Originally Posted by
indyfabz
And let’s not forget that reporting a plate is not necessarily reporting the operator of the vehicle. Three different people used to drive my first car.
Try owning a pickup truck. Everyone wants to borrow one of those occasionally. The last few years I owned mine, my friend drove it more than I did.
Originally Posted by
Milton Keynes
Exactly the reason I think that red light and speed cameras are unconstitutional. Unless you can prove who was actually operating the motor vehicle, sending a speeding or moving violation ticket to the registered owner of the car just from a picture of the car is not valid in my opinion. It's even worse when someone posts someone else's license plate as a reckless driver. Even if they have the best intentions, what if they get the tag number wrong?
I'm not sure that those cameras are unconstitutional, but there are myriad problems with them. For one, they are mostly operated by private contractors on a for-profit basis, which obviously creates a conflict of interest. They also are used as a substitute for actual police officers, and hence there is less policing of behaviors that actually
do significantly raise accident rates, such as drunk/reckless/distracted driving. And then, as has been noted, the photo ticket is applied to the vehicle owner, who may not have been the driver; that puts the onus on the owner to show up in court and argue the case, even though there may be no evidence that he/she was driving. (Actually, that may brush up against the Fourth Amendment.)
Biggest problem: at least in one state (CO, where I lived for many years), a traffic ticket is a subpoena, and a subpoena is only valid if served by an officer of the court; in other words, to be valid, the ticket must be handed to you by a police officer - not mailed to you by a private firm. When I once got a ticket generated by a speed cam, I chuckled and threw it in the trash.
PS:
njkayaker , You are clearly hysterical and defensive. I mean, how dare you expect posters to be consistent, to not just make stuff up, to
make sense! Outrageous!