More, I am less than comfortable with the comparison between the situations that he pops up on the web seemingly on a weekly basis and the topic under discussion here. That's because as screwed up as police forces get, at least there's still a human being that you can point at , which is certainly not the case with the automated systems under discussion here.

In all that time, I have been saying that 90% of the traffic laws, and specifically speed laws, have very little to do with public safety and everything to do with making money for the local governments. And in all that time, I've seen very little to counter that observation.

I will suggest to you that a cup sitting in the middle of the freeway running radar is a bigger hazard to life than would be the drivers left to their natural and logical impulses.

Most traffic enforcement is of a kindwith that kind of safeguarding we've seen out of the T. S. A., where the person is supposedly safeguarding our travelers from Islamic radicals with bombs, are instead spending most of their time removing oversized bottles of hairspray and toothpaste and the deodorant from the suitcases of 75 year old Irish grandmothers. It does very little to stop the real problem, but it does have the distinct quality of the government yet again being a major pain in the ass for people trying to get from point A to point B..

And of course it also serves as a rather large monetary collection point .

This now with the cameras were talking about, you don't even need a police officer there to make money. The cameras are far cheaper. they work 24 hours a day without a break. So, as with manufacturing going to the robots, the government makes even more money.

Forget about guilty or not guilty , if that camera goes off there can't be any such thing as not guilty, after all. Forget about small things like the constitution. Forget the implications of big brother. forget about the fact that the justification for the law the camera supposedly is enforcing , particularly speed cameras, is questionable.

I dare to propose to you that government as a whole loses its legitimacy to the direct degree that its laws are unreasonable. That process is accelerated, when its enforcement is unreasonable. Both those qualities, are present in this situation. The outcome, in the end, is quite predictable.

As to the victims of this “game,” one presumes “This isn’t the car to which these plates are assigned” would be an effective defense.

James, James, James....logic? Do you know who you are talking about? You should Radley Balko's story about the guy who noticed he wasn't charged sales tax on a hardware store purchase. So he wrote out a check payable to the State of Florida (which ever department) and sent it in with a letter explaining things. The State of Florida demanded he pay $50 in fines for failing to pay sales taxes as a business. The guy sends another letter explaining he is a not a business, but was correcting for an oversight as a customer. A month later he gets another threatening letter this time demanding $650 dollars or face collections and criminal charges.

Link

Logic and government, the two are all to frequently mutually exclusive.

It would seem that they would notice that [in most cases] the plate doesn't match the vehicle, before issuing the ticket. At least this should cause some live human review??, or maybe they will need to upgrade recognition technology to include make model and color?
Of course transponders & GPS systems will soon eliminate the need for the camera ticket and turn every car into a snitch, ratting on it's owner at every turn!

BTW: The assumption of guilt is law in Illinois traffic court, as is implied consent!

As I suggested at my place the other day, I wonder what this says about how the various governments have been operating with these things; Guilty until proven innocent.