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.

> 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.

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?

Besides, it neatly solves the whole responsibility problem for self-driving car!

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.

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...

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.

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.

Reporting vehicle theft etc. can provide immunity from points on the car.

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.

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 …)

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.

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.