Well, now that you’re playing, you might as well go all in. I recommend going to the live traffic school. The online one will be dry as a bone and loooooong. In the personal one, you’ll learn a lot more, have lots of chances to ask questions, and you might get a really cool instructor who makes the class fun. If you’re lucky, you might even get let out early. The online ones are timed so if it’s a 4 hour course you can bet your socks that you will be staring at the computer screen for 4 full hours.
Leave it to a Doper named Ruffian to get burned by a photo-finish…
sorry you got caught.
Sorry you paid out , but time now to start getting proactive for the next time this may occur. Now Im pretty sure that your not the type to go running reds, but there is no need to pay for an oops.
Pick up either an iPhone or a BlackBerry ( maybe other phones have it by now , but those two are for sure.) or a TomTom/Garmin with bluetooth. The program for the phones is called trapster and is rated highly by the DC cops for being reliable and useful :).
The GPS pods will do something similar using a connection via your cell phone, this also supports notice of heavy traffic , construction and static red light cams, with a high confidence level on mobile red light platforms.
Declan
$400 is a ripoff. Here it is $50 at most and no points. I believe the reason it’s no points is that was the only way the state would allow it to be legal to use the cameras.
Except red light cameras don’t take into account the weather, speed, driving conditions around the intersection, etc… They’re a terrible judge at whether you were able to stop at the red light safely or not.
And then there’s this whole issue of cities being obviously corrupt after recognizing that red light cameras are revenue machines.
You may have been been tagged by a private ticket company. If so, DO NOT PAY THEM!
Your Ticket - Red Light Cameras in California Fuck snitch tickets. If you got popped by the real police, suck it up and cough up the cash.
I have had 2 speeding tickets over the years and both times I went with online traffic school to avoid points. It was so easy and fast. There are pages you are supposed to read and then you are tested on it. The thing is while you are taking the test you can go back and read the pages and find the answers. I think it took me about 15 minutes in total. I never did the in real life ones, so I don’t know how they compare.
Sucks! Sorry you got a ticket.
What about someone else driving my car in Delaware, and we both live in another nearby state?
We were all returning from vacation together, and my daughter was following me, and she’s the one the camera caught. The picture doesn’t show any faces, but my other car, which I was driving, is clearly visible a few car lengths in front of her - IOW the picture makes it clear that both my cars went through the intersection but only one triggered the camera.
The ticket said a $125 fine (or about that, anyway). I don’t mind the fine, as she did run the light, and I heavily subsidize her anyway. But I worry more about points, insurance increases, and other scary long term consequences. Since I will pay the fine in either case, what interest should I have in protesting that I wasn’t the driver?
Here the fine is about $104 dollars, but no poins on your license as they can’t prove who was driving the car.
Not so in California.
Real tickets will have the phrase NOTICE TO APPEAR on them, as in these samples And this piece of the Vehicle Code allows service by mail:
Automated Traffic Enforcement Systems: Notice to Appear
- (a) Whenever a written notice to appear has been issued by a peace officer or by a qualified employee of a law enforcement agency on a form approved by the Judicial Council for an alleged violation of Section 22451, or, based on an alleged violation of Section 21453, 21455, or 22101 recorded by an automated enforcement system pursuant to Section 21455.5 or 22451, and delivered by mail within 15 days of the alleged violation to the current address of the registered owner of the vehicle on file with the department, with a certificate of mailing obtained as evidence of service, an exact and legible duplicate copy of the notice when filed with the magistrate shall constitute a complaint to which the defendant may enter a plea. Preparation and delivery of a notice to appear pursuant to this section is not an arrest.
(b) A notice to appear shall contain the name and address of the person, the license plate number of the person’s vehicle, the violation charged, including a description of the offense, and the time and place when, and where, the person may appear in court or before a person authorized to receive a deposit of bail. The time specified shall be at least 10 days after the notice to appear is delivered.
So what did they tell you about the form on the back? Do you still use that form when you are the co-registered owner rather than the intended “driver is not the registered owner”?
If the ticket is issued to your husband, can’t he claim that he is NOT the driver shown on the picture and request the ticket to be dismissed altogether? I thought I read somewhere that one can NOT be compiled to testify against his/her spouse. So your husband does NOT have to tell the police that the driver in the car at the time was actually you. Anyone has similar experience?
The courts can and do serve you legally through the mail. I work for a city government, and as soon as the notice is submitted in the mail, whether it ever reaches you or not, you have been served.
In California, I guess.
I know for 100% sure that they cannot in Arizona.
The paragraph above says:
This sounds like something you sign upon delivery. Did you sign something Ruffian?
if you can’t stop at a red light safely due to weather, speed, or driving conditions, you are driving too fast for said road conditions. try getting out of a red light ticket by telling the judge the road was too wet for you to stop in time, and he’ll tell you that you should have been driving slowly. the speed limit is a maximum, not a minimum.
DO NOT BLINDLY FOLLOW THIS “ADVICE”!, in Houston the cameras are privately owned and the fine is $75.00 but if you do not pay a “warrant fee” is automatically added and when you still don’t pay the company dings your credit. So instead of $75.00 and a stamp the deal runs you $110.00, a stamp and 6 phone calls.
Unclviny
A certificate of mailing is not something signed upon delivery. It’s something the post office gives you when you mail a letter, for an additional fee. It proves the item was mailed.
Interesting. Well, I withdraw my comments about California, then. I thought I’d heard that their system operates like ours, but I guess I heard wrong or misremembered.
No. A certificate of mailing is a proof of service. Here’s a sample proof, although not one for criminal matters.
What this means is that the person that mails the document signs an appropriate form indicating that the document was mailed. It doesn’t come from the post office; it’s just a form, either on Judicial Council forms, or following what’s in the Code.
In other words, they mail whatever to you, and they sign a piece of paper saying that they mailed it to you, and then when you say you didn’t get it, they submit the piece of paper saying they mailed it, and you’re screwed.
I would be quite surprised if other states operated differently; it’s not efficient to require personal service of these kinds of tickets.
There are two kinds of Certificate of Mailing in play here. The first, and simplest is a Post Office form. (PDF) For bulk mailings, there’s a similar form (PDF) that basically says “I ran 450 envelopes though my postage meter and gave them to my mailman.”
Depending on the manufacturer of the red light camera system, some citations may include a more formal COM, such as the RedFlex sample halfway down this page, and ones generated by Nestor systems don’t incorporate a COM - they just fill out a bulk mail COM every day.