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Comment by cronix | Hacker News Reader

These are easy to get around though. It might depend on the State, but in Oregon, in order to actually get ticketed by those stupid things, the image of the driver in the car must match the picture of the driver the car is registered to. So if you're married, just register your wife's car in your name and hers in yours. The pics will never match, and no ticket. If you have to go to court, you can show the judge the pic and it's clearly not you driving, so no ticket.

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Some states are “owner responsibility” states which means it doesn’t matter who is driving.

And going through red lights is dangerous. Wouldn’t it be better to stop doing it rather than come up with a way to outsmart the system?

Sure, one should never intentionally run a red light, and I wasn't suggesting that they do.

The article specifically talks about them shortening the duration of a yellow light from 5 seconds to 3 in order to increase revenue by catching more people running the (shorter) light. They purposefully are creating a situation where people feel the need to speed up to make it through the shorter duration light and more people are getting killed because of it.

I don't know about where you live, but in a lot of places if you cross the crosswalk and are now in the intersection and the light just changes from green to yellow, 3 seconds isn't enough to clear the intersection before it turns red unless you were already traveling the speed limit and the lane is clear ahead of you. Imagine yourself in rush hour traffic and you're the first car stopped at a green light because you can't safely clear the intersection. The car ahead moves and you start to enter the intersection because there is now space to clear the intersection without having to stop in it. Just as you start to accelerate it turns yellow, and then red 3 seconds later before you clear it because they shortened the time. If the light stayed at a 5 second yellow light, you would have made it through. Is that genuinely your fault if you did everything according to the book but only got caught because they artificially lowered the yellow light time?

Shortening light cycle times to increase revenue is evil. But one thing that is not widely known is that it is illegal to enter an intersection while the light is yellow. The only time it is legal to enter an intersection is while the light is green.

So if the light turns yellow, you enter the intersection and leave it while the light is still yellow... that is just as illegal as if you entered the intersection when the light was red.

You must be living in a perfect world where people finally won laws of physics.

In my world, if you driving at speed limit near intersection you have zero chance to stop before the line. And even if you managed so, there is a very good chance that a driver behind will not have so good brakes and reflexes.

Not true in the first few states I checked. The closest is Wisconsin, where the motorist "must stop at a yellow light except when the motorist is so close to the intersection when the light turns yellow that it’s unsafe to do so" [1].

In other words, you're wrong. Also, there are multiple degrees of illegal, and I'm certain the punishment for running a yellow light isn't of the same magnitude as the punishment for running a red light.

It seems that you like correcting people enough that you're biased towards believing in unintuitive things.

1: https://www.drivinglaws.org/resources/wisconsin-red-light-st...

Running a red light, say, 0-2s after it's just turned red is much, much, much safer than one that's been red for minutes already.

But these laws don't prevent the latter, since those are usually oblivious or impaired drivers.

They just find a way to monetize the former. Which isn't in itself wrong -- it just sets up these perverse incentives that history has shown various jurisdictions cannot handle without transparency.

Most other states these are civil infractions, not criminal, so the burden of proof is much lower for the state. Hence, they just mail a fine to the owner of the vehicle. You do not earn points against your license, and you insurance usually won't go up, but they can prevent you from renewing your registration if there are unpaid fines.

Germany is like this for its speed cameras: the ticket must go to the driver.

None of this “let’s blame someone not responsible because it’s easier than finding who is really responsible” business.

The problem is most people won't think of doing this, and bother to actually go to court.

In my jurisdiction, they changed the laws to make it nearly impossible to fight the ticket and exempt the signor of the ticket from having to appear in court.

(Ontario, Canada)

I felt like the problem is that some people will think of doing this, and use it to drive like assholes and endanger people without penalty.

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