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Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

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Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#261

Post by vegadw »

crote wrote: post #125
lateforwork wrote: post #19

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…

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.

Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#262

Post by rootusrootus »

crote wrote: post #81
eweise wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Four people in my family drive my car. I'm supposed to track that? sure.

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?

> how do you currently solve the latter one?

Same as parking enforcement. Goes against the car, not an individual. So the financial responsibility will be assigned, but no punishment.

Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#263

Post by xeromal »

credit_guy wrote: post #169

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…

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.

Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#264

Post by danesparza »

hamdingers wrote: post #253
fusslo wrote: post #198

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…

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…

"It also means penalties are limited to fines and can't impact your driving privilege or insurance."

Wow! So if you have enough money, it's cool to run as many red lights as you want?

Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#265

Post by rootusrootus »

crote wrote: post #125
lateforwork wrote: post #19

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…

> 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.

Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#267

Post by antonvs »

0x3f wrote: post #149
crote wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are conveniently leaving out some European countries, such as Norway being at 3.0 per 1B km. You are also conveniently leaving it the per-capita figures, with US being at 14.2 per 100k while countries like Norway, Sweden, and Finland being at 2.x, and Europe as a while being at 6.7. So sure, "10x more" might be an exaggeration, but "2x more" is fairly accurate and even a claim of "7x more" is arguable.

I haven't conveniently left out anything. I wrote my previous comments intentionally, and specified which statistic I was talking about. If you misread it, that's on you. I used this statistic because yours is like saying the US is richer than Switzerland, if you don't divide by the number of people. Pretty irrelevant. There is no point comparing a country that drives everywhere with a country that doesn't using a me…

> There is no point comparing a country that drives everywhere with a country that doesn't

Unless the argument is that driving everywhere is a stupid and irresponsible way to operate a society.

Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#269

Post by rootusrootus »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #53
lateforwork wrote: post #19

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.

> 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 de…

> 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.

Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#270

Post by vkou »

danesparza wrote: post #264
hamdingers wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"It also means penalties are limited to fines and can't impact your driving privilege or insurance." Wow! So if you have enough money, it's cool to run as many red lights as you want?

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?
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