The audio is the famous speech from the film "Network"
Smile. The telescreen is watching. Red light camera traffic tickets are a scam.But it's not Big Brother watching. He's rented out the job to a private company. It's still spying -- family member against family member, and no one is safe (unless maybe you have government exemption plates).
The private for profit corporation that sold intersection cameras and exclusive maintenance contracts to cities across the country did so with promises of free money.
But the offense is rarely for dangerously running a red light. The money to be made is for automatically generating thousands of tickets for rolling stops at yellow lights. The "California roll" may not be safe but it is hardly something to be punished with a ticket that can run $500. And it is widely practiced.
Pitching the promise of preventing motorists from running red lights and causing intersection disasters, these private camera companies have in fact gone overboard. They send out representatives to train municipalities how to set their leased cameras to catch conscientious motorists on a technicality.
(Even if the cameras cause more accidents by people stopping short while trying to avoid getting ticketed, cities just want to see the returns they were promised that have never materialized).
The motive on both sides -- between the camera company and the cities, because the motoring public does not figure into the equation -- is easy: profits. Whose profits? Not the city's, the company's. And they have been very successful riding the backs of overtaxed drivers.
Some drivers are as mad as niraya and are not going to take it anymore! Others don't mind being gouged as punitive fees for first time offenses skyrocket to refill municipal coffers drained by the economic downturn. At a time when everyone has less income to spare, the ticket fines are going way up. That leaves one between a rock and a hard place.
What can a person do after being ticketed by mail?
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