Big Brother is Watching
I got another one, this time in DC where the charge is $125.00 and they will double it if you ignore the invoice. It was on New York Ave somewhere, if anyone cares. I don't remember speeding, I remember keeping up with traffic.
This one makes about 7 tickets I’ve received in the mail without delivery or signature confirmation, and I paid the other six because it was easier to just pay it than fight it for $40. This one is triple the usual price.
Yeah, I could slow down. I could stop running through the yellow. I could also reduce my cholesterol and volunteer to help the poor more often, but that is another diary on another day.
Red light and speed cameras are coming to a town near you. There are several dozen of them in Baltimore City, and more than two hundred known in the state of Maryland. The revenue these cameras provide is irresistible to city and county governments. Linky
Montgomery County, for example, which was the first county in the state to install speed cameras in select residential streets and school zones in 2007, estimated that it would receive more than $13 million in net revenue from fines for fiscal year 2010.
April 2011 news article
In the last 6 months, Baltimore County (from the city north to PA) has issued 43,000 tickets from their newly installed units in November 2010, which translates to $1.2 million in revenue, a cool million of which went to the company that owns the scamera devices.
I’ve seen license plates with those plastic photo blocking devices. I’ve seen license plates with mud on them (rest of the car is clean), and I’ve seen plates with one letter painted to match the background color. I’m told it is illegal to intentionally disguise your license plate, and my girlfriend was pulled over last December in Baltimore County because one of the little lights illuminating her license plate was burned out. I’m convinced (without a shred of evidence to support my conviction) that the county had/has a “special enforcement” mandate for license plate visibility.
The “official” reason for these devices, of course, is safety. Data showing a reduction in violations in school zones, work zones, and highways where the cameras are located are cited as “wins” for the camera installations. (As people learn where they are, they slow down, forcing the car behind them to slow down, lowering the number of speeders through the area) A response to the linked article:
Please explain to me how a camera system that sends a bill out to the vehicles registered owner 2 weeks after the offense has taken in place is going to make school zones safe…
Is it coincidental or greedy that the cameras in school zones continue to send out tickets during the summer,... two in the morning, ... Sundays,... and Christmas?
An officer in a marked car sitting on the side of the road with lights flashing is an effective method of slowing traffic. Same officer hiding behind a bush at night at the bottom of a hill next to the reduction in speed sign is worth debate on whether it is valid law enforcement or revenue generating activity.
Cameras giving out tickets 24/7 regardless of work activity, or school activity, or traffic patterns are obviously revenue generating devices and not there for safety reasons. Plates with light reflecting covers, or mud, or paint can cruise through the camera zone with impunity. How is that law enforcement?
Do we still have the right to face our accuser in court; is mass surveillance of the population OK since GWB got away with it? As with most traffic court B.S., the driver is guilty until proved innocent. Most of us have no experience with courts other than traffic violations, and if you go to traffic court you wish beyond hope that the issuing officer had something better to do that night, because you know it's your only way out of that ticket. Just count the number of people that plead "Guilty with Explanation". No judge in this country will ever say: "That's a great explanation, dismissed."
With cameras deciding my guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, can I cross examine the camera? Do I have access to whatever technology has decided my car was the one that tripped the photo? Imagine two cars passing through the photo zone at the same time, one traveling under the limit, the other rapidly catching up to me exceeding the limit. How do I know whether the other car in the picture did or did not trigger the photo?
I’m waiting for a response to my refusal to pay my most recent ticket (invoice) based on my assertion that the letters and numbers on the photo match my license in the correct order, but it cannot be ascertained which state issued the license. My claim is that some other state issued the same license number to another car that looks just like mine from the back. The picture is shadowed, I have a license plate frame that hides about half the word “Maryland”, and the only way to definitively show the license was issued in Maryland is the little state crest in the middle, too small, I hope, for clarity in the picture.
My guess is they will simply throw it away; consider it a non-response, and double the fine for their next unconfirmed delivery of correspondence. I’m tempted to return to them a picture of $250 in cash to respond their picture of me speeding. I’m not beholden to the District for registration renewal, so I don’t think there’s much they can do to me, aside from adding bold letters to the next mailing.
I’m at a point in my life I can afford a lawyer to get me out of this. I’m not paying this ticket. I’ll pay the lawyer whatever it takes.
I welcome your comments, thoughts, advice, and donations. Should we roll over and take this abuse of our civil rights? It is not 1984, but Mr. Orwell is grumbling from the grave that he was a couple of decades off in his estimate.
I feel like smearing Vaseline on the camera lens - except the damn things are mounted on poles. I am itching to commit an act of civil disobedience... what say you?