The best way I can describe the courts setup around automated red light cameras is as a kangaroo court. They have very little oversight, the owner of the vehicle gets ticketed regardless of the driver, and the fines are fairly high (depending on where you live). The fine tends to be some kind of civil penalty, but it also has the ability to block your drivers license renewal. Yes, it takes the cop out of the equation, but it also takes accountability out of the equation as well. There's also the fact that red light cameras just flat out don't improve safety, but they do increase municipal profits. The only reason they ever got installed over bumps and road barriers is due to lobbying: https://web.archive.org/web/20110526113001/http://www.motori...
>The best way I can describe the courts setup around automated red light cameras is as a kangaroo court. They have very little oversight, the owner of the vehicle gets ticketed regardless of the driver, and the fines are fairly high (depending on where you live).
I'm not sure how this is a kangaroo court. If the machines are generally known to be working correctly, and have an up to date calibration certificate, it makes sense that you can't dispute the validity of the evidence. It's not any different than limiting the avenues of appeal for breathalyzer results in DUI cases. Otherwise, the courts would swamped with people trying to drag out the case by doing the same appeal process over and over again. The fact that the owner gets penalized rather than the driver is more sketchy, but if the owner authorized someone else to use his car, why shouldn't he be on the hook for infractions? For instance, you lent your car to someone else and it got towed, do you think it's acceptable to use the "you can't prove I did the parking/driving" excuse to get off of it?
Not sure what you are arguing here, people should be penalized without justice and there shouldn’t be accountability on the part of the blaming party because these people will block the court if they have a chance? Are you reinventing the law?
I'm not sure where the "penalized without justice and there shouldn’t be accountability on the part of the blaming party " is coming from. At least where I live if you get such a ticket you can always dispute the ticket in court, although you'll be rarely successful because the cops/government has done this enough times that the usual excuses (eg. "the machine isn't reliable!") doesn't work.
> The City is not authorized to delegate police power by entering into a contract that allows a private vendor to screen data and decide whether a violation has occurred before sending that data to a traffic infraction enforcement officer to use as the basis for authorizing a citation.
This is generally how all of them work and that is why you go to civil court to fight a civil penalty if you appeal the ticket. That is a de facto kangaroo court when the consequence can overlap with drivers license revocation for a civil matter.
Source? At least in my jurisdiction they're reviewed by police officers. A recent story[1] about red light cameras work in a town in Florida also describes something similar. Moreover, while delegating ticket issuing powers to a private company might come with procedural issues and raise questions about impartiality, it's hardly enough reason to call it a "kangaroo court" if you're able to dispute it in court. That's the case for both my local jurisdiction and the florida town mentioned in the story. That's not to say that there aren't any red light camera kangaroo courts out there, or even that most of them aren't, but there's no reason why red light cameras are "kangaroo courts" in and of themselves.
I would suggest you experience the process. Go run an automated red light and see how it works, all the way up to trying to appeal before you boldly claim the process works and is fair.
There is now usually a police officer in the mix, but they're not actually doing much if anything other than clicking a button. They just believe whatever the machine and video paints and use the existing assumptions about car owners being responsible over drivers.
>There is now usually a police officer in the mix, but they're not actually doing much if anything other than clicking a button. They just believe whatever the machine and video paints and use the existing assumptions about car owners being responsible over drivers.
Which part do you think is unfair? The police/courts blindly trusting the machine, or the owner being fined rather than the driver?
The whole shabang is a big, abrupt departure from how we enforce traffic laws. Normally you had the option to face your accuser, there was room for interpretation and discernment, and the law was sufficiently nuanced.
Additionally, you got the point and missed the mark about traffic fatalities and poorer communities: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S259019822...
The highlights, if you don't want to read the whole thing:
Car ownership
Lower-income households may be more likely to drive older cars with fewer safety features.
Road design
Poorer neighborhoods may have more high-speed roads, and fewer basic traffic safety measures like streetlights, crosswalks, and sidewalks.
Systemic patterns
Disinvestment and displacement may favor car owners and road expansions over community safety.