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Comment by kolpa | Hacker News Reader

Legally speaking , robot-tickets for driver offenses can generally be avoided by simply making an affadavit of non-responsibility, since the robot doesn't have evidence of who is driving the vehicle.

The whole system relies on the honor system, so honest people pay and dishonest scofflaws don't. Yay!

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Sure, but the cost of the ticket is then paid in risk. If the police come back with evidence that you were in fact driving the car and you have a signed affidavit that says you weren't you're in much bigger trouble.

Unless the picture shows who the driver was.

Source: I ran a red light and got a picture of myself in the mail

And if it's your car, and you want to claim that it's not you, they ask you who it is.

In California at least, you can just ignore that question.

Not in many other states. MO for example specifically puts the onus of who is operating your motor vehicle on you, the owner. Or you need to declare it stolen.

But can they assign the ticket to you personally? In my experience, places that put the responsibility strictly on the owner of the car do so by removing the attachment to an individual's driving record and instead attaching the ticket to the car itself, like a parking ticket.

All automated tickets in mo are non-moving violations. So yes you are correct on "points". But mo also allows you to convert almost any driving ticket to a noisy muffler by paying 3x or more the price by paying a lawyer. Unfortunately even DUI (up to a point). It basically encodes the realization that the state just wants the revenue. Randomly assessed taxes on correct road use.

You can always directly fight the ticket too. I can't tell how far it is from legal graft... But I did avail myself of it, it would be dumb not to as the 3x cost for a ticket was still 1/2 what you'd get dinged by the insurance for the original ticket.

Many jurisdictions that use them now have the camera record at least three things:

1. A video of the car committing the infraction

2. A photograph of the car's license plate

3. A photograph aimed at the driver's seat, capturing the face of the driver of the car

While you can try to argue the photo of the driver is too blurry or unclear to serve as evidence, it's not as simple as saying "wasn't me". Also, even if you manage it, it's not enough to just say "wasn't me" -- you also will need to provide the name of the person you allege was driving.

Let's fix that: your car, your responsibility.

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