601–610 of 703 posts
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Automated enforcement where fines are anchored to the KBB value of the car is The Way Enlightenment and utopia across that simple bridge
Or how about the curb weight of the car? Higher mass means you're doing a lot more damage in an accident. People might think twice about buying an F250 for their grocery getter.
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Automated enforcement where fines are anchored to the KBB value of the car is The Way Enlightenment and utopia across that simple bridge
Devil's advocate: billionaire driving a beater (I'm not a billionaire, but I drive a beater)
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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 ille…
You're coming with the assumption that pro-social is a universal goal, and that it is objectively good. I'm not even disagreeing with you here, but that's a huge assumption yo make and you are granting pretty broad authority to the state in the name of that goal. Where do you draw the line of power the state shouldn't have despite it using the authority today towards pro-social goals?
Automated traffic enforcement isn't "granting" any new authority whatsoever to the state. The state already has the authority, it just uses it unfairly and imperfectly enough to fail to produce meaningful deterrence.
> Where do you draw the line of power the state shouldn't have despite it using the authority today towards pro-social goals?
I draw the line at the point where their power becomes not-pro-social, of course.
You and I can argue about what's pro-social or not (which this clearly is), but not whether pro-social things are good or not (which they clearly are).
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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…
Everything you've said applies to parking tickets too. You can't prove that the owner parked the vehicle. Tha owner is ultimately civily liable if the vehicle is parked in a way that it shouldn't be. Extending that same civil liability to the active operation, as opposed to only the consequences of active operation, seems perfectly reasonable.
As this judgement reveals, such a suggestion is patently unreasonable, for the reasons listed in the judgement
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My daycare fines parents $5 _per minute_ of lateness.
Three hundred dollars per hour? How is that acceptable? Certainly there's some sort of maximum or grace period?
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Where is the line drawn for criminal vs civil in nature? It feels like any civil case brought against an individual by a government is quasi-criminal.
Per the US Supreme Court in Hicks v. Feiock 485 U. S. 624 (1988): >The substance of particular contempt proceedings determines whether they are civil or criminal, regardless of the label attached by the court conducting the proceedings. >See Shillitani v. United States, 384 U. S. 364, 384 U. S. 368 -370 (1966); Penfield Co. v. SEC, 330 U. S. 585, 330 U. S. 590 (1947); Nye v. United States, 313 U. S. 33, 313 U. S. 42…
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…
It states "while these offense are labelled civil they remain fundamentally quasi-criminal in nature: punitive, adjudicative". Later it states "the State may not employ presumptions or burden-shifting devices that relieve it of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt"
The judge stops just an inch short of saying "this is a kangaroo court where guilt is stated rather than proven"
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…
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> … the owner of the car gets the ticket, and it's up to them to figure out if they were driving, … That's exactly what makes it unconstitutional here in the US. The Constitution specifically requires that they have evidence of who committed the crime _before_ charging someone with it. If you do it the other way around then you are making an assumption about who is guilty in advance of the evidence.
It's not a crime, it's a fine, and are you suggesting parking tickets don't exist in the US?
> are you suggesting parking tickets don't exist in the US?
No, but parking tickets don’t have the same problem because they are governed by a different law that was written better. Specifically, it states that the owner of the car is liable if the car is found to be parked illegally and must pay a fine. This makes it truly a civil matter.
Meanwhile the law against running red lights says that the _driver_ commits a misdemeanor if they pass through a signalized intersection while the light is red. See the difference? The tickets that result from the red–light camera are being assigned to the owner of the car, not the driver, but it’s the driver who committed the crime. The owner is then forced to prove their innocence, which makes it unconstitutional. Our constitution requires that the government must first prove using actual evidence who committed the crime and only then can they proceed to the step of writing a ticket or arresting someone.