It may happen again. Got another camera ticket back in August. For this one, by a strict reading of the law I was in violation. I was at a stop sign with a car in front of me, we were both turning right. After the car ahead of me went forward I did as well, looking to my left, it is a college town and there are always students (and even faculty) who don’t look up when they are in the crosswalk. Once i had made the right turn, I was right beside a school bus on the other side of the street. I would never have remembered this until I saw the video footage when I got the ticket. The bus had just stopped as I turned and the Stop signs were out, but there had not been enough time for the students to start getting out of the bus.
I waited until 2 days before the ticket was due to request a court hearing. Still waiting. Have called a couple of times to check and see if a day was scheduled. As of last week, none. If/when I get one, if I have the time to go to court I think I could get it removed or reduced, but if I lose the case it goes on my driving record. Not going to take that chance. If I do get a court date, will see if I can postpone it.
they don’t unless you contest in court, with a police officer there. At least that is how it is in Virginia. Or maybe the phone rep I talked to was misinformed or I misunderstood
By the way, since this topic first started I got my first speed camera ticket (in the brief period where Toronto had speed cameras) for going 52 kph in a 40 kph school zone. My wife is challenging it, of course.
I wonder how that works - the reason that camera tickets don’t generally go on your driving record is that there is generally no way to prove who’s driving. You can tell who the car is registered to , but lots of people drive cars that belong to other people. ( And I don’t mean just borrowed - my husband has never driven a car registered to him - for convenience, I’ve always owned our cars.)
I was thinking that myself, unless somehow they think the person going to court was the driver. In that case, what if you hire a lawyer; the owner / driver shouldn’t need to show up if they are represented.
It’s not a crime. It’s a civil infraction. It doesn’t go on your driving record so it’s more like a parking ticket. That may be the difference. At least that’s what Dr. Google tells me.
As to the civil infraction stuff, the fifth can pretty easily be gotten around by the government. e.g. “You’re welcome to choose not to tell us who’s driving. At which point we’ll cancel the car’s registration for non-compliance with statute 123.456a. Have a nice day. And don’t be driving on dead plates; we’ll get you for that too.”
I can’t address every example given and I am sure there are valid cases where a traffic violation or parking ticket was improperly issued.
Yet it seems to me that often people just don’t like that they got caught. So to attempt to find some loophole to avoid owning up to the violation and pay the fine is not legitimate to me.
Traffic laws are for everyone’s safety. But if there have been some instances of red light cameras being manipulated, and I think that’s true, that doesn’t justify everyone complaining that a red light camera legitimately caught them blowing through a red light.
“Parking Wars” was a reality show focused on parking violations and the hard working city employees enforcing those laws. I think 95% of the violators claimed innocence.
FTR. Yes, I have violated traffic and parking laws.
As have we all. I agree much of the outrage aimed at red light cameras is misplaced. Just another variation on the age-old theme of Americans. “It’s unfair” is really just sugar coated codewords for “It doesn’t work to my advantage.”
Then again, I don’t think we really want to go too far down into automated traffic enforcement. Every modern car logs everything you do. And could send that directly to Big Brother. Hit 26 in a 25 zone? Citation! Still doing it 10 seconds later? Second citation!
Admittedly that’s kinda worst case. But it’d be trivially easy to accomplish technologically and if there’s one thing an authoritarian leaning government wants, it’s to have everybody always being guilty of something. Being able to hold the fear of sorta-legit police action over the head of every citizen is their dream set-up. A complaint legislature and court system could wave these sorts of evil processes into place with nary a hiccup.
I don’t disagree about that - but that’s not the reason people object to camera tickets. If it was, few people would be using apps/devices that report to their insurance company Some do it unintentionally , by using Gas Buddy or an app that tracks family members and not opting out of selling information but others do it intentionally , by downloading an app or installing a device or answering “yes” when an insurance company asks if you want a personalized rate based on your driving behavior,
Nope, people mostly object to camera tickets because they feel like they should get away with it if there wasn’t a cop right there to ticket them for the red light/speeding/bus lane or bus stop violations. ( My city now has cameras on at least some buses for tickets involving bus s top or lanes.)
You’re contradicting yourself. If the red light camera was manipulated, sometimes by making the yellow shorter than it should be (for which there were documented examples) then the majority of people getting caught at that light really weren’t guilty.
I can’t tell you how many times I saw the (now disbanded) red light cams near her house flash when I was sitting at a light; sometimes there was no on in the intersection while other times had multiple cars there because the light was green. I don’t know if they issued tickets from those inappropriate flashes that I saw or not but I do know if I ever got a ticket there I was going to go out with a GoPro for a few mins & play that in court as to all the times it flashed inappropriately that it couldn’t possibly be working properly.
The biggest difference between the Gestapo & the PPA was the hard working city employees Ha! patronage hacks wear blue shirts.