Big brother is watching
Man, I have all the luck. As faithful Doug’s World readers know, I got a pretty silly traffic ticket a few months ago. And now this: a ticket for running a red light, from a hidden camera monitoring the intersection of Rainier and Orcas.
OK, so I did in fact push the light a bit, because I was running late to meet my friend Eric for a beer. But still. This is America. And in the America I grew up in (cue the “Star Spangled Banner” here), if you knew for sure there were no cops around, you could run red lights all you wanted.
And more importantly, in that same mom-and-apple-pie America, when you got a ticket the process started with an opportunity to talk your way out of it. But how can you negotiate with a camera? One you don’t even know is there?
I love the corner of my Nine Inch Nails bumper sticker in the license-plate closeup. That’s probably the real reason they wrote me up. I should replace it — anybody know where to get an “I heart cops” bumper sticker? Maybe one in the shape of a fish or a badge or something?
This entry was posted on Thursday, October 11th, 2007 at 5:39 pm. You can subscribe to comments on this post through its RSS feed.
on October 11, 2007 at 7:22 pm Tom wrote:
That’s it. You’re obviously a bad influence and a shameful scofflaw. I’m not going to pattern my life after yours anymore. So much for left-handed golfing and .NET.
Seriously, though, I agree. There was a guy around here who beat the rap on one of those based on the fact that by Illinois law, they have to notify you (at least around here) in something like fifteen days. They didn’t get him a notification until 27 days later, and he went to court and won his fight. Granted, he never did make any effort to prove that he hadn’t broken the law, so there was a lot of blathering about whether he was just blowing wind when in fact he was a speeder. The judge apparently ripped the prosecutor a new one after this schlub came in and tore down the case against himself based on the laws regarding notification of violation. If they’re going to nail you for speeding, they need (at the ticket-issuing level AND at the court level) to know the law themselves.
I agree, too, that if they’re going to write you a $101 ticket, they should have to roll a car and pull you over properly. There’s an ancient protocol to be followed — we are an empty society if we don’t grant each other this formality. In other words, if we can’t have radar detectors to defend ourselves against them, they can’t have unmanned cameras to catch us.
If nothing else, that might keep the policing of speeders down to the really hazardous people. But then I get cranky about this, as our last few homes have been in neighborhoods with moderate amounts of crime, and most of the routes I travel in the car have at least two stupid speed traps in them (not to mention the rabid parking ticket attention we get). So if they took some of those cops and put them toward fighting bad guys instead of fighting me and my urge to make my light on the way to dropping my kid off at school or park for five minutes a foot too close to a hydrant, I’d feel more like their priorities were in the right place. So I may be a bit biased about all of this.
Of course, you could argue that the cameras free up officers to go fight crime. Dunno. Still seems wrong for some reason, though. In order to respect each other, we all need to be playing by the same rules.
Either way, I’m very disappointed in you, young man.
(And by the way, more and more people I know are getting caught by one of these — I’m quickly becoming part of the minority for NOT having been nailed by a camera yet.)
on October 12, 2007 at 6:06 pm Doug wrote:
Tom, your disappointment makes my pain all the greater.
But seriously … I’m still pissed. I may have to go find a stop light out in the country and run it over and over. And I need to go back to the intersection of Rainier and Orcas to figure out where that camera is located. Is there an obvious camera, so that spotting those can replace the traditional practice of cop-spotting? Or is it so hidden I won’t find it? Stay tuned.
on October 13, 2007 at 8:50 am nick wrote:
Since I have been back on a sportbike I have met a few riders that have cool little release things on their plates when they dont want the man or his camera to see who they are. But when they get caught there are big fines and impound fees. Take off your trailer ball and have a stainless steel middle finger put there so next time you can state your feelings right off the bat. Or just drive like I do since my canser surgery and all I found life is short and I dont really care if I am a few minutes late, not worth the rush.
on October 14, 2007 at 8:21 am Lynn wrote:
Come to Berkeley and tolerate the no turn of red signs. Intersections where there is absolutely no traffic until the light turns green and then someone runs a red lightthat legal and the pedestrians stepping off the curb just as you think the coast is clear for a legal turn. Before you know it the light is red again and you have to wait for the green light to return. It happens to me almost every day at the intersection of Telegraph and Derby.
on October 15, 2007 at 8:09 am Scott B wrote:
Once you see what your looking for, it actually becomes quite obvious. It’s a big ugly box attached to a St. Light or telephone pole a few dozen feet before the said intersection.
I saw a few things in a news report a few months ago on how to defete these things.
http://www.phantomplate.com/
http://www.backstreetinline.com/photoblocker/
Although I do not know if either of these are better than any else, I am sure a tad of research could clarify it if this was a direction you wanted to go. =)
Down with the man!!
Scott
on October 16, 2007 at 10:55 pm Doug wrote:
Scott, I should have known you’d know the details.
on October 17, 2007 at 7:46 pm Tom wrote:
Hey, I just noticed that it will be processed as a parking infraction, not a moving violation. This seems to prove that either a) they aren’t sure they can nail you on the moving violation because it wasn’t witnessed by a human, or b) that a moving violation requires that you be able to engage the officer (kind of the same thing, but not quite). Interesting — I didn’t think they could do that kind of massaging. Still, a $101 parking ticket is pretty steep.
on October 21, 2007 at 11:12 am molly wrote:
at least it’s on record as just a parking infraction.
i have a friend who was caught on camera running a red light… while trying to read the map on the way to the courthouse for her drunk driving trial. that was rough.