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Comment by h2odragon | Hacker News Reader

In the USA, the automated traffic cameras seem to be having a hard time in court, in some jurisdictions. Around here the State Representatives tell people to wipe their arse with "Violation Notices" they get mailed by companies claiming to have the authority of some barely extant town.

So they have a new wrinkle: put the automated photography kit in someone's car, and pay them to sit and observe the machinery operate. Somehow this is supposed to serve as the same basis of authority as a publicly sworn peace officer who will be obligated to appear in court.

I get that little towns have budget problems and Bubba's brother needs another bass boat, but setting the example of making up and attempting to enforce your own laws like this is a bigger can of worms than they wanted to open.

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Outliers in rural Georgia and Ohio notwithstanding, wealthy suburbs are a million times worse than small towns when it comes to using fines to generate revenue. They have so few "real problems" that they have the man hours to spare on boondoggles, they have more people to prey on, their governments are big enough to provide plausible deniability and anonymity to the people deciding to do these things and they have far more resources to throw toward whatever they are trying to do.

There is a little thing about having to have the ability to face your accuser in our constitution. When your accuser is an automated algorithmic system with the sole purpose of generating revenue not promoting public safety it will be hard to hold that up in court

Many companies that run these systems will drop the fine because it is less costly then fighting it in court as most people just comply, and they do not want to run the risk of some judge ruling the entire system unconstitutional (which IMO it is)

Couldn't you be accused by a prosecutor based on video evidence?

I get that having some private company collect fines directly would be bad, but couldn't they solve that with a simple manual review process by law enforcement?

In most area's of the US these traffic camera's are owned, operated, and controlled by a private company who use a revenue share model with the local city.

They are not operated by the police dept, nor does anyone in law enforcement review them.

The issue I've seen in most of these cases is that they have a difficult time proving who was in control of the vehicle at the time. The ticket is issued to the registered owner of the vehicle instead of the driver. So even if the prosecutor is the accuser based off video, that video evidence often isn't enough to determine who was the offender.

Maybe we should stop worrying about it and just fine the car owner. If implied consent laws are legal surely agreeing to be responsible for your own vehicle on public roads would also be permissible under the constitution.

Also, the systems in place for toll road entrances seem to be doing a good enough job. Why can't the same thing be implemented for traffic cameras?

That presumes people agree with the system in place for Toll Roads... I do not that is for sure, so I certainly do not want to expand that to other areas

I am not sure what you are talking about when it comes to implied consent, but in the US At least one is only responsible for their own actions, it is a dangerous precedent to set that a 3rd party should be liable for the actions of others, were by the state can just fine or even arrest someone with out proving them personally committed the offense

No that is not something I want to have applied to anything not even tolls or traffic laws

What's your issue with toll cameras? The law is pretty clear in the US that you have no right to privacy in public, and public roads are no exception.

You can fight the fine if it wasn't you in the car and if the picture they took of you is unclear or looks like someone else you can get out of it.

Assuming you're recognizable in the picture what's the issue with that?

Most of the complaints I've seen about automated traffic cameras have been in big cities. Little towns seem to like still having the personal touch of a police officer in a patrol car run the traffic traps.

Yes, I think most places haven't caught up with this variant of capitalism where citizens are paid to enforce laws, bounty hunter style. This is going to be crazy.

You could be paid to have the speed radar placed inside your car at all time while on the road. If someone overtakes you at a given speed, it calculates that car's speed based on your own speed and knows the local speed limit based on GPS. The Good Citizen™ gets a salary proportional to how many tickets he helped deliver.

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