whether you want a network of cameras tracking every vehicle through every intersection is a different question that nobody voted on
Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional
481–490 of 703 posts
Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional
#482Earlier 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…
Or maybe not have automated surveillance robonannies playing gotcha games and pocketing money, often impacting those who can least afford it, over technicalities and arbitrary rules made up to benefit the people doing the collecting. The idea that AI enforcement won't be just as corrupt and capricious as any other form of government run extortion is bonkers. You're talking systems with less oversight than openclaw be…
What’s crazy is every dissenter of the parent comment is being downvoted, despite HN being strongly against this type of enforcement in the past.
Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional
#483Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional
#484After 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…
Interesting that your use of "solves for this" is with regards to the end result of being able to write more red light tickets. In my view, the courts solved this by deeming at least certain uses of red light cameras illegal.
Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional
#485Earlier 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…
Interesting that your use of "solves for this" is with regards to the end result of being able to write more red light tickets. In my view, the courts solved this by deeming at least certain uses of red light cameras illegal.
Automated traffic control is objectively one of the most pro-social things we could possibly ever create. Yes it is good if more red light cameras exist and face fewer legal challenges.
> the courts solved this by deeming at least certain uses of red light cameras illegal.
This is incorrect. The court in Florida said certain arrangement of the statutory basis (a different one than in CA) for red light cameras is illegal.
Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional
#486Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where does the fine money go? Building more red-light cameras?
bike lanes, pedestrianized streets, and public transit
That sounds like an easy obvious win. But see then you've made bike lanes and public transit depend on funding from car drivers, specifically ones who run red lights. When what you want as a bicyclist are safer drivers. And what you want as a bus rider is fewer cars.
You're putting those public services and their sources of funding in conflict with each other.
Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional
#487Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't like paltry sums like this. $300 is a significant financial impact to someone who's barely making ends meet, and absolutely nothing at all to a billionaire. "If the penalty for a crime is a fine, then that law only exists for the poor." Make it a tiny % of net worth, with a modest minimum and watch EVERYONE obey. Or at least something meaningful to everyone, or don't make it a fine. Use some other carrot or s…
But that makes wildly different incentives to enforce, depending on the target. We all know this stuff is all about revenue enhancement, and in that capacity, the targets will become the whales.
Automated enforcement where fines are anchored to the KBB value of the car is The Way
Enlightenment and utopia across that simple bridge
Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional
#488After 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…
That sounds fine except the part where private companies have cameras everywhere surveilling us, directly tied into dmv records to identify us, and then do whatever they want with that data. And not on a random store front or a persons front door but the major roads we all must use.
Even forgetting that, all this means is people that don't care about getting a ticket, either because they won't pay or it's a such a small amount to them that they don't care. just do what they want. Nothing is being "enforced", just taxed.
Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional
#489Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can’t tell if you’re joking or seriously trying to justify running red lights.
Use your eyes, your situational awareness and your best judgement. The traffic light is not god's word. In my neighborhood there used to be a traffic light that would be red for a long time despite not usefully regulating any traffic whatsoever. It stopped traffic despite the fact no other traffic could possibly conflict with it. People realized this and routinely ran that light with zero consequences. At some point…
Stop training yourself to run red lights before you kill some body.
The correct action is to constantly bug your local representative to fix the problem, not break a law written in blood.
Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional
#490After 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…
But AB 645 is designed to punish and deter rather than compensate, which creates a genuine constitutional vulnerability under California's Article I, Section 16 jury trial guarantee.
The structural problem is that revenue goes to program costs and traffic calming, not to anyone harmed by speeding, which makes the fines punitive in character under any substance-over-label analysis.
The lack of DMV points and criminal record weakens the argument somewhat, but under California's substance-over-label approach those omissions aren't dispositive. They merely show the legislature knew how to stay on the civil side of the line, not necessarily that it succeeded.
If a court finds the penalties punitive in character, the owner-liability structure becomes a compounding problem: California's state due process protections are arguably more robust than federal, and imposing a punitive fine on a registered owner without proof they were driving, while burden-shifting exculpation to them looks increasingly difficult to sustain.