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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

#631

Post by cestith »

hunter2_ wrote: post #390
jakobobobo wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A $3 fine is a good portion of someone's disposable income and a $300 fine is not much of someone else's.. A civil penalty of that nature almost guarantees some part of the population will view it like the $3 fee.

This is exactly why license points (leading to suspension) are better than fines. If the ticketing decision made by an automated camera system is deemed acceptable when issuing mere fines akin to parking tickets, but deemed unacceptable when issuing other penalties (which don't have this wealth inequity issue we are discussing now, at least not exclusively), that's effectively a poor tax.

This is exactly why in some countries traffic fines are proportional to income.

Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#632

Post by [deleted] »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #604
joshuamorton wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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

[deleted]

Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#633

Post by cucumber3732842 »

troupo wrote: post #620
cucumber3732842 wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A vehicle will materialize out of nowhere and crash into you. God I hate these sort of responsibility shirking opinions and their peddlers. I do this several times a day in a major US city for close to a decade now and I've never had a close call closer than the "two people trying to pass each other in the hallway" routine with a driver trying to take a right on red. Vehicles and everything else on this rock flying…

> I do this several times a day in a major US city for close to a decade now and I I, I, I > Vehicles and everything else on this rock flying through space obey the same laws of physics. Yes. Yes they do. That's why some countries (e.g. Sweden) actually have this in drivers ed: how fast a vehicle travels, how long it takes for the driver to react, what the stopping distance is for a vehicle etc. They even teach thing…

I'm not special. I'm fairly normal. Hundreds of millions of people manage to walk and drive as uneventfully as I do. The presence of some few number of people who can't manage to jaywalk decently and not run reds when it matters doesn't justify saddling the literal entire rest of society with some automotive flavor of 1984 anymore than some small number people robbing convenience stores to pay for their drug addiction justifies subjecting all of society to pervasive surveillance and the war on drugs fueled police state.

Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#634

Post by cestith »

tda wrote: post #585
furyg3 wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in Fremont, CA, which pioneered the use of red-light cameras and terrible red-light camera practices (e.g. shortening yellow light times to increase revenue and giving a cut of the fines to the companies installing cameras). I hated cameras, the idea of speed cameras felt like big brother, and the basic principal of attributing a violation to a car and not a person (and thus requiring a person to rat out th…

The best thing about the average speed cameras is that between the checkpoints all cars drive at almost exactly the same speed. No one trying to overtake, just 5 lanes of traffic at 1km/h below the speed limit

So the flow of traffic is actually better overall, rather than bunching up in one or two lanes while the fastest of the fast lane blows by?

Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#635

Post by estearum »

_heimdall wrote: post #630
estearum wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I do think things that are good for society are objectively good insofar as "objectively good" has any meaning at all. 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…

Its usually much harder to decide what's good for society than its made out to be. Externalities matter, something can seem good for society today and turn out to have serious downsides that either weren't known upfront or didn't show up until later. With regards to authority here, this absolutely is a case of granting more power and authority to the state, or more specifically the state claiming it. The judge here s…

Yes I agree, we should consider all of those things.

Considering all of those things, fully automated traffic enforcement in general is a clear net positive.

> The judge here said its illegal to use redlight cameras in certain situations. Based on the prior comment, if California found a loophole so they can get to the same end by labeling it something different that is them functionally claiming new authority. The judge says its illegal, the state says no its not we can do this anyway.

Sorry but this is just too surface-level of an understanding of how law actually works that I can't justify engaging with it.

Not only are California and Florida totally different jurisdictions, but even if they weren't, different statutory bases for the same effective policy can have different levels of legal defensibility or constitutionality. It's not just possible, but in fact quite common for policies to be struck down and then reintroduced with (effectively) a different argument for its validity, and for the new policy (same policy, different argument supporting it) to be valid.

Understanding how laws and the judiciary actually work is truly fascinating stuff and I hope your confusion about this apparent contradiction (which it's not) actually piques your curiosity to dig deeper.

Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#636

Post by troupo »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #633
troupo wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do this several times a day in a major US city for close to a decade now and I I, I, I > Vehicles and everything else on this rock flying through space obey the same laws of physics. Yes. Yes they do. That's why some countries (e.g. Sweden) actually have this in drivers ed: how fast a vehicle travels, how long it takes for the driver to react, what the stopping distance is for a vehicle etc. They even teach thing…

I'm not special. I'm fairly normal. Hundreds of millions of people manage to walk and drive as uneventfully as I do. The presence of some few number of people who can't manage to jaywalk decently and not run reds when it matters doesn't justify saddling the literal entire rest of society with some automotive flavor of 1984 anymore than some small number people robbing convenience stores to pay for their drug addictio…

I couldn't parse your demagoguery, bad analogies and non-sequiturs, and I don't want to.

Adieu.

Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#637

Post by db48x »

unselect5917 wrote: post #466
db48x wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A perpendicular intersection uses way less area than a roundabout. That’s not actually true. It’s entirely possible for them to have the same footprint.

Nitpicking: roundabouts that small may be entirely impassible to truck hauling a standard trailer. Personally, I think we could replace a LOT of stoplights with roundabouts. Way better throughput and faster travel for everyone.

Roundabouts that small won’t be built in areas with heavy truck traffic, and in any case won’t be built with a raised island in the center.

Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#638

Post by joshuamorton »

sjtgraham wrote: post #561
joshuamorton wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The key difference is a parking ticket isn't $500.

The mentioned fines are $1-200, which is in the same range as parking tickets.

I think the best argument is that license points are criminal in nature, but I don't really buy that.

Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#639

Post by 15155 »

Frieren wrote: post #584
sowbug wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consistent, low-impact enforcement is better at preventing unwanted behavior than the rare and severe but also capricious enforcement performed by human police. It can also give permission for unwanted behavior. Cf. the Haifa study, where the rate of late pickups increased when daycares added a fine. One explanation is the fine turned a complex moral obligation into an ordinary financial transaction.

> One explanation is the fine turned a complex moral obligation into an ordinary financial transaction. Income proportional fines solve the problem. The fine should be a deterrent, but not create crippling debt. That is impossible without taking into account the income of the infractor.

Sounds like a great reason to keep all of your income in a corporation in a state with favorable privacy laws and then have very little on paper.

Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#640

Post by joshuamorton »

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…

Can someone link the order, I've searched heavily for it and it's not linked by an of the articles or findable easily.
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