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Comment by Anechoic | Hacker News Reader

I do wonder why they haven't been used yet to track speeding violations.

This question was answered for me by a Maryland DOT person a few back during a tour of one of their operations center. The upshot is that the intended purpose of EZ-pass and other toll systems are for improved traffic flow, there is a lot of DOT involvement and the DOT wants to encourage folks to use them.

If those toll systems were to be used for speed enforcement, people would be discouraged from using them, which hurts the DOT's objective. Furthermore (and this is probably the bigger reason), since the DOT is deeply involved in deploying and monitoring the system, they would be subject to subpoenas by offenders challenging their speeding tickets and the DOT absolutely wants no part of that.

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My father is an attorney in NJ, and told me growing up as the system was first implemented in the tri-state it was off the table once this started to happen, on a large group of lawyers were vocal about making it very painful for the NJ and tristate DOT groups once they went too far.

I am not sure if I remembered this incorrectly but I am sure there were serious lawsuits in the tri-state, and lawyers were lining up to stick it to the states for it, but I could be wrong. Anyone find/know of data about this?

Similarly in New Zealand, the highways agency isn't interested in catching people who are speeding. They certainly help the police with live incidents and co-operate on lots of levels, but they don't keep camera footage forever or feed data streams of toll/traffic-management users to Police. "It's not our business".

It isn't possible to give automated speeding tickets in New York at this time because our law requires that a ticket be given to a driver instead of a vehicle.

It's different in California, Arizona and many other states -- in those states red light and speed cameras are legal. There is talk of changing the law in NY because some municipalities want more money, but us New Yorkers see what goes on in other states and we don't like it.

It NY you need to be given a ticket by a police officer who observed you speeding, because otherwise you don't have a positive ID on the driver. EZ-Pass identifies the car, but they couldn't decide if it were me, my wife or somebody else driving.

In many states this is circumvented by taking a picture of the driver.

Here in CO you receive a nice piece of mail asking if the pictured driver was you. The process to contest the driver's identity is very straightforward, presumably to reduce the inevitable enormous load on the court system.

The obvious loophole is that if someone who isn't the registered owner drives the car, they can speed and run lights with as much impunity as they could pre-cameras. Especially if the other driver is named on the insurance, there's nothing illegal about loaning your car to someone else long-term.

In NYC at least, they do give red light tickets by camera/mail. I think it is like a parking ticket in that the responsibility is to the owner of the car. I assume it carries no points as well for that reason.

One issue is you can put the thing in a lead box or whatever until you need it for a toll. there is no requirement that it be available. so its easily thwarted as an enforcement mechanism. one could also envision equal protection lawsuits or what not related to this as well.

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