I agree the automated systems are impartial, but they cannot ID you without it becoming super invasive.
In Europe and places with more omnipresent cameras, the laws are such that they can ticket you without needing to ID. The car gets the ticket so to speak.
It depends on whether the ticket is considered a criminal or civil matter in the US.
For a criminal case, yes, they need to prove "beyond a reasonable doubt" - which would require that you are positively identified as the driver.
For a civil case, they only need to prove by a "preponderance of the evidence" - which is a much lower standard.
This is why tickets from red-light cameras in many states are zero-point citations. You're still charged a fine, but there's no finding of guilt attached to the offense, which keeps it away from being considered a criminal matter. (This is the same way parking tickets work.)
What does "North America" have to do with Florida?
I'm in Canada and they issue you a fine without any ID. It goes straight to the registered car owner. Simple as.
The issue is that currently in FL there are points / demerits issued for violations, and these can cause the loss of a license, increases to insurance, etc. This is not a problem if an officer can ID you directly.
In Brazil, you can identify who was driving the car and they will get charged with the fine and get the points on their licence. You can do it all using an app on your phone. It's really simple.
I don't know what happens if the other person denies it though.
Many US states have switched to that approach. The ticket goes to the registered owner of the vehicle and no penalty points are attached. It's treated more like a parking citation than a traditional moving violation.
Systems don’t necessarily react based on the legal situation. A red light camera that’s improperly installed, poorly maintained, etc could essentially act randomly from a drivers perspective.
... which is why they are supposed to be regularly calibrated by an independent third party - with tickets automatically being void if law enforcement can't prove that it was functioning properly.
Which is why they are supposed to have a sworn officer review the camera footage. I have certainly had a camera flash me while waiting to turn right on red, still outside the intersection. They never sent me a ticket however since I had clearly not done anything illegal.
This person is not articulating it well but I think they are complaining that the person identified as the driver is random. Presumably the camera can impartially identify a car running a light, but not necessarily who is driving.
"I've been ticketed here twice, and it's ridiculous because they - it's just not fair. The person that - [let me start over] - the determination when you ran the light [of who is responsible], it's just a random whoever they want to pick ... [they] pick you to say, okay, you're gonna pay the ticket."
Obviously it's not actually random, it just defaults to the vehicle's owner, but with a generous reading I think you can interpret the quote this way based on the context of the article.
I think it's kind of irresponsible and lazy for the publication to use a verbatim verbal quote like this, when it isn't from someone notable who really needs to be quoted. If you don't understand what they're saying then don't put it in the article, and if you do understand then put in a sentence explaining what they're saying.
Everywhere I've been, the owner of the car gets the ticket, and it's up to them to figure out if they were driving, or if not them, collect from whomever they loaned the car to.
No camera I've ever seen tries to figure out who the driver is.
The logic is, it's your car, you're responsible for loaning it/owning it, so you get the fine. Don't like that? Don't loan your car out.
The trade off is no points are deducted from a driver's license. It's a pure fine, because they can't prove you were driving.
So the person just seems to be speaking gibberish to me.
edit:
More context...
The same logic applies for parking tickets. No one cares who parked the car, the car's owner gets the ticket... not the person who parked it. While I dislike red light cameras, the logic holds.
That somebody got nailed twice suggests to me that they are at least making borderline yellow-light decisions, if not running the red outright. I doubt they actually know anything about how tickets are handed out, claiming it's just some guy handing them out at random is flagrant cope.
One thing that seems reasonable is to have car points and driver points. In the event of violations, both the vehicle and the driver are assigned points depending on detection. Then after a certain number of points, the vehicle is impounded with the owner able to have it stored at an appropriately licensed facility of their choice that ensures that the vehicle cannot be driven on public roads.
Reporting vehicle theft etc. can provide immunity from points on the car.
That seems extremely unreasonable, cops can prove who was driving at the time of the violation or they can not bring a case. If I lend my car to someone and they break the law, it’s not the car’s fault.
I’m glad my state found these unconstitutional as well.
Well, objects used in the commission of a crime are frequently confiscated. That's not outrageous. If I lend someone my gun and they rob a bank, I will likely not get my gun back though "it's not the gun's fault". Automated machinery has the advantage that it is impartial and effective, and given that law enforcement costs a lot in these circumstances, and that chasing cars for small enforcement violations creates worse outcomes, it seems thoroughly reasonable to apply the crime to the detectable object.
I was pulled over for having a non-obstructive frame on my license plate. The officer said they interfere with the red light cameras. He then presented me with a screwdriver and gave me the option of getting a ticket or taking it off. I took the screwdriver and he watched me take it off. I lost a freedom due to a shitty ml model.
Having driven in the UK and coming back to the US I miss all of the roundabouts. Any reason (aside from contractor profits) towns use 4-way traffic light systems vs a roundabout and some yield signs?
A perpendicular intersection uses way less area than a roundabout. That's the basic reason.
Roundabouts have better throughput than a busy 4-way stop, but less throughput than a signaled intersection if the timing and sensing is reasonable (many signaled intersections don't have reasonable sensing). Roundabouts also have some pretty nasty worst case wait times; I'm really not looking forward to the state installing one near me on the approach to a car ferry; it won't be fun to wait for 200 cars to go by before you get a turn to go, and I expect long ferry lines to result in impatient people in the ferry line blocking the roundabout. Sometimes there's two hours between ferry loadings. Going to be some fun times.
Personally, I find it challenging to both look ahead to the right to confirm I have room to enter the roundabout, look to the left to confirm there is no traffic that I need to wait for, as well as looking far left and right to ensure there are no pedestrians crossing soon. Signaled 4-way perpendicular intersections have worse outcomes when a participant doesn't follow the signalling, but indication of right of way makes it easier to confirm at a glance if it's safe to proceed.
Traffic lights can be tuned to create "green waves" that allows for efficient flow of traffic along arteries through a city. You can adjust the timing throughout the day to help alleviate congestion. In rural areas, heavy machinery/commercial vehicles may need to make a very wide turn through the intersection. Traffic circles are fine for a lot of applications but they aren't strictly better than lights in all circumstances.
I don't see how that could possibly be true. The same flow has to be achieved either way, and lights will always have some margin of inefficiency in switching. Seems lights will always be strictly worse than roundabouts in this sense.
There are also solutions for large vehicles where the center is raised but not impassible.
As with most things, it’s just history. Roundabouts were invented here in the US, but the inventor made a tiny but critical mistake. Originally drivers inside the roundabout had to yield to drivers entering it. Obviously we know now that this leads inevitably to gridlock during heavy traffic, but back then it wasn’t so obvious. The result is that roundabouts were written off as a bad idea, and signalized intersections (also invented around the same time) took off instead.
Having driven in both, Americans don't take naturally to roundabouts and it would be difficult to teach all the existing drivers about them. Same in the UK when they add new rules: most drivers remain completely unaware of them.
The only difference is Americans aren't yet used to them because they're uncommon. You fix that by making them common. It's not like there's a genetic difference in Europe that makes them capable of roundabouts and Americans not.
There’s nothing complicated about roundabouts: entering it is like joining the traffic from a parking lot/your own driveway, exiting it is like exiting a highway.
Its baffling to me how the US cannot handle their traffic laws.
How is there any doubt in running a red light? Why can they not let common sense handle it?
Just fine the car owner without question.
Car owners will think twice borrowing their cars.
Easy detection, less bureaucracy. And hopefully safer streets.
Read other comments. It is not so simple. Traffic lights often are configured wrongly, when yellow light is too short. So, violations are used to profit from cases when the driver could not have been stopped. In such system, it is better to be safe than sorry.
It seems like the law was poorly written. If it is civil, automated speeding tickets and red light tickets should be just added to the registration cost. If it is criminal, you definitely need to identify the person in order to prove they are guilty.
One side issues the judge brought up is that no points go on the driver's record with a red light camera offense. The entire point of the points system is to get bad drivers off the road. But people can have numerous red light infractions and still keep their license.
Meanwhile the solution to this problem in the UK is to reaffirm that you are in fact guilty by default unless by happenstance you are determined not to be by an unfairly chosen panel of blind and deaf mice.
It should be noted that red light cameras were NOT found unconstitutional as a thing, BUT Florida (and many other states) implementation of them was. And I think the judge used very good, solid reasoning.
I know this is not related to the legal merits of the case being discussed, but who runs a red light? In my experience, this is an infarction that occurs very infrequently. Speeding or illegal parking happen all the time, but running a red light? Most people are not suicidal.
Edit: Nevermind, I think crossing on yellow and catching a tenth of a second of red counts as running a red light. If it does, it’s something I did myself a few times (of course, all in the distant past, the statute of limitations has pased now …)
Where I live, it's common to see at least one person run a red at every major intersection and not just for left turns that couldn't be made due to cross-traffic. Quite often these drivers have expired temp tags which means they don't have insurance because you have to show you registered your vehicle to get insurance. Enforcement is awful so people have been trained to realize there's virtually no consequences to their bad habits. And if they do cause an accident, well it's not like the police will show up in time to stop them from driving off.
In fact, it's so bad that parts of the metro are reinstating red light cameras this year despite having decommissioned them years ago for similar legal reasons as what Florida has run into.
Then the state needs to start doing immediate impoundment of these vehicles. Add on massive fines before release of the car for repeat offenders and you'll see this dry up pretty quick.
Fairly common for me to see my light turn green and 2-3 more cars continue turning left in front of me through a red light. And not just yellow-light clippers, but cars that would have fully entered the intersection under a red light.
I'm actually all for impartial enforcement of traffic rules via camera systems, but there are problems that need to be solved.
- There need to be standards for evidence required to assign an infraction to a driver.
- There need to be standards for setting yellow light durations to avoid municipalities reducing them to increase revenue
- There needs to be protection against municipalities outsourcing the whole project to a private entity where there is a combined financial incentive from the private entity and the municipality to issue more tickets without adequate oversight.
My town implemented red light cameras around 15 years ago and then took them back out. Locals noticed shortened yellow lights, and there were multiple issues found with how the private operator issued the tickets and with their contract with the municipality.
I live in Baltimore and straight-up running of reds is pretty common here.
You can often do it pretty safely - stopped at a light with good visibility to see that there is no cross traffic. But also some people are just insane and blast through lights at 45 without stopping.
Cops haven't cared to enforce it for going on a decade.
Running reds is a favorite pastime of Boston area drivers. Enter just after the yellow and buzz the pedestrians waiting, lurk in the middle of the road and make a left turn once oncoming traffic is stopped for the red, or just blow it for the hell of it.
> lurk in the middle of the road and make a left turn once oncoming traffic is stopped for the red
In the jurisdictions I'm familiar with, this is the proper way to make a left-hand turn. Many intersections are designed such that this is the only realistic way to ever turn left (high traffic, no left arrow).
Most red light rules are written against entering the intersection on red. If you're already in the intersection, you're allowed to safely proceed through and out of the intersection on red. That can be challenging, of course, if oncoming traffic is running the red light.
Where I live people run them routinely to make left turns. The light timing and spacing are bad, so at some intersections people will keep turning left long past the turn red. There are also several intersections where people cross but get stuck in the middle because another light has to change for traffic to move.
This is a silly example but in Los Angeles, there are hardly any protected left hand turns so the standard behavior is to wait for the light to turn red and two cars proceed before the next traffic group continues. Police even do this.
I mean I’ve run red lights but only because I live in a city and there are times where it would be impossible to turn left due to oncoming traffic. So you poke your nose out a bit so the other directions see you and turn when incoming stops but before new directions start.
Depending on where you live it is very common. In chicago when they installed the cameras they lowered the yellow duration to like half a second so people were constantly running them for a while. Then running yellows became normalized, and just ignoring lights from bikers which drivers noticed, and now when traffic is low its not uncommon to see people just treat lights as stop signs if they think no one is coming.
Lmao why. Stop driving through red light, stop speeding. Ya fuckers.
In the UK it's ridiculous, barely any speed cameras and those that are there are clearly marked (legally have to be). Everyone just slows down for the speed cameras and then start speeding again after.
I've actually heard people say that the above is effective because it makes people slow down where it's important. Or, you know how about people just don't fucken speed in general?
If it were up to me they'd be everywhere, totally unmarked and all revenue from fines would go to charitable causes to rule out the "but they just do it for da money!11" bs - no, they're doing it to stop people speeding and killing someone for fuck's sake.
Except cameras don't increase safety. You say it yourself that everyone just speeds up after the camera.
Getting a ticket also does nothing to prevent you from speeding in the first place (the ticket does not arrive to you instantly, you're still speeding on the road).
Road safety is an infrastructure problem, but it is always easier and cheaper to just put a camera and collect money. While designing roads that you cannot go too fast, and actually building them cost money.
They just want the cheapest option to say "we did something". Not the safest.
One time when I was living in Shanghai, I accidentally took the train to the wrong airport and had to take a cab to the other one. The cabbie was driving on the highway right at the speed limit, and I was worried I wouldn’t make my flight. I asked him if he could rush a bit, but he replied that he would not speed because 100% he would get a ticket.
It only doesn’t work if the system is half assed. But I agree that in low speed pedestrian areas, the built form is a better solution, but knowing you will get caught is also effective (if you accept the privacy tradeoffs).
Minnesota is in a strange place where they were ruled unconstitutional, and they disappeared for many years. Now they are back, and to get around that they are not a misdemeanor, aren't a ding against your license or insurance, and you're under no obligation to pay them.
I suspect the result would be dependant on the specifics. How much is the fine, and how much of a delay after the red triggers a ticket. Sounds like they are set at $158?
I only mean that all revenues collected from the fines must be distributed to the public at large. They must never be treated as a revenue source for the government.
Sin taxes are meant to reduce bad behavior - or incentivize good behavior. Ideally you'd collect $0 in red-light fines because everyone's following the law. If some politician's budget or private company's revenue stream depends on traffic fines they have adverse incentives. I don't want my city council member voting against traffic safety initiatives because it makes people better drivers and that means less money for some other city program.
Back to taxpayers. Subtract only the cost of installing and maintaining the cameras and aggressively audit that annually. Cut everyone a check at the end of the year. Buy each household a pony. Have a really good 4th of July fireworks display. It doesn't matter, as long as the government can't spend it for any government program. (And actually the pony and fireworks programs might be susceptible to corruption - just send a check)
Or in the case of a private company contracted to run the cameras, don't give a private company a contract to run the cameras. At least not a contract where they get paid in proportion to the fines collected.
No one should profit off bad behavior. No government program's funding should have to depend on people driving badly.
In the UK this is simple. If you want to operate a motorvehicle on the public highway you need to register it. Part of this is that the vehicle will have a registered keeper: the person responsible for knowing who is driving the vehicle and when. If you want to operate a vehicle on the road, you must accept the responsibility that comes with being a registered keeper.
More and more I'm seeing people taking privileges wherever they can but completely shirking responsibility. There is a name for a person who pushes the boundaries but takes no responsibility: a child. How do we get people to understand that someone needs to take responsibility in this world? If it's not the adults then who will?
> "I've been ticketed here twice, and it's ridiculous because they it's just not fair," one driver said who didn't want to be identified.
Of course they don't want to be identified after blankly admitting they were ticketed; i.e. they were the one driving, in fact.
Entitled prick: running red lights, and crying "unfair".
> The person that does the determination when you ran the light, it's just a random. Whoever they want to pick, pick you to say, okay, you're gonna pay the ticket."
Complete nonsense; why is the article even quoting this mouth breather?
These cameras work in terms of determining that the given vehicle was involved in the alleged violation. There is nothing random about it. It's not randomly pinning a drummed up allegation on vehicles not involved in a violation. The choice of pinning the ticket on the registered owner is also not random.
Typically these systems take at least two shots, moments apart, one showing the vehicle not yet in the intersection (whose traffic light is clearly red) and then the same vehicle in the intersection a split second later, providing evidence that the vehicle entered the intersection on a red.
The problem with red-light cameras is that enforcement becomes robotic. Robots are perfect—they don’t make mistakes (at least in theory), and they don’t show leniency. If policing is done by robots, then humans are expected to be infallible.
This is a complete non-issue. It's a traffic light, you are supposed to stop when it turns yellow! The yellow is the leniency. If you can't manage to stop before it turns red, you are either: 1) speeding, 2) driving a vehicle with defective brakes, or 3) mentally impaired. In all three cases you are a danger to fellow road users.
Besides, it's not a "the machine says so and not even the Supreme Court can overturn it" scenario. If there's genuinely a reason to cross into the intersection while the lights are red (such as there having been an accident, and a cop is temporarily managing traffic) the ticket will be waived. Heck, there will probably even be photographic evidence of it!
Most countries even have cops judge the tickets, just to already filter out those weird cases. The registration is done by a robot, but the policing is still done by a human.
Or you have a heavy, inbalanced object in your car you don't want sliding, something fragile in tow you don't want to have fast decelaration, or just don't have super-human reaction time since some light have extremely fast yellows.
Or, a deer jumped out on the side and you briefly looked away at it.
Or you could tell the driver behind you wasn't slowing down, so the safer option is to go.
Or. Or. Or. Real life is messy, and there's a million reasons to go though a yellow instead of slowing down.
> Most countries even have cops judge the tickets, just to already filter out those weird cases. The registration is done by a robot, but the policing is still done by a human.
This is common in the US as well. The machine takes the picture, filters out the illegible ones, and sends the rest to an actual officer who will issue the ticket.
> and they don’t show leniency. If policing is done by robots, then humans are expected to be infallible.
This is bad when applied to laws that were written with an exception of leniency and selectivity in enforcement, which is quite a lot of them. For running red lights though? I don't mind if the robots take you off the road automatically.
Running red lights? That's not all the cameras are used for. If are making a right turn on red and didn't come to a complete stop first you can get a ticket.
Subjectivity in applying the law is a huge problem, especially given how corrupt and violent police are. Red light cameras remove police from the equation for that infraction and apply the law evenly. They also scale in a way that police just can't, and that's extremely important for safety.
I live in a city where red light running is an epidemic. Drivers flagrantly just don't stop, and it kills people all the time. Red light cameras - plus actually revoking drivers licenses, and then actually throwing people in jail for driving on suspended licenses - are the only way to fix this.
It's far past time that drivers are no longer immune to consequences for violent, sociopathic behavior.
> If policing is done by robots, then humans are expected to be infallible
The reality is that the people doing the policing are counting on humans not being infallible
Fines have become an important revenue stream, that's why they are being automated.
Now that this is becoming more widespread, there's a perverse incentive for governments to maximize the difficulty in avoiding fines. Lower the speed limit on roads designed for higher speeds for "safety", etc
There are many citizens, like me, begging for red light cameras so something can be done about the rash of crashes and killings from willfully reckless drivers.
> Fines have become an important revenue stream, that's why they are being automated
Maybe we should legislate traffic fines out of existence, and just use points. Or at the very least the fines should never go back in any recognizable way to the budget of the police doing the enforcement.
The HN title is factually incorrect. As the article's title and text state, it was Florida's specific law that was declared unconstitutional, and not because of red light cameras.
I think every jurisdiction who has ever deployed these has come to the same conclusion. I remember paying $500 for a red light ticket in Glendale CA in around 2012 and a year or two later they were outlawed.
The ripple effects for automotive liability will be interesting to watch here. For a long time, insurance companies have viewed these citations as an easy signal for high-risk behavior. If that signal is now legally 'poisoned fruit' in Florida, it likely makes the move toward private telematics tracking your actual braking and speed via apps even more inevitable for the carriers. They are going to want that risk data one way or another, and private tracking bypasses the due process issues of municipal cameras.
Great. Ban speed cameras next. They’re just performative safetyism used as revenue sources or by activists on an anti car quest. But I actually suspect all of this will somehow be twisted into something neither side expects, which is mass surveillance and tech grift.
They’re only proven to unnecessarily slow the flow of traffic and create inconvenience for the majority of people, and revenue for mismanaged local governments. That’s not a right wing thing, it’s just reality. Not to mention I’m not sure how you’re drawing this weird political association here in the first place.
We have red light cameras here in Tampa. I don't know all the details of what it takes to make a right on red and not get a ticket, so I do exaggerated stops to be sure. I know what the law claims but that doesn't matter. The real law is the actual (proprietary) code rumning in the machine. Not what the law says. Not what the contract says. Not what the requirements say. Not what the programmer thinks the code does.
No, the real law is what's written by the Tampa/Florida legislature (or I guess you could say the "real real" law is judges' interpretations of what is written). While it may be inconvenient, if you are falsely issued a ticket while following the real law you can have the ticket thrown out.
This is the correct take. And it's frustrating! To fix the problem an individual has to fight a huge, multi-party system (law, jurisdiction, police, tech-provider) - it's a (near) impossible feat for a person.
In some parts of the U.S.A. it's legal to turn right through a red light. GP was wondering if the software can tell that the driver was making a legal right turn through the red instead of doing the thing that's obviously illegal everywhere because it's just a matter of time until you kill someone.
This is a great argument for fines indexed to the price of the car, and non-linearly with speed and value and repeated occurrences.
Fine = 2 ^v^2 ^n^2 ^p^2
Where v is velocity % higher than the speed limit, n is the number of speeding occurrences in the past 12 months, p is the normalised price of the vehicle. Obviously these parameters could be tweaked.
The result should be that frequent violations cost much more, cost is proportional to the increased danger, and rich people feel the cost of violations.
Or they can just hire more police and deter crime with actual hard work instead of building a nanny state running social experiments based on how nice your car appears.
I can see that you have sand in your underpants about getting infringements for breaking the law. It is obviously uneconomic to have very expensive police officers enforce traffic crime when automated cameras are so effective. What you are really arguing for is individual exceptionalism for rich people to violate speed limits.
It isn't a "social experiment" to deter crime, and calibrating punishment to have an actual deterrent effect has a long precedent. If it is "nanny state" policy to set speed limits that penalise repeat offenders and hoons in high powered cars, you will find it has broad community support.
Red light running is bad...but I think the solution to this problem at this point is just "self driving cars". With some exceptions, I would just focus all jurisdictions on this future and avoid policy inline with a world full of self driving cars. Currently in the US, most places feel like you need a car, and many US laws are designed with this in mind. In 5 years, this will no longer be true, so laws should reflect:
1. No parking minimums
2. Less free parking (e.g. street parking)
3. Policy supportive of self driving cars
4. More aggressive removal of driver licenses for human drivers with repeat violations
5. More aggressive penalties for driving without a license.
The average cost of car ownership is $0.69 per mile without insurance, $0.25 per mile to store it, and $0.49 per mile in societal costs (death, injuries, delays due to accidents). So about $1.43 per mile. I do not enjoy driving, so would add more cost per mile, maybe some would want to pay more but I do t see that much joyriding outside of teenagers and classic car enthusiasts, so I don’t think those that do it for pleasure is a large population.
Tesla cybercab is targeting $0.20 per mile. Waymo projections are $0.40 per mile by 2030. Assuming both hit $0.50 and are twice as safe, this is basically $0.75 per mile.
I don’t see may paying more to drive themselves. And I think as society there will be non economic reasons human driven cars get banned. Like MADD but for human cars.
So I expect 5 years and human cars will not make sense in many cases, 10 years new human car sales to be <50% current levels, 15 years you start seeing bans. 20 years bans common.
fusslo – yesterday
The judge frames the red light camera scheme as a revenue generating scheme, not a public safety measure.
Additionally, "A distinctive feature of the statutory scheme is its assignment of guilt to the registered owner rather than the driver of the vehicle". and "If there are multiple registered owners, the citation is issued to the 'first' registered 'owner'". and the person whom the citation was issued to must sign an affidavit that includes the name, address, dob, of the person who was actually driving. The judge says this "...abandon(s) centuries time honored protections of hearsay as substantive evidence.".
"It is a foundational rule of constitutional due process that the government must prove every fact necessary to constitute an offense beyond a reasonable doubt before a person may be adjudicated guilty of a crime".
"Although nominally civil, traffic infraction proceedings retain every substantive hallmark of criminal prosecution..." "under Feiock, such proceedings are sufficiently criminal in form and function to invoke the full protections of due process..." - that's probably the core of the reasoning here.
"Section 316.074(1) provides in relevant part that "The driver of any vehicle shall obey..."" - the driver, not the registered owner.
I highly recommend reading the order. It's easy to follow and aligns with my understanding of the law within the USA.
hamdingers – yesterday
Tickets issued by these cameras are civil penalties issued to the owner of the vehicle, like parking tickets, rather than a criminal moving violation. This means the tickets are just as constitutional as parking tickets. It also means penalties are limited to fines and can't impact your driving privilege or insurance.
Hopefully other states can follow this pattern. Consistent, low-impact enforcement is better at preventing unwanted behavior than the rare and severe but also capricious enforcement performed by human police.
sowbug – 23 hours ago
It can also give permission for unwanted behavior. Cf. the Haifa study, where the rate of late pickups increased when daycares added a fine. One explanation is the fine turned a complex moral obligation into an ordinary financial transaction.
jaredklewis – 23 hours ago
They fined parents (IIRC) ~$3 per late pickup. Rerun the study with a $300 fine and let’s see how it pans out. It’s an interesting finding, but that then people take it to mean that fines don’t work (no matter their size) is insane.
furyg3 – 9 hours ago
I then moved to Amsterdam and became the biggest fan of continuous, always-on ANPR speed cameras. On some freeways, your car is recorded at certain checkpoints and EVERYONE driving over the speed limit ALWAYS gets a fine.
Why? Because they are properly implemented (only high-risk areas), very well communicated (tons of signage), consistently applied (no crying your way out of a ticket, no racial profiling), purpose targeted (you get a speeding ticket, not a bunch of other fines at the whim of a cop), and correctly incentivized (ticket revenue does not immediately go to the local police or city).
hamdingers – 23 hours ago
Kind of like if enough parents paid the late pickup fee, eventually the daycare could afford a van for dropoffs.
gus_massa – 23 hours ago
> Raise the prices. Then raise the prices. Then when you're done with that, raise the prices.
Frieren – 9 hours ago
Income proportional fines solve the problem. The fine should be a deterrent, but not create crippling debt. That is impossible without taking into account the income of the infractor.
ExoticPearTree – 14 hours ago
You know what they say: a fine makes something legal for an amount of money.
And for daycares, I think a lot of parents saw it just like that: a cheap way to keep the kid away from them for longer.
deepsun – 23 hours ago
maest – 16 hours ago
This is very common outside of the US, btw.
seanmcdirmid – 18 hours ago
sejje – 22 hours ago
Trading a little liberty for a little safety and all that.
Larrikin – 22 hours ago
hamdingers – 22 hours ago
andrepd – 21 hours ago
There are real surveillance arrays, please worry about those instead.
XorNot – 22 hours ago
Is said in place of using actual arguments or evidence?
abcd_f – 9 hours ago
Unlike improper parking, running red lights should impact said privilege as potential consequences are way more serious.
throwaway2037 – 8 hours ago
quietbritishjim – 10 hours ago
That is a definite punishment for anyone that cares enough about driving that they were doing it in the first place, while also clearly not being revenue generating (in fact it prevents future fine revenue). I'm not sure that would wash in the car-centric States though (but it would make it an even juicier punishment). But since you don't get banned immediately, it's potentially low-impact on a per-ticket basis.
SturgeonsLaw – 9 hours ago
mixdup – 6 hours ago
valiant55 – 21 hours ago
I was going 5 over the reduced speed limit, in the slow lane with rush hour traffic. That thing must've issued thousands of tickets.
bobthepanda – 18 hours ago
sjtgraham – 17 hours ago
The structural problem is that revenue goes to program costs and traffic calming, not to anyone harmed by speeding, which makes the fines punitive in character under any substance-over-label analysis.
The lack of DMV points and criminal record weakens the argument somewhat, but under California's substance-over-label approach those omissions aren't dispositive. They merely show the legislature knew how to stay on the civil side of the line, not necessarily that it succeeded.
If a court finds the penalties punitive in character, the owner-liability structure becomes a compounding problem: California's state due process protections are arguably more robust than federal, and imposing a punitive fine on a registered owner without proof they were driving, while burden-shifting exculpation to them looks increasingly difficult to sustain.
joshuamorton – 17 hours ago
Tha owner is ultimately civily liable if the vehicle is parked in a way that it shouldn't be. Extending that same civil liability to the active operation, as opposed to only the consequences of active operation, seems perfectly reasonable.
YokoZar – 22 hours ago
Given that they insure cars more than drivers, it seems kinda reasonable that they be allowed to look at tickets for cars.
tschwimmer – 21 hours ago
If this is the case, what are the consequences of not paying the fine? I interpret your statement to mean that they can't prevent registration of your car. Can they tow you in SF for unpaid fines?
bombcar – 21 hours ago
ggiigg – 23 hours ago
It just turns speeding into something you can buy.
aziaziazi – 23 hours ago
Sadly money and power buying freedom of law isn’t restricted to road rules.
sejje – 23 hours ago
whycome – 20 hours ago
owlstuffing – 7 hours ago
That makes the Florida judge's framing of red light cameras as a revenue generating scheme even more applicable. More than that, it ambiguates the crime.
lokar – 21 hours ago
class3shock – 17 hours ago
Even forgetting that, all this means is people that don't care about getting a ticket, either because they won't pay or it's a such a small amount to them that they don't care. just do what they want. Nothing is being "enforced", just taxed.
ihavekids – 17 hours ago
dotancohen – 17 hours ago
Xelbair – 8 hours ago
hinkley – 23 hours ago
So when you start worrying about it as a cost center, then there is a perverse incentive to do things like shorten yellow lights. Short yellows have been proven to create more vehicular fatalities than people running red lights intentionally. And so the person who makes that decision to shorten yellows to boost tickets is effectively committing murder to keep the system “working”. Which is disgusting. Ghoulish, even.
It is literally better in such situations to simply dismantle the system than keep it running.
hamdingers – 23 hours ago
That said, the bill addresses this category of abuse directly: if a speed camera fails to reduce 85th percentile speeds or violation volumes within 18 months it must be removed.
There are also substantial limits on how the revenues can be spent. If you are interested in this topic it's worth a read: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...
LorenPechtel – 21 hours ago
As you say, it encourages short yellows. I am aware of having "run" one red light in my life--got ticketed for it. The yellow timing was set as short as legally permitted--a driver had a narrow window to decide go or stop. Unfortunately, what happens when neither is an option? I was in the left turn lane and past the decision point. I was already slowing when the light went yellow, I saw it and knew there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
There's also the problem that a huge number of red light tickets are issued to people who "run" red lights in a completely normal and safe manner: making a right turn on red. Car #1 stands as far forward as they can without being in the cross traffic path, the other cars line up behind. First car goes, the rest move forward. Nobody pays attention to the stop line--but the camera does.
In the real world, neither speed nor red light cameras pay for themselves except when something about the situation causes a problem--and it would be better addressed by fixing the true problem. Likewise, I have never seen a cop watching a situation for offenders unless there was something out of sync between the law and the road. Half of the traps I've seen over the years have disappeared when the root cause was fixed.
_heimdall – 18 hours ago
estearum – 17 hours ago
> the courts solved this by deeming at least certain uses of red light cameras illegal.
This is incorrect. The court in Florida said certain arrangement of the statutory basis (a different one than in CA) for red light cameras is illegal.
ak217 – 17 hours ago
danesparza – yesterday
Wow! So if you have enough money, it's cool to run as many red lights as you want?
hamdingers – 23 hours ago
They're speed cameras, not red light cameras, and the revenues go towards street improvements to reduce speeding. So you could speed as much as you can afford, but eventually you'll have bought enough traffic calming infrastructure it'll be prohibitively difficult to keep getting tickets.
pfdietz – 23 hours ago
vkou – 23 hours ago
exabrial – 20 hours ago
cucumber3732842 – 22 hours ago
So what does this say about the legitimacy of having those fines affect your license and insurance when issues by a real flesh and blood cop?
Sounds to me like that by default they shouldn't be affecting squat because there's an implicit "the cops will mostly only pull people over if it's unconscionably bad" filter going on.
_blk – 16 hours ago
bikesharing – 16 hours ago
observationist – 22 hours ago
The idea that AI enforcement won't be just as corrupt and capricious as any other form of government run extortion is bonkers. You're talking systems with less oversight than openclaw being run by people whose entire goal is to make as much money as possible, no matter the source. Private, unaccountable companies with effectively no oversight with the legal right to send you invoices for things you might or might not have done, and the cost for disputing it might well exceed the cost of just paying it and getting it over with.
Why are Californians so hellbent on giving their money to the government, given the absolute shitshow that is their budget and track record? The only good things that have happened in California for decades comes out of private enterprise, but all the crazy nonsense is fostered and maintained, apparently quite vigorously, by elected governments.
I'm furious that 10% of my federal income taxes end up going to California's bullshit, I can't imagine what it would be like having to live there.
Seriously, it's bordering on levels of insanity right up there with thinking that Jefferey Epstein would make a great babysitter. Do people just not pay attention? Does the weather just make everyone complacent and docile?
Speed cams and automated gotchas allowing the government to raid your pocketbook are a bad thing. There's no framing or circumstances where that's good.
michaelt – 22 hours ago
In the specific case this thread is about - that of red light cameras - presumably the camera produces a photograph showing a red light, a vehicle going through it, and the vehicle's license plate. Plus a video, showing the light was orange for the legally required amount of time, and showing the absence of any exceptional circumstances (e.g. ambulances).
As law enforcement goes, that really seems like the least capricious, highest oversight law enforcement I can imagine.
maxerickson – 22 hours ago
Your taxes getting evenly distributed is one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is that removing California from the US would either increase your taxes or require reductions in federal spending.
exabrial – 18 hours ago
htx80nerd – 23 hours ago
In my own experience, when they took down the red light cameras in my area now people are not afraid to run red lights ~2 to ~3 seconds after it's red. See this kind of thing on a regular basis. Every now and then there's a serious accident.
giantg2 – 23 hours ago
hamdingers – 23 hours ago
Council et al., 2005 -- https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/05048/...
digitalPhonix – 21 hours ago
I'm skeptical of this claim because the red light camera operators are usually contracted by municipalities. They don't have any direct control over the light cycles.
(Yes, obviously they can be in cahoots with the municipality, but I would be surprised if that was common and not the exception)
Do you have any evidence of this?
advisedwang – 23 hours ago
kshacker – 23 hours ago
themafia – 15 hours ago
Why are we discussing cameras?
croes – 21 hours ago
AdamN – 10 hours ago
Fines (and points) are better of course.
SunshineTheCat – yesterday
The question in those cases came down to if the operators of the cam can be considered "accusers."
They widely considered that of course the cam itself didn't count as an accuser, but the question was how "automated" the system was. If there was a human who flagged it, the system was fine, if it was fully automated, they were unconstitutional.
Many states don't share this opinion, but an interesting argument nonetheless.
qingcharles – 22 hours ago
[0] Unless the defendant waives that right and stipulates to the prosecutor's statement about the machine.
bombcar – 21 hours ago
burningChrome – yesterday
So in essence, if you know this is what they're doing, you're good. But they're not telling people so the money grift continues unabated and in place.
giantg2 – 23 hours ago
filoleg – 22 hours ago
IIRC there was a point in time roughly around ~2017 when it happened in Redmond WA (i.e., in the town that the Microsoft HQ is in). I might be off by a year or two, but it doesn't really change the overall point.
TLDR: in under 2 years, that whole red light cam initiative got canceled and reverted, because the local stats showed that it just made things more dangerous on the roads (by significantly increasing the rate of rear-ending accidents at traffic lights).
sidewndr46 – 8 hours ago
It states "while these offense are labelled civil they remain fundamentally quasi-criminal in nature: punitive, adjudicative". Later it states "the State may not employ presumptions or burden-shifting devices that relieve it of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt"
The judge stops just an inch short of saying "this is a kangaroo court where guilt is stated rather than proven"
moduspol – yesterday
horsawlarway – yesterday
> Although nominally civil, traffic infraction proceedings retain every substantive hallmark of criminal prosecution...
Is going to matter here. A moving violation (ex: red light) is quite different from a non-moving violation (ex: parking) in how they're handled, and often how they're classified.
Ex - my in state, a moving violation is a criminal misdemeanor, while a non-moving violation is entirely civil.
devman0 – yesterday
bdangubic – 23 hours ago
JumpCrisscross – yesterday
otterley – 22 hours ago
wifipunk – yesterday
Tactical45 – yesterday
atomicUpdate – yesterday
causal – yesterday
causal – 5 hours ago
lnenad – 11 hours ago
moduspol – yesterday
hxorr – yesterday
spunker540 – yesterday
jojobas – 15 hours ago
vkou – 23 hours ago
If they used the car with your permission, you should either be responsible for what they do with it, or be able to point to the person who was using it.
maest – 16 hours ago
fyredge – 11 hours ago
Higher quality cameras equipped with facial recognition connected to a database to issue a ticket to the correct person (driver), or
Hire more traffic officers to sit at traffic intersections to catch red light offenders, which will scale in cost by the size of the city, so
Pick your poison
mr_mitm – 11 hours ago
So yeah, in some cases you might get out of it by feigning ignorance, but it seems to be a sensible compromise between facial recognition and giving up.
giantg2 – 22 hours ago
This makes me question many existing civil things. Obviously child support, as in the case law. But also, things like red flag laws. It seems like any civil law that would apply criminal-type contemt penalties is unconstitutional.
nashashmi – 9 hours ago
advisedwang – 23 hours ago
The court says that criminal rules should apply because points are at stake, while civil penalties are usually restricted to fines, but I don't buy that argument. We have plenty of non-money civil remedies. Code enforcement departments can require changes to property. Family courts can make all kinds of requirements. It's not outside of constitutional bounds for a traffic rule to result in forfeiting a license without criminal proceedings.
cucumber3732842 – 21 hours ago
All of which are an affront to people's rights.
The fact that we use a "special word" (civil) for the category of laws where we won't throw you straight in prison if you don't comply, we'll add the extra step of waiting for noncompliance and then charging someone with contempt doesn't fundamentally alter the relationship between the enforcers and the people, so why should the people have to put up with their rights being ignored in those cases?
TulliusCicero – 15 hours ago
Rights are not unlimited.
You don't have some inherent human right to ignore building codes, or to retain full custody of your child in the event of a divorce.
throwawayffffas – 11 hours ago
joshuamorton – 4 hours ago
fusslo – 2 hours ago
tootie – yesterday
toast0 – 23 hours ago
tootie – 23 hours ago
rootusrootus – yesterday
tsimionescu – 23 hours ago
kakacik – 12 hours ago
Where I live, there is one nasty radar placed so that people have to break rather hard, when leaving town as in few meters before end sign, on a steeply downhill slope, when there is just straight empty road ahead. Those who don't know get flashed frequently. There is no pedestrian crossing, no buildings, just empty fields. Locals complained and municipality said - sorry, we know, but its generating too much revenue and municipality needs that cash and became dependent on that. Basically FU. I know about few others in either Switzerland or France which have very nasty locations, in order to trap as many as possible, in places with 0 actual risk to anybody.
They also love putting temporary radars in some train underpasses which also go steeply down, so its trivial go few kms over the limit if you don't constantly brake and ie actually watch traffic around. Since they are well hidden and people see them at last moment and slam brakes hard, it properly increases risks of accidents, especially with mixture of cyclists or scooters/motorbikes. But that doesn't seem the priority anymore.
I am not saying they don't make sense in some places especially around pedestrian crossings, but its trivial to get 'addicted' to steady cash flow and then friction to change situation is maximal. Thats the point where it stops its primary purpose and becomes self-serving bureaucracy self-feeding loop.
embedding-shape – yesterday
> The defendant argued the statute unconstitutionally requires the registered owner to prove they were not driving — instead of requiring the government to prove who was behind the wheel.
Bit like having to prove you weren't the one breaking in, rather than the police having to prove you were guilty.
In light of this, seems like a no-brainer no one could disagree with.
cromka – yesterday
> In light of this, seems like a no-brainer no one could disagree with.
If someone shoots a person with your gun, you gonna say it wasn't you and expect them not to question any you further? Not very no-brainer, is it?
This is how it works in Poland and, I assume, most/all of EU and the rest of the world.
archontes – yesterday
It is enough to say absolutely nothing, and request the government to prove its case.
If someone shot a person with my gun, I would invoke the fifth amendment, and ask the government to prove who did it beyond a reasonable doubt.
limagnolia – yesterday
(EDIT: I should note that you also have a right to remain silent when questioned by the police- and since they won't know who to charge, there will likely not be a court case to call you to testify at)
SoftTalker – yesterday
You're not going to roll on whoever really did it (assuming you know), and trust your fate to a jury understanding presumption of innocence, and being convinced of "reasonable" doubt, without you saying a word in your own defense? Most people would not unless they had an iron-clad alibi, but if they did, they wouldn't be getting charged in the first place.
KingMachiavelli – yesterday
crote – yesterday
Sounds nice on paper, but unless you have an absolutely airtight alibi that's a great way to end up in jail. Oh, you were alone at home all night? Well, your neighbor is pretty sure they heard you come home unusually late, and a witness saw someone who kinda-sorta looked like you run away from the crime site, and the victim was sorta-kinda involved in your social circles, and there's video of victim bumping into you a few weeks ago in a bar and you reacting in what could be interpreted as an aggressive way - and it is your gun...
Or you could tell them who you loaned the gun to. Your choice.
tsimionescu – 23 hours ago
Now, per the judge's ruling in this case, red light tickets are actually quasi-criminal, not purely civil, so the standards of criminal law might need to be applied.
singleshot_ – yesterday
Is it appropriate to compare murder and running a red light given what you know about the civil implications of 5A?
joshuamorton – yesterday
Only in criminal contexts. In civil contexts your silence can absolutely be an adverse inference. Usually these red-light cameras are civil penalties, not criminal (fines with no points). The judge here seems to be saying that these are "quasi-criminal" because, uhh, I guess there are penalties.
elteto – yesterday
It's basically "innocent until proven guilty". Red light cameras turn that assumption around since if your car gets ticketed it is assumed you are "guilty until proven innocent".
SoftTalker – yesterday
The judge in this case disagreed, because the red light infraction was not a simple civil fine but quasi-criminal, e.g. points on drivers license, possibly resulting in suspension, etc.
cromka – yesterday
As someone else said, this only works against self-incrimination? If you say it wasn't you then you need to testify or get prosecuted?
mothballed – yesterday
Most camera tickets are either civil moving, or civil non-moving. Civil moving are against a person and civil non-moving are against the vehicle. Neither of which case does 5th amendment protect you from incriminating yourself, and neither of which does it require prove beyond a reasonable doubt.
ssl-3 – yesterday
The US is a very big place. And in this place, we have fifty (!) different states. That's fifty different sets of rules relating to owning and driving cars -- nearly twice as many as the EU has member nations.
A Florida judge might decide that red light camera tickets are unconstitutional, while an Arizona judge might decide that they're completely OK. These two very different rulings can co-exist, without conflict, potentially forever.
Each state doing their own thing independently of the others is just how we roll here.
A sane and rational person might reasonably conclude that this situation is literally insane -- and they may be right! -- but it is this way anyway.
(And it is this way by design.)
sejje – 22 hours ago
I don't believe the founders intended as much federal oversight as we currently have. It was supposed to be self-governing states with a few exceptions. So much of the constitution is to limit the feds.
db48x – yesterday
brigade – yesterday
AyyEye – 8 hours ago
This is... Absolutely not true.
I had some family friends and their two (adult) sons come in (from Poland!) and loaned them my car for a week while they were driving around the states. They were all licensed and it could have been any one of them driving at any given point.
I've even been on road trips in my own car where figuring out the question "we got a ticket from nowhere, montana. Who was driving when we went through there?" Would be met with "that was over a month ago, I don't even know where that is much less who was driving then."
My husband and I and our kid take each other's cars for various reasons and trying to figure out who was driving on any given hour of the day over a month later when the ticket arrives in the mail would be an impossible task.
JasonADrury – 13 hours ago
This is an absurd assumption. I own many cars. Often, I'll borrow a car to a friend, I'm generally totally OK if they borrow it to other people. I don't care, and should not have to care, who those people are.
Also, for what it's worth, the government has no idea who owns any of my cars. EU registration certificates are typically not proof of ownership (are they in any EU country? I suspect quite possibly not). At best a government might be able to figure out the registered keeper of my vehicle, but they're not going to know anything about who drives the car.
>If someone shoots a person with your gun, you gonna say it wasn't you and expect them not to question any you further? Not very no-brainer, is it?
If I say "it wasn't me" and refuse to answer further questions, I would expect them to stop asking me pretty quickly. Being excessively bothersome about asking further questions would be a clear violation of the ECHR.
eweise – yesterday
daveoc64 – yesterday
e.g. checking your calendar/diary, looking through receipts or bank statements to work out where you likely were.
There's also a requirement that a request for information is sent within 14 days for minor incidents like speeding or red light violations, so it's not like you have to work out who was driving on a Tuesday morning three years ago.
crote – yesterday
There really is no difference between "who drove through a red light" and "who scratched the bumper while parking" here - how do you currently solve the latter one?
smsm42 – yesterday
Says who? If the car is mine, I am free to do with it whatever I like (of course, excepting criminal acts). I do not owe anybody an account of what I - or the care - did at any particular moment. If the car was used in the commission of a crime, it's up to the prosecution to prove I had something to do with it. If they think I know who did it - prove it and prosecute me under the law. You can't just prosecute because you think I should know, that's not how proper law works - otherwise every cop in the country would be 100% sure who they caught is the criminal - because why not, if it's enough for conviction, why work harder!
> If someone shoots a person with your gun, you gonna say it wasn't you and expect them not to question any you further?
They can question all they like, but to secure a criminal conviction, they must prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that I was the person who did it. Otherwise you get no conviction. If they strongly suspect I did it, they would find a proof - but the fact that I owned a gun is not that proof (for one, guns can be easily stolen, and frequently are).
jan_g – yesterday
HarryHirsch – 21 hours ago
The arguing about having a constitutional right to drive bad boggles the mind, road deaths in the US are high, compared to civilized nations. Wikipedia states it's 14.2 deaths per 100000 inhbitants, that's between Sierra Leone (13.8) and Angola (15.0). For comparison, India has 12.6 traffic deaths per 100000 citizens and the worst country in Europe is Greece at 6.1.
The right metric is death per citizen, not per mile, because it's about the number of people who have lost a family member or friend.
When you get around exclusively on two wheels (motorcycle and bicycle) bad drivers are a direct safety threat. Even cagers ought to be careful about being permissive with red light running, side-on crashes are remarkably deadly for the one who got hit in the door because there is not much structural protection or space on the side of the vehicle.
electronsoup – yesterday
There is no such requirement.
tsimionescu – yesterday
Sure, but they have no right to issue you a ticket without proving you broke the law. Same as in the gun case: they have every right to question you, but they can't convict you for murder based solely on evidence that it was your gun that killed the victim.
otterley – 22 hours ago
protocolture – 15 hours ago
Lol your "Tool" analogy breaks down here.
Its not the responsibility of the defendant to prove their innocence, no matter how you want to twist it.
> expect them not to question any you further
Wow. No one expects you to not be questioned, but for questioning to take place before punishment because duh.
Build a case, test it. Not issue fines based on an assumption.
terminalshort – yesterday
asdff – 14 hours ago
defrost – 14 hours ago
some_random – yesterday
cromka – yesterday
openuntil3am – yesterday
circuit10 – yesterday
For speeding there's a website where you can view photos and a certificate showing the equipment was calibrated recently, and you can admit or nominate another driver (or you can do it via paper forms)
garaetjjte – yesterday
stronglikedan – yesterday
Why? IMHO, I shouldn't have to. It's the police's job to make sure they have the right person.
happosai – 16 hours ago
hypeatei – yesterday
That's not necessarily true. What if it's a shared car in your family and you weren't home to see who took it?
This comment is the tech equivalent to "falsehoods programmers believe about <thing>"... real life does not fit into such neat boxes.
izacus – yesterday
brewdad – yesterday
stefan_ – yesterday
But also traffic cameras here generally take frontal pictures, so typically the only way you can get away with claiming it wasn't you is if they are very lazy / not interested in investigating further.
Nursie – 15 hours ago
People's spouses and kids drive their cars. I've lent cars to friends before. Unless you've got some kind of log book, you might not know (or even remember) who was driving at any given moment or location.
> you need to plausibly explain why was someone operating your car while you were not aware of it.
This is the point of the judgement, under US law it seems that you don't need to plausibly explain anything, the authorities need to be able to show who was driving as the penalty is pseudo-criminal.
> I assume, most/all of EU and the rest of the world.
Under UK law which is much less definite about the state proving who was driving, one must make a good faith effort to identify the driver. But my Father got into a situation that took months to resolve when a speeding ticket arrived. The photograph of the driver didn't capture the head and was otherwise too blurry to identify from the body. It's a month after the fact on a road they both drive down frequently, and they only have one car. Was it him or his wife driving? Nobody knows.
The primary vehicle owner is not allowed to just assume responsibility for the ticket, because the liability for the offence is with the specific driver. Giving the wrong information is an offence itself, because people have tried those sorts of tricks to (for example) give penalty points to their spouse and avoid a ban.
So ... what do you do?
It's possible to take such cases to court in the UK and receive a not-guilty verdict if the vehicle owner can show a good faith effort has been made to identify the driver but there is no reasonable way of doing so.
carlosjobim – yesterday
Why? Americans liberated themselves from this kind of relationship with the government hundreds of years ago.
ratelimitsteve – yesterday
I don't have to prove who was driving. I don't have to prove I wasn't the one driving. The state has to prove that I was the one driving.
>If someone shoots a person with your gun, you gonna say it wasn't you and expect them not to question any you further?
I don't expect them not to question me further and that's not what this is about. This is about whether your car running a red light is proof, in and of itself absent any other facts, that you ran a red light in your car.
>This is how it works in Poland
This is not how it works in the US
>I assume, most/all of EU and the rest of the world.
You assume incorrectly
Vaslo – yesterday
crote – yesterday
brewdad – yesterday
bluefirebrand – yesterday
Running a red light is not remotely equivalent to shooting someone with a gun, get a grip
Rapzid – yesterday
Why shouldn't we?
cromka – yesterday
0x3f – yesterday
As usual, Europe doesn't care about internal consistency when it comes to rights. They just legislate (or rule) whatever 'works' for the current definition of 'works'.
> If someone shot a person with your gun, you gonna say it wasn't you and expect them not to question you further? Not very no-brainer, is it?
Nobody has said you can't be questioned.
cromka – yesterday
Sure. And you advocate that in exchange in US you get havoc on the roads because anyone can say "it wasn't me speeding 50 miles over the limit, bite me"? Is that the freedom you want?
litoE – yesterday
seemaze – yesterday
However, I agree with Florida on this; the onus should be not be on the accused to prove innocence after a citation is issued. Feels like a 'call us to unsubscribe' time-wasting dark pattern.
californical – yesterday
In the same way, if your car fails emissions tests, you can’t register it and it’s the responsibility of the owner to ensure that their car meets emissions standards.
freediddy – yesterday
true_religion – yesterday
joecool1029 – yesterday
Some other thoughts: An illegally parked car can be fined, impounded, booted. Car with outstanding parking tickets can also have all of the above. But typically the driver wouldn't see points or a moving violation for any of these offenses. For example: NYC you can get blocking the box tickets written by parking enforcement but they don't carry the weight of a moving violation like a police officer's ticket would. (and if you don't pay it, it's not the driving privilege that's suspended in the state, it's the car itself that would be targeted for booting/impounding, etc)
cucumber3732842 – yesterday
Yeah that's what they said when ICE was unilaterally kicking in doors.
The way I see it anything that would prompt the government to use violence upon you without you taking action to escalate deserves the same level of protection for the accused as a "real" criminal matter.
Yes I'm aware this includes just about everything beyond library late fines and would break the system at least for awhile. Worth it. The government shouldn't be able to assess the same penalties (fines) and threaten the same enforcement actions (forfeiture of property, arrest for nonpayment, etc, etc) as they do in criminal matters and side step people's rights simply because they say it's civil. The rights and procedural protections are what they are not to prevent the application of a label, but to prevent abuse at the hands of the government.
bluefirebrand – yesterday
Shift the problem onto individuals, make it a burden for the public. Typical HN attitude
smsm42 – yesterday
And yes, very likely some people would abuse it to get out of traffic tickets. I'd rather have that than constitutional due process protections eroded. We're not doing super-great on that anyway, we don't need to do worse, and if some scoundrel occasionally not paying traffic ticket is a price we have to pay to avoid that, I am fine with it.
LorenPechtel – 20 hours ago
Some examples that come to mind:
Look how the exception for searches at border crossings has expanded.
The use of actions against licenses for behavior that has nothing to do with the license.
The use of permits to get companies to do things only marginally related to the purpose of the permit.
The encouragement of universities to expel those accused of criminal acts--just because the punishment isn't jail should not mean the state can hand it off to a kangaroo court.
Pressuring financial companies to cut ties with disliked things. (For example, getting Steam to remove games with any whiff of incest. Either declare them illegal or don't take action against them!)
dolni – yesterday
spullara – yesterday
tacticalturtle – yesterday
> In the order, the court found that red-light camera cases, although labeled as civil infractions, function as “quasi-criminal” proceedings because they can result in monetary penalties, a formal finding of guilt, and consequences tied to a driver’s record.
Which seems to just relabel any fine from the government as a criminal matter?
IMO when you register the vehicle for the right to drive on public roads, you are entering into an agreement that you will be responsible for following the rules of the road, and for lending the car to people who also do so.
Similarly, if I register a firearm legally, and then lend it out to anyone who asks, regardless of whether they follow the law, I don’t think it would be crazy to hold me financially responsible if a shooting happens with my gun.
0x3f – yesterday
pixl97 – yesterday
States have had to write laws for this to be a criminal matter. Before then it was a civil matter, but it was individuals against individuals and not state against individuals.
>Which seems to just relabel any fine from the government as a criminal matter?
It wasn't exactly about the fine, but points on a license I believe.
jonahhorowitz – yesterday
[1]:https://caticketking.com/help-center/photo-red-light-help/ph...
ApolloFortyNine – yesterday
Probably a lot of other issues arise from that. If your car gets towed for being illegally parked, what if you just say you didn't park it there? Seems like a similar violation to a red light ticket.
dolphinscorpion – yesterday
mikkupikku – yesterday
Ekaros – yesterday
Still, seems to me that it is reasonable to prove who did such violation. Maybe photo could identify person. Or maybe other data could be requested like phone location data. Doesn't seem unreasonable or high hurdle. Probably not cost effective in every case.
SoftTalker – yesterday
dangood – yesterday
maratc – yesterday
"Preponderance of the Evidence" which is probably used for traffic cases means only "more likely than not" (or about 51% certainty).
socalgal2 – yesterday
For one, that was Florida. In California there's the "Permissive Use" rule which means you are at least partially responsible for who you lend your car to. If they get in an accident, you can be held partially liable.
There's also "Negligent Entrustment" if it can be proved you knowingly loaned your car or gun to someone intoxicated, unlicensed, etc...
Businesses are generally supposed to take responsibility for their employees. That might sound obvious if the business is FAANG but it's far less obvious to a single person coffee-shop or flower stand who hires their first employee who then spills hot coffee on a customer.
Parents are liable for their kids on many (most?) cases
I think another is where a someone goes to bar, drinks too much, the bartender gets charged.
Rather than just fight the cameras, what solution would you suggest? Just saying "more officer enforcement" doesn't seem valid as budgets are shrinking, applicants are shrinking, and people are dying from reckless drivers.
paulddraper – yesterday
Which is better than the HN title.
mvdtnz – yesterday
I disagree completely. This is how speed and red light cameras operate in my country. If you weren't the one driving, it's straight forward to show that. The other party can admit to the offence or you can present evidence including the camera itself. The burden is low. Camera infractions do not carry license demerit points because of this ongerent uncertainty.
What's the alternative? Use even more valuable police resources to issue these tickets? Or just not penalize dangerous infractions?
NetMageSCW – 22 hours ago
Perhaps needing to show these are dangerous infractions should come first?
pixl97 – yesterday
These US states considered them moving infractions with points. Now the state must adjust by removing points or doing its due diligence.
db48x – yesterday
One interesting point is that the Judge also spent some ink criticizing the law because paying the ticket removes the ticket from your driving record. This means that habitual bad drivers can get away with the same infractions over and over again as long as they pay the fines quickly. This bypasses the State’s points system that was designed to punish repeat offenders by taking away their license.
I wonder how other state’s red–light camera laws hold up? Do they have the same flaws or are they written better?
reactordev – yesterday
maest – yesterday
There is a driver in NYC who gets almost 300 speeding tickets per year. They've paid their fines, so they're allowed to keep driving. Apparently, since the fines come from speed camera, they can't revoke their license.
https://www.jalopnik.com/1836395/worst-driver-in-ny-563-tick...
chupchap – 23 hours ago
Coming to the part about issuing fines to the registered owner, you can nominate a different driver online here, when replying to the fine. The person nominated need to accept this as well before it is taken off the person to whom the vehicle is registered to.
db48x – 21 hours ago
shakahshakah – yesterday
Also, I think at that time some questionable arrangements surfaced between the operators of the automated ticketing system(s) and the towns and/or counties involved.
NetMageSCW – 22 hours ago
0xbadcafebee – 21 hours ago
Weird thing to point out, as in Florida, if you get any traffic citation, you just hire The Ticket Clinic for ~$80. If they don't get your ticket expunged or points eliminated, you get your money back. They don't lose often. You can keep racking up tickets, but not get any points, as long as you've got $80.
stronglikedan – yesterday
kamarg – yesterday
spankalee – yesterday
neutronicus – yesterday
It's very common to just have fake plates / registration, with the plan in the case of an accident to just bail out and run.
[1] https://www.wmar2news.com/homepage-showcase/how-md-drivers-w...
jacquesm – yesterday
devy – yesterday
Sources:
1. yes I got them before when I was driving a lot in Queens, New York City had legal counsel regarding fighting these red light camera tickets.
2. NYC government is quadrupling those cameras as it's a really cheap way to increase municipal revenue and reduce traffic speed. It's working if you drive in Queens NYC you will notice most traffic obey to the speed limits. https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/1q8fm89/nyc_to_quadrup...
ecshafer – 23 hours ago
Sound like, in typical NYC fashion, its also a great way to pad time for the NYPD and get some quid pro quo from their Union.
crote – yesterday
Besides, it neatly solves the whole responsibility problem for self-driving car!
seydor – 14 hours ago
sharpshadow – 1 hour ago
Penalizing the owner of the vehicle regardless of the driver would be less ideal for society in my opinion.
1shooner – yesterday
This is the opposite of my understanding of red light cameras. I always considered the supposed impartial application of the traffic law as the main benefit.
spankalee – yesterday
Maybe they just stop running red lights?
jotux – yesterday
Sometimes lights are just so poorly implemented, and drivers pass through them so often, it feels like whoever designed the intersection was actively goading drivers into running the light.
MisterTea – yesterday
Some lights change timing depending on the time of day so e.g. rush hour might have different timing than midday or late night.
I also believe there are and likely still are cases of malicious short yellow lights at camera intersections to increase revenue.
HDThoreaun – yesterday
mikrl – yesterday
I agree the automated systems are impartial, but they cannot ID you without it becoming super invasive.
In Europe and places with more omnipresent cameras, the laws are such that they can ticket you without needing to ID. The car gets the ticket so to speak.
tjohns – yesterday
For a criminal case, yes, they need to prove "beyond a reasonable doubt" - which would require that you are positively identified as the driver.
For a civil case, they only need to prove by a "preponderance of the evidence" - which is a much lower standard.
This is why tickets from red-light cameras in many states are zero-point citations. You're still charged a fine, but there's no finding of guilt attached to the offense, which keeps it away from being considered a criminal matter. (This is the same way parking tickets work.)
red-iron-pine – yesterday
I'm in Canada and they issue you a fine without any ID. It goes straight to the registered car owner. Simple as.
The issue is that currently in FL there are points / demerits issued for violations, and these can cause the loss of a license, increases to insurance, etc. This is not a problem if an officer can ID you directly.
mitthrowaway2 – 15 hours ago
forinti – yesterday
I don't know what happens if the other person denies it though.
brewdad – yesterday
Retric – yesterday
crote – yesterday
brewdad – yesterday
burkaman – yesterday
"I've been ticketed here twice, and it's ridiculous because they - it's just not fair. The person that - [let me start over] - the determination when you ran the light [of who is responsible], it's just a random whoever they want to pick ... [they] pick you to say, okay, you're gonna pay the ticket."
Obviously it's not actually random, it just defaults to the vehicle's owner, but with a generous reading I think you can interpret the quote this way based on the context of the article.
I think it's kind of irresponsible and lazy for the publication to use a verbatim verbal quote like this, when it isn't from someone notable who really needs to be quoted. If you don't understand what they're saying then don't put it in the article, and if you do understand then put in a sentence explaining what they're saying.
b112 – yesterday
No camera I've ever seen tries to figure out who the driver is.
The logic is, it's your car, you're responsible for loaning it/owning it, so you get the fine. Don't like that? Don't loan your car out.
The trade off is no points are deducted from a driver's license. It's a pure fine, because they can't prove you were driving.
So the person just seems to be speaking gibberish to me.
edit:
More context...
The same logic applies for parking tickets. No one cares who parked the car, the car's owner gets the ticket... not the person who parked it. While I dislike red light cameras, the logic holds.
mikkupikku – yesterday
arjie – yesterday
Reporting vehicle theft etc. can provide immunity from points on the car.
quickthrowman – yesterday
I’m glad my state found these unconstitutional as well.
arjie – yesterday
richard_chase – 22 hours ago
sejje – 22 hours ago
NetMageSCW – 22 hours ago
vincston – 10 hours ago
t1234s – yesterday
toast0 – 23 hours ago
Roundabouts have better throughput than a busy 4-way stop, but less throughput than a signaled intersection if the timing and sensing is reasonable (many signaled intersections don't have reasonable sensing). Roundabouts also have some pretty nasty worst case wait times; I'm really not looking forward to the state installing one near me on the approach to a car ferry; it won't be fun to wait for 200 cars to go by before you get a turn to go, and I expect long ferry lines to result in impatient people in the ferry line blocking the roundabout. Sometimes there's two hours between ferry loadings. Going to be some fun times.
Personally, I find it challenging to both look ahead to the right to confirm I have room to enter the roundabout, look to the left to confirm there is no traffic that I need to wait for, as well as looking far left and right to ensure there are no pedestrians crossing soon. Signaled 4-way perpendicular intersections have worse outcomes when a participant doesn't follow the signalling, but indication of right of way makes it easier to confirm at a glance if it's safe to proceed.
db48x – 21 hours ago
That’s not actually true. It’s entirely possible for them to have the same footprint.
boc – yesterday
0x3f – yesterday
There are also solutions for large vehicles where the center is raised but not impassible.
db48x – 21 hours ago
0x3f – yesterday
unselect5917 – 19 hours ago
Detrytus – 22 hours ago
wffurr – yesterday
t1234s – 21 hours ago
snarf21 – yesterday
vincston – 10 hours ago
theragra – 7 hours ago
rudhdb773b – 17 hours ago
A similar law could eliminate most of the problems with civil forfeiture.
spullara – yesterday
vaadu – yesterday
One side issues the judge brought up is that no points go on the driver's record with a red light camera offense. The entire point of the points system is to get bad drivers off the road. But people can have numerous red light infractions and still keep their license.
Arch-TK – 22 hours ago
Meanwhile the solution to this problem in the UK is to reaffirm that you are in fact guilty by default unless by happenstance you are determined not to be by an unfairly chosen panel of blind and deaf mice.
gozucito – 21 hours ago
I believe the first time it was because the photos were processed out of state. Apparently it didn't stick!
oompydoompy74 – 8 hours ago
limagnolia – yesterday
credit_guy – yesterday
Edit: Nevermind, I think crossing on yellow and catching a tenth of a second of red counts as running a red light. If it does, it’s something I did myself a few times (of course, all in the distant past, the statute of limitations has pased now …)
kamarg – yesterday
In fact, it's so bad that parts of the metro are reinstating red light cameras this year despite having decommissioned them years ago for similar legal reasons as what Florida has run into.
pixl97 – yesterday
Then the state needs to start doing immediate impoundment of these vehicles. Add on massive fines before release of the car for repeat offenders and you'll see this dry up pretty quick.
stetrain – yesterday
I'm actually all for impartial enforcement of traffic rules via camera systems, but there are problems that need to be solved.
- There need to be standards for evidence required to assign an infraction to a driver.
- There need to be standards for setting yellow light durations to avoid municipalities reducing them to increase revenue
- There needs to be protection against municipalities outsourcing the whole project to a private entity where there is a combined financial incentive from the private entity and the municipality to issue more tickets without adequate oversight.
My town implemented red light cameras around 15 years ago and then took them back out. Locals noticed shortened yellow lights, and there were multiple issues found with how the private operator issued the tickets and with their contract with the municipality.
neutronicus – yesterday
You can often do it pretty safely - stopped at a light with good visibility to see that there is no cross traffic. But also some people are just insane and blast through lights at 45 without stopping.
Cops haven't cared to enforce it for going on a decade.
wffurr – yesterday
BrandonM – 23 hours ago
In the jurisdictions I'm familiar with, this is the proper way to make a left-hand turn. Many intersections are designed such that this is the only realistic way to ever turn left (high traffic, no left arrow).
Most red light rules are written against entering the intersection on red. If you're already in the intersection, you're allowed to safely proceed through and out of the intersection on red. That can be challenging, of course, if oncoming traffic is running the red light.
loeg – yesterday
fckgw – 22 hours ago
Glyptodon – yesterday
xeromal – yesterday
Apocryphon – 22 hours ago
interestpiqued – 23 hours ago
HDThoreaun – yesterday
pixl97 – yesterday
Anyone involved in those yellow light lowering schemes should have been criminally charged.
fennecfoxy – 10 hours ago
In the UK it's ridiculous, barely any speed cameras and those that are there are clearly marked (legally have to be). Everyone just slows down for the speed cameras and then start speeding again after.
I've actually heard people say that the above is effective because it makes people slow down where it's important. Or, you know how about people just don't fucken speed in general?
If it were up to me they'd be everywhere, totally unmarked and all revenue from fines would go to charitable causes to rule out the "but they just do it for da money!11" bs - no, they're doing it to stop people speeding and killing someone for fuck's sake.
Stop speeding.
Orygin – 10 hours ago
Getting a ticket also does nothing to prevent you from speeding in the first place (the ticket does not arrive to you instantly, you're still speeding on the road).
Road safety is an infrastructure problem, but it is always easier and cheaper to just put a camera and collect money. While designing roads that you cannot go too fast, and actually building them cost money.
They just want the cheapest option to say "we did something". Not the safest.
presentation – 9 hours ago
It only doesn’t work if the system is half assed. But I agree that in low speed pedestrian areas, the built form is a better solution, but knowing you will get caught is also effective (if you accept the privacy tradeoffs).
donatj – 20 hours ago
ayaros – yesterday
jscomino – yesterday
francisofascii – yesterday
46493168 – yesterday
triceratops – yesterday
Drunk_Engineer – yesterday
triceratops – 23 hours ago
I only mean that all revenues collected from the fines must be distributed to the public at large. They must never be treated as a revenue source for the government.
Sin taxes are meant to reduce bad behavior - or incentivize good behavior. Ideally you'd collect $0 in red-light fines because everyone's following the law. If some politician's budget or private company's revenue stream depends on traffic fines they have adverse incentives. I don't want my city council member voting against traffic safety initiatives because it makes people better drivers and that means less money for some other city program.
advisedwang – 23 hours ago
triceratops – 22 hours ago
Or in the case of a private company contracted to run the cameras, don't give a private company a contract to run the cameras. At least not a contract where they get paid in proportion to the fines collected.
No one should profit off bad behavior. No government program's funding should have to depend on people driving badly.
mh2266 – 18 hours ago
LorenPechtel – 19 hours ago
triceratops – 19 hours ago
aschatten – 23 hours ago
globular-toast – 8 hours ago
More and more I'm seeing people taking privileges wherever they can but completely shirking responsibility. There is a name for a person who pushes the boundaries but takes no responsibility: a child. How do we get people to understand that someone needs to take responsibility in this world? If it's not the adults then who will?
kazinator – yesterday
Of course they don't want to be identified after blankly admitting they were ticketed; i.e. they were the one driving, in fact.
Entitled prick: running red lights, and crying "unfair".
> The person that does the determination when you ran the light, it's just a random. Whoever they want to pick, pick you to say, okay, you're gonna pay the ticket."
Complete nonsense; why is the article even quoting this mouth breather?
These cameras work in terms of determining that the given vehicle was involved in the alleged violation. There is nothing random about it. It's not randomly pinning a drummed up allegation on vehicles not involved in a violation. The choice of pinning the ticket on the registered owner is also not random.
Typically these systems take at least two shots, moments apart, one showing the vehicle not yet in the intersection (whose traffic light is clearly red) and then the same vehicle in the intersection a split second later, providing evidence that the vehicle entered the intersection on a red.
protocolture – 15 hours ago
In context of this article, being ticketed does not require to be the person driving.
kazinator – 15 hours ago
lateforwork – yesterday
crote – yesterday
Besides, it's not a "the machine says so and not even the Supreme Court can overturn it" scenario. If there's genuinely a reason to cross into the intersection while the lights are red (such as there having been an accident, and a cop is temporarily managing traffic) the ticket will be waived. Heck, there will probably even be photographic evidence of it!
Most countries even have cops judge the tickets, just to already filter out those weird cases. The registration is done by a robot, but the policing is still done by a human.
vegadw – yesterday
Or, a deer jumped out on the side and you briefly looked away at it.
Or you could tell the driver behind you wasn't slowing down, so the safer option is to go.
Or. Or. Or. Real life is messy, and there's a million reasons to go though a yellow instead of slowing down.
rootusrootus – yesterday
This is common in the US as well. The machine takes the picture, filters out the illegible ones, and sends the rest to an actual officer who will issue the ticket.
maxwell – yesterday
idle_zealot – yesterday
This is bad when applied to laws that were written with an exception of leniency and selectivity in enforcement, which is quite a lot of them. For running red lights though? I don't mind if the robots take you off the road automatically.
lateforwork – yesterday
spankalee – yesterday
I live in a city where red light running is an epidemic. Drivers flagrantly just don't stop, and it kills people all the time. Red light cameras - plus actually revoking drivers licenses, and then actually throwing people in jail for driving on suspended licenses - are the only way to fix this.
It's far past time that drivers are no longer immune to consequences for violent, sociopathic behavior.
NetMageSCW – 22 hours ago
When was the last person killed by someone running a red light? When was the time before that?
bluefirebrand – yesterday
The reality is that the people doing the policing are counting on humans not being infallible
Fines have become an important revenue stream, that's why they are being automated.
Now that this is becoming more widespread, there's a perverse incentive for governments to maximize the difficulty in avoiding fines. Lower the speed limit on roads designed for higher speeds for "safety", etc
spankalee – yesterday
There are many citizens, like me, begging for red light cameras so something can be done about the rash of crashes and killings from willfully reckless drivers.
rootusrootus – 23 hours ago
Maybe we should legislate traffic fines out of existence, and just use points. Or at the very least the fines should never go back in any recognizable way to the budget of the police doing the enforcement.
jibal – 15 hours ago
analog31 – yesterday
whalesalad – 8 hours ago
engelo_b – 20 hours ago
jollyllama – 23 hours ago
stevehawk – yesterday
bluefirebrand – yesterday
bell-cot – 23 hours ago
kevincloudsec – 18 hours ago
shevy-java – yesterday
SilverElfin – yesterday
octernion – yesterday
SilverElfin – 23 hours ago
knowitnone3 – yesterday
natas – 17 hours ago
CapitalistCartr – yesterday
thenewnewguy – yesterday
edoceo – yesterday
edoceo – yesterday
dangood – yesterday
tmtvl – 6 hours ago
angry_octet – 22 hours ago
Fine = 2 ^v^2 ^n^2 ^p^2
Where v is velocity % higher than the speed limit, n is the number of speeding occurrences in the past 12 months, p is the normalised price of the vehicle. Obviously these parameters could be tweaked.
The result should be that frequent violations cost much more, cost is proportional to the increased danger, and rich people feel the cost of violations.
dmix – 22 hours ago
angry_octet – 20 hours ago
It isn't a "social experiment" to deter crime, and calibrating punishment to have an actual deterrent effect has a long precedent. If it is "nanny state" policy to set speed limits that penalise repeat offenders and hoons in high powered cars, you will find it has broad community support.
ProllyInfamous – 20 hours ago
Nothing happens if you don't pay them; state congressmen have burned their own citations publicly.
mchusma – yesterday
1. No parking minimums 2. Less free parking (e.g. street parking) 3. Policy supportive of self driving cars 4. More aggressive removal of driver licenses for human drivers with repeat violations 5. More aggressive penalties for driving without a license.
stronglikedan – yesterday
mchusma – 20 hours ago
The average cost of car ownership is $0.69 per mile without insurance, $0.25 per mile to store it, and $0.49 per mile in societal costs (death, injuries, delays due to accidents). So about $1.43 per mile. I do not enjoy driving, so would add more cost per mile, maybe some would want to pay more but I do t see that much joyriding outside of teenagers and classic car enthusiasts, so I don’t think those that do it for pleasure is a large population.
Tesla cybercab is targeting $0.20 per mile. Waymo projections are $0.40 per mile by 2030. Assuming both hit $0.50 and are twice as safe, this is basically $0.75 per mile.
I don’t see may paying more to drive themselves. And I think as society there will be non economic reasons human driven cars get banned. Like MADD but for human cars.
So I expect 5 years and human cars will not make sense in many cases, 10 years new human car sales to be <50% current levels, 15 years you start seeing bans. 20 years bans common.
triceratops – yesterday