Translogistics

Posted on | March 26, 2013 | Comments

If you ve followed the local or statewide debate over red light cameras, you may know that under current law, you can t be forced to pay the ticket if someone else driving your car runs a red light. A bill working its way through Sacramento would change that.

The red light camera at Mission Inn Avenue and Lime Street was removed in November. A state bill would make significant changes to how camera programs like Riverside s are administered.

The bill, titled AB 666¹ (no Satan jokes please), would make significant changes to how red light camera programs like Riverside s are administered, who can be held responsible for tickets and how the tickets are categorized as a legal violation.

Currently, if someone gets a red light camera ticket and photos from the camera show the driver is not the car s registered owner, the owner may get a notice asking who is driving so the ticket can be directed to them (a so-called snitch ticket ). But if officials can t prove who was driving the car when the camera went off, they can t force the owner to respond.

(As a Riverside employee who reviews tickets from the city s camera program said in 2011², if you weren t the one driving, You re under no obligation to help us. )

Under AB 666, if someone driving your car (spouse, child, friend, etc.) gets a ticket and you don t turn them in, you have to pay the fine. Or as it says on the draft notice included in the bill text (page 13 at this link³), you will be liable for paying the automated violation penalty unless you identify the driver.

The bill would change how red light citations are handled from a criminal proceeding (like many other moving violations) to a civil one, and it would lower the cost of citations, though it s not exactly clear by how much.

The bill also would set up an administrative system that local jurisdictions with camera programs again, like Riverside would use to address citations. Currently, those who get red light camera tickets are given a court date.

A few other provisions of the bill were unclear to me on a first reading. I left a message Tuesday for the press contact at the office of Assemblyman Bob Wieckowski⁴, who sponsored the bill, so I ll write an update when I hear back.

The bill language was just amended last week, and support and opposition already have emerged. The California branch of the Traffic Safety Coalition⁵ (a group that gets most of its funding⁶ from camera company Redflex) has a form letter people can sign in favor of the bill. Anti-camera activist Jay Beeber has posted criticism of what he called the devil s bill on the website of his group, Safer Streets LA⁷.

The bill puts an interesting wrinkle in the issue for Riverside residents. The City Council recently opted not to let voters decide⁸ whether to keep the city s red light camera program, but with four council seats on the June ballot, you can bet some voters will want to know where candidates stand, since the city s contract with Redflex lasts until 2016.

I ll be reporting more on this as I get information and calls back, but I ll end for now with an interesting statistic. Riverside doesn t have data on how many of its tickets get paid because that s handled by the courts, but officials can find out from Redflex how many tickets were actually enforceable because the car s owner was also the driver, and how many weren t.

In 2011, Riverside issued 26,856 citations. Of that total, 46.5 percent were snitch tickets.

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References

1. ^{^} AB 666 (www.leginfo.ca.gov)
2. ^{^} said in 2011 (www.pe.com)
3. ^{^} this link (www.leginfo.ca.gov)
4. ^{^} Assemblyman Bob Wieckowski (www.asmdc.org)
5. ^{^} Traffic Safety Coalition (www.trafficsafetycoalition.com)
6. ^{^} most of its funding (blog.pe.com)
7. ^{^} Safer Streets LA (saferstreetsla.org)
8. ^{^} not to let voters decide (www.pe.com)
9. ^{^} Privacy Policy (www.facebook.com)
10. ^{^} Terms of Service (www.facebook.com)
11. ^{^} read the FAQ (www.pe.com)