Red Light Camera Violation

[stonedstooge]

[mlyonsd]

Any ticket should be considered bull shit if a police officer didn't witness it and is willing to testify in a court of law.

In Iowa red light cameras only create revenue. Offenses aren't submitted to your insurance company or show up on your DMV records. Guy at work (raider fan) has received two red light tickets in the past three years and refused to pay either of them. His insurance has not gone up and he's renewed his plates twice. The only thing he hasn't tried to do yet is renew his driver's license so we don't know about that.

On a side topic, speed cameras in Iowa are the same thing. Here's an interesting story from the local paper that makes you wonder why anyone pays the fine:

SIOUX CITY | An Oregon man who got a speeding ticket after his rental car was snapped by a traffic camera on Interstate 29 in Sioux City claims he was hundreds of miles away at the time and has witnesses and documents to prove it.

Ken Benkstein thinks the only logical explanation for his $168 ticket is that the camera equipment malfunctioned, recording the date incorrectly when a different customer had the car.

His story and supporting documents seem credible, but city officials didn't back down. They said the evidence is on the citation, which shows the car, with a closeup of the rear license plate, was recorded traveling north at 65 mph in a 55 mph zone at 10:15 a.m. Sept. 11 at I-29 mile marker 151.

That's at the Riverside exit in Sioux City. Benkstein and colleagues from his West Des Moines public relations and marketing firm, Meyocks Group, insist they were meeting in West Des Moines, about 200 miles from Sioux City, that morning and later went to Ames, Iowa.

Company Senior Vice President James Head said Wednesday he and the other employees were dumbfounded when they learned Benkstein, who commutes from his home in McMinnville, Ore., had received the $168 speeding ticket for the day he spent with them.

“It defies any logic," Head said. “Ken’s car was in our parking lot when we left for Ames, and it was there when we returned” less than four hours later.

“Ken’s rental cars are absolutely not shared with other employees,” Head wrote in an Oct. 22 letter to the Sioux City Police Department.

“It’s not like we were drinking buddies and saying we’ll help you fight this thing,” Head told me Wednesday. “What we said didn’t seem to count. From my perspective, the city should have understood there was a mistake somewhere in the machinery.”

Two other colleagues and Benkstein himself wrote to city officials. Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group, based in Tulsa, Okla., wrote a letter stating Benkstein had rented the car on Sept. 9 at the Des Moines airport, returned it Sept 14 and driven it 230 miles. Benkstein also sent a copy of the receipt for the car rental and a Google document showing the distance from the airport to Sioux City as 199 miles -- a round trip of nearly 400 miles.

That was after he had called the police department and the city attorney's office and tried unsuccessfully to resolve the issue.

Sioux City started installing traffic cameras in 2009, and although many motorists have complained about their tickets, city officials said Benkstein's case may be a first.

“We’ve never had an incident where the camera equipment has been off,” City Attorney Nicole Jensen-Harris told me last week, adding the only issue for the city was that the car was in Sioux City when the violation took place. “That’s all we’re required to prove.”

The city did check with Dollar Thrifty but was told Benkstein's mileage could not be verified.

However, late Friday afternoon, a Dollar Thrifty official contacted the police department saying it would pay the fine to RedFlex, the company that operates the cameras. As of Wednesday afternoon, Dollar Thrifty hadn't returned my calls and emails asking what spurred the decision.

Benkstein had just mailed his payment to the RedFlex processing center in Cleveland. When the company receives the two payments, it will work with the city to refund his money, RedFlex spokeswoman Jody Ryan of Phoenix said.

She also said the staff wasn't aware of any erroneous date stamps on citations "in recent history."

Benkstein, 61, who lived in Cedar Rapids and Des Moines for 20 years before moving to Oregon in 2002, said he hasn't been in Sioux City since 2000.

“If I had actually done the crime, I would have owned up to it and paid the ticket,” he said. “What we have is a confluence of robots and real human beings here.”

Sometimes, humans score a surprise win over technology.

“I think I have a happy ending,” Benkstein said.

http://siouxcityjournal.com/news/loc...c1413323a.html

To me both are bull shit in the first degree and only used to raise money.

One other thing, the city of Sioux City didn't buy the speed cameras, instead the company that builds them gave them to the city and is given a cut per ticket. If that isn't a recipe for corruption nothing is.

[go bo]

Originally Posted by mlyonsd

Any ticket should be considered bull shit if a police officer didn't witness it and is willing to testify in a court of law.

In Iowa red light cameras only create revenue. Offenses aren't submitted to your insurance company or show up on your DMV records. Guy at work (raider fan) has received two red light tickets in the past three years and refused to pay either of them. His insurance has not gone up and he's renewed his plates twice. The only thing he hasn't tried to do yet is renew his driver's license so we don't know about that.

On a side topic, speed cameras in Iowa are the same thing. Here's an interesting story from the local paper that makes you wonder why anyone pays the fine:



http://siouxcityjournal.com/news/loc...c1413323a.html

To me both are bull shit in the first degree and only used to raise money.

One other thing, the city of Sioux City didn't buy the speed cameras, instead the company that builds them gave them to the city and is given a cut per ticket. If that isn't a recipe for corruption nothing is.

i admit it's a combover...

[The Bunk]

Originally Posted by Chief Gump

Do they send the letter as a certified letter? If they don't they can never prove you received the letter.

Mine came as a regular letter. I went ahead and paid it. I just knew Barney Fife that had been on the force for two weeks was just waiting to pounce on me.

[redgoldexpress]

My wife and I just went to court for a red light violation. It was not because of a camera but an officer supposedly saw my wife run a red light. I happened to be in the car when this happened, and we were in the intersection when the light turned red. An Independence PD officer in an unmarked turned on the discos and pulled us over and gave us a ticket. When we received the ticket in the mail, we went to the courthouse to contest the ticket, once we got in front of the judge the officer said that he just looked at the video right before he came across the street to the courthouse. The judge granted a continuance for last week, in which the judge requested the officer to bring in the copy of the tape. Once we got in front of the judge the officer again explained what happened and stated that the dash cam footage of the violation had been purged and that he did not have the video evidence. The judge then asked my wife to explain her side of the story in which she did. After about 10 seconds the judge fined us with court cost the fine was $100.00. I in turned asked the judge why did he side with the officer when it is up the accuser to prove if you are guilty after all you are "innocent until proven guilty" the judge said that you could file an appeal. When we asked about the appeal process it would have cost us another $160-$170 to file the appeal in which we could of not "won" our money back. So we just decided to pay the $100 and call it good.

[ThaVirus]

Originally Posted by redgoldexpress

My wife and I just went to court for a red light violation. It was not because of a camera but an officer supposedly saw my wife run a red light. I happened to be in the car when this happened, and we were in the intersection when the light turned red. An Independence PD officer in an unmarked turned on the discos and pulled us over and gave us a ticket. When we received the ticket in the mail, we went to the courthouse to contest the ticket, once we got in front of the judge the officer said that he just looked at the video right before he came across the street to the courthouse. The judge granted a continuance for last week, in which the judge requested the officer to bring in the copy of the tape. Once we got in front of the judge the officer again explained what happened and stated that the dash cam footage of the violation had been purged and that he did not have the video evidence. The judge then asked my wife to explain her side of the story in which she did. After about 10 seconds the judge fined us with court cost the fine was $100.00. I in turned asked the judge why did he side with the officer when it is up the accuser to prove if you are guilty after all you are "innocent until proven guilty" the judge said that you could file an appeal. When we asked about the appeal process it would have cost us another $160-$170 to file the appeal in which we could of not "won" our money back. So we just decided to pay the $100 and call it good.

The good ol' justice system at work right there.

[redgoldexpress]

Originally Posted by ThaVirus

The good ol' justice system at work right there.

Yeah I know tell me about it.

[verbaljitsu]

I am a lawyer. I have had about ten of these dismissed in the last year. They can't make them. However, they fight tooth and nail when a pro se defendant tries to fight them. They quietly dismiss them when a lawyer appears. The problem is they set the fine amount almost perfectly. I need to charge about $100 to make it worth the effort. So the only people that make sense to hire me have like 5 red light tickets or more serious companion charges.

You absolutely cannot ignore them. They will issue warrants. Eventually you could get your license suspended.

[Predarat]

I want to take a baseball bat or hammer and beat the shit out of every Red Light camera ever made.

[Valiant]

Originally Posted by Predarat

I want to take a baseball bat or hammer and beat the shit out of every Red Light camera ever made.

Offer young kids to paintball the cameras.. No real damage, just have to wait for them to be cleaned.. hypothetically of course..

[Frazod]

Naperville actually removed the damned things. Thank God.

[MahiMike]

They just started putting these in here in Jax. I'm kinda glad actually. Here, if you don't run a red light, you're likely to get rear-ended by 3 more cars behind you.

[houstonwhodat]

In Texas they tried to outlaw them.

A cop told me that it's not a moving violation because a cop has to personally write that type of ticket.

[Tombstone RJ]

it's nothing more than a revenue stream for local municipalities IMHO. It's understandable why so many towns are trying to use this system because it generates revenue which is a positive, it "may" prevent accidents and it frees up law enforcement to concentrate on other things like bustin' hardened criminals and eat'n deep fried donuts!

[Saulbadguy]

Ignore it. Don't pay.