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Comment by rahkiin | Hacker News Reader

In europe we use traffic cameras for this. Going through red light? A bill is in your mailbox automatically. No need for a whole police station.

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In Massachusetts, USA, red light cameras were illegal until very recently, due to a 70s era law specifying that a live policeman had to issue a citation for something like that. From well before traffic cameras were common.

Put a single live policeman in front of 100 camera screens

We had a pilot program in NJ for them, they were universally hated. People would slam brakes on and be hanging over the edge into intersection and throw their car into reverse panicking to avoid the ticket, ended up causing a ton of new accidents so the program was never continued. In newark people shot at the cameras: https://www.nj.com/news/2012/08/shoot_out_the_red_lights_2_t...

Thankfully sawzalls are cheap and plentiful so people can use much safer practices to disable/remove them:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/parkside-drive-speed-...

I bet if you come back after they've removed the old one but before they install the new one you can wreck the threads on the threaded anchors by impacting the wrong size higher grade nut on.

The comments is written as if you specifically advocate for this. Why?

Hitting the brakes and getting rear ended is barely even a crash compared to T-boning someone or plowing over pedestrians

I didn't say that. I said they'd panic and throw their vehicle into reverse. Cars/trucks can take the hit, motorcycles/bicycles not so much.

Huge skepticism that bicycles and motorcycles were getting backed into in any appreciable quantities.

How many people you willing to put in the hospital to prevent people from technically running reds on the yellow-red transition?

> in 2023, 1,086 people were killed in crashes that involved red light running

https://www.iihs.org/research-areas/red-light-running

So let's use that as an upper bound.

How many people were killed by these backups you're talking about?

If not that then rear-ended, here's the state's report on how red light cameras increased accidents: https://dot.nj.gov/transportation/about/publicat/lmreports/p...

That's an insufficient yellow phase rather than a camera problem. Not sure why NJ would think their population are special snowflakes that can't deal with red light cameras otherwise.

Italians?

Sounds like NJ has some terrible drivers

Before they were common, yes, but they existed in active use back in the 1960s in the Netherlands: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_enforcement_camera

Sweden: Their locations are public. There is even an official API.

They are mostly located in sane places.

Apps like Waze consume this API and warn drivers if they’re at risk of getting caught. It’s the deterrence/slowdown at known risky spots they’re after, not the fine, I guess.

I heard that apps warning drivers this way are illegal in Germany?

Aside: what's up with the traffic speed cameras in Sweden? It feels like they're not designed to catch anybody. In my recent drive there it seemed like most of the cameras were in an 80 zone just before it switch to 50 for a tiny town. They wouldn't catch a typical driver who does something like 10 over everywhere -- they would likely have already started slowing down for the 50.

In my city in Canada, that camera would be in the 50 zone.

I think the general idea is strategic speed shaping before spots where lethal accidents are likely.

So nudging, sort of. There’s a lot of public support for that.

Because the point is to slow the traffic down, not to extract revenue from the peasantry.

Same as the difference between an obvious speed trap and a "gotcha" speed trap.

But does it slow people down? I doubt it has significant effect. Very few people are going to be going over 80 a few meters in front of a 50 sign. You essentially are only catching people who are doing close to double the upcoming speed limit. Those who are willing to do that should be getting much more severe punishment than a speeding ticket.

They do.

The typical driver who does something like 10 over everywhere is probably not the biggest safety hazard.

When I lived in a small town in Sweden, the problem was that at night some drivers would blow down the country roads and straight through the small towns at crazy speeds assuming that there was nobody around. On some nights/weekends there were also zero police on duty in the whole municipality, they would have to be called in from a neighboring, larger, municipality.

We have them in the US too, but it varies widely by jurisdiction because they're regulated at the state level and policed at the local level.

Oh and it's not a bill, it goes through the legal system so people have the right to argue it in court if they want.

NYC is ramping up on this as well.

https://www.nyc.gov/site/finance/vehicles/red-light-camera-v...

Here in my country they removed the cameras in the second largest city after a trial period. It took too much effort to filter out police colleagues running a red (in police or civilian vehicles).

Ah that is easy here. 1) civilian vehicles never get leeway 2) we know the license plates of all police cars so we just filter it. Or actually only do so when they use proper permission to run a light

Simpler

Plate lookup returns state/municipal as the owner -> ticket gets discarded.

In most the USA, or at least Arizona, you have to serve someone. Just dropping something in a mail box doesn't mean dick. The very people that invented the traffic cameras up in Scottsdale were caught dodging the process servers from triggers from their own camera.

Another words, you have to spend hundreds of dollars chasing someone down, by the time you add that on to how easy it is to jam up the ticket in court by demanding an actual human being accuse you, it's not the easy win some may think. You're basically looking at $500+ to try and prosecute someone for a $300 ticket.

NY is not Arizona. They have the plate and send the fine to whomever the vehicle is registered to. If the fine isn't paid they flag the plate and impound the car if it's driven in their state.

In CO we have automatic traffic cameras, and to my knowledge they just mail you the ticket, which is usually only a fine (and no license points). Its one of those “automatic plea” tickets where if you fight it, you fight (and risk conviction on) the actual offense, while if you just pay the ticket it will automatically get downgraded to a less serious offense (IE parking outside the lines).

This isn't true we've had plenty of programs where red light camera tickets were rolled out.

Voters just really don't like them.

They were rolled out but the mailed tickets are legally meaningless, someone has to actually hunt you down within a short timespan (I think 90 days) to create any binding requirement to address it.

   A mailed citation from a photo radar camera is not an official ticket and does not need to be responded to unless it has been formally served to you.

https://rideoutlaw.com/photo-radar-tickets-in-arizona-a-comp...

Arizona also did stakeouts to try and catch this guy:

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna32806142

Not in New Jersey. I visited my parents and didn’t stop for a full three seconds before making a right on red on a deserted road at night and they fined my dad.

In FL, a speed camera can give a car's owner can a ticket without needing to know he was the driver. Your perspective is not true nation wide.

"The registered owner of the motor vehicle involved in the violation is responsible and liable for paying the uniform traffic citation issued for a violation"

http://www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Displ...

That seems completely fucked to me. Charging people who aren't guilty of any crime with a crime because somebody else was driving their car?

What would be the alternative? Just get who was driving your car to pay you back for the fine. If they are not accountable/honorable enough to back you back, then why were you letting them drive your car in the first place?

The same "alternative" that there is to every other crime in existence, proving the person you charged with a crime actually committed the crime. The default is suppose to be innocence, not guilty. It is the state's responsibility or problem to prove someone is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, not a citizen's responsibility to prove their continued innocence at all times.

I mean, the state obviously has photo evidence. So you need to show that either the photo was taken in error, that it misidentified your vehicle or that you weren't the legal owner at the time.

I got a couple of them like 20 years ago. Picture was terrible. I just through the ticket in the trash and never thought about it again.

That's absolutely hilarious. They take a photo of something approximating your vehicle that shows your plate number, toss it in a mail system that loses more than 0.5% of the class of mail used, then according to another poster in NY they impound your car after all this.

Anyplace with the slightest adherence to the rule of law requires the state to positively identify an actual person, not a vehicle owned by a person, that is responsible for a moving violation. And then personally serve that person rather than just coming up with this absolute bullshit excuse that an unreliable mail system with a letter dropped god knows where somehow is legal service.

A couple things wrong here:

1. Camera-issued tickets are not moving violations

2. Your car will not be impounded for failure to pay (maybe unless you have many, many unpaid tickets)

If the photo is bad, you can dispute it! That isn't presumption of guilt, it's the legal system working exactly as intended: one side presents their evidence, and the other side has a chance to respond.

Even if USPS loses 0.5% of mail (I am skeptical; that seems crazy high) the state sends at least three notices, so the chances of you missing every notice of your infraction is something like one in a million.

Only by the most ridiculous fiction is running a red light or speeding not a moving violation. They've intentionally pretended like it's not to get around the due process involved.

They have a photo of a car, but the car cannot commit a crime all on its own, someone has to be driving it. And if you have no idea who is driving when you charge them you are inevitably going to be charging innocent people.

When the police come across a car that's parked illegally, do you think they should need to wait around and figure out exactly who left it before issuing a ticket? Of course not; the vehicle owner is responsible for ensuring it's parked legally.

In the same way, it's the vehicle owner's responsibility to make sure their car is not driven through a red light. If they abdicate that responsibility, they aren't innocent!

What do you mean by people who aren't guilty? The infraction here is allowing your vehicle to run a red light.

How do you allow a vehicle to run a red light that you aren't driving?

Easy:

1. Allow someone else to drive your vehicle

2. That person runs a red light

Your responsibility as the vehicle owner is to either not do step 1, or only do it for people whom you trust will not do step 2.

You don't even have to 'allow' them. Either you could live in a community property state, where your spouse, even a spouse who has initiated divorce against you, legally also owns the vehicle that is in your name. Or someone could steal it. Or someone could steal or duplicate your plates and put it on a nearly identical car, which happened to a friend who had to spend years fighting all the tickets that were mailed to him when an entirely different car (same make/model) used his same plate numbers.

If you can show that your vehicle or plates were stolen, you won't have to pay the ticket; in NYC that is explicitly listed as a possible defense [1].

The spouse thing honestly seems fine — it just means that you're both responsible for paying the ticket, rather than you alone — but if you have an issue it's with the property laws, not the red light cameras.

[1] https://www.nyc.gov/site/finance/vehicles/red-light-camera-v...

My friend "showed" the plates were not his (he couldn't prove the car wasn't stolen because it wasn't -- they only copied his plate) but they kept sending him tickets because apparently it only counts for one ticket. They wanted him to go through a laborious process every time. I think he finally just stopped challenging them because it took too much time, and probably can't go to that state again unless he wants his car seized.

Sounds like the issue here is that the police aren't doing their job!

I live in AZ, try driving on Lincoln in Paradise Valley. Everyone is going at 40mph because of the speed cameras. Most people don't want to be fugitives.

I sometimes use Tatum with PV's speed vans parked on the side of the road to head towards downtown Phx and, yes, the common speed is definitely around 40. But pretty much as soon as past McDonald and on 44th St, I resume the the normalized 7-8 mph over the posted limit because I know there are no more speed cameras.

Which proves the speed cameras in PV work...

It's just a process server, not cops. It's just the equivalent of a glorified delivery man looking for you. The general counsel, an executive, and the employees in general of ATS (the company that does the traffic cameras in most of AZ and I think much the USA) dodge the process servers when they get caught by their own cameras. The people that understand how the process works don't seem too bothered being a "fugitive" as it's all a nothing-burger and if you get caught all it means is you need to hire a lawyer to make it go away or pay the ticket.

The problem with traffic cameras in the US was that they became outsourced revenue enhancement rather than public safety.

The cameras would get installed at busy intersections with lots of minor infractions to collect fines on rather than unsafe intersections that had lots of bad accidents. And then, when the revenue was insufficient, they would dial down the yellow light time.

Consequently, and rightly, Americans now immediately revolt against traffic cameras whenever they appear.

(San Diego was one particularly egregious example. They installed the cameras on the busy freeway interchange lights when the super dangerous intersection that produced all the T-bone accidents was literally one traffic light up the hill. This infuriated everybody.)

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