Originally Posted by
vkalia
Sorry, maybe I should have been more clear.
When there is no photo, the department has no case against you. There should be no need for a driver to even have to contest the charge. By issuing a moving violation when there is no legal basis for doing so, the concerned department is banking on the fact that most people will simply pay rather than waste a day in court. Before I became a beach bum, I sure as hell wouldnt give up a day's wages to save a couple of hundred bucks.
What the government is doing is enforcing a law that they know to be unconstitutional. Technically speaking, you are right - this doesnt require the driver to prove his innocence, it merely requires him to defend himself. But bottom line is - the government has no business trying this in the first place.
V.
So are you saying that video recorded evidence should not be considered in any case? Or just that you feel the government is setting it up as a trap? If the former, I disagree completely. Many important criminal and civil cases have been proven beyond a doubt because it was video recorded. If you have a problem with government cameras in public, why not a problem with private cameras? If the latter, then your issue still isn't with the government enforcing a law (the law is not running a red light, a perfectly constitutional law), but the way in which they catch people doing it. Of course, I find less of a problem with it when they have big cameras with signs that tell you about their presence as well as the dollar fine. That should make people think twice. My only exception is like you said earlier: When the general public consents to this in the first place, they unwittingly vote approvals that allow the government to do similar things with different motives.