A family friend, who happens to be a judge that decided one of the two cases that declared them unconstitutional, told me that it'd "be a cold day in hell" before he allowed them. He said they're blatantly unconstitutional then gave a lengthy reply why. Won't deny I sorta zoned out halfway through ... damn ADHD.
From what I did manage to gather, though, the local governments were trying to argue that the cameras made the streets safer despite study after study proving this was wrong. IANAL but apparently that means they're used solely for tax collection purposes and, as such, they have to prove the money is being used to make the streets safer. Not surprisingly, the governments were unable to do that so the court said, "go fuck yourself" and last I heard they were working their way through the appellate process.
In my area rear endings at red lights went up because people slam on their breaks and because of many reasons that prevented the tickets from being pursued to a fine and had to be thrown out the city still had to pay a huge fee to the camera companies that would have partially been paid by tickets. A lot of the tickets during the afternoon were at an angle where the suns reflection covered up the drivers face was one reason
Well, iirc that was the whole point of challenging them in court. Not only did they not lower accidents, in many, they increased them.
The corner in which the plaintiff received their ticket the accidents went up. He was sorta laughing about that. I'm one of those where I only remember bits and pieces of conversations but I remember him saying something like, "Some attorneys choose losing cases just because they like seeing their names in print."
In Springfield Mo. they are not able to use the cameras for traffic tickets anymore. There are cameras at every major intersection and they used them for literally just a few months. Public had an uproar and they fairly quickly just stopped using them. After all that money and time (our money as taxpayers) wasted... they're still up and they're still active to spy on us, but they can't use them for Traffic Court.
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u/davvii Oct 14 '17
Where I'm from they were ruled unconstitutional.
A family friend, who happens to be a judge that decided one of the two cases that declared them unconstitutional, told me that it'd "be a cold day in hell" before he allowed them. He said they're blatantly unconstitutional then gave a lengthy reply why. Won't deny I sorta zoned out halfway through ... damn ADHD.
From what I did manage to gather, though, the local governments were trying to argue that the cameras made the streets safer despite study after study proving this was wrong. IANAL but apparently that means they're used solely for tax collection purposes and, as such, they have to prove the money is being used to make the streets safer. Not surprisingly, the governments were unable to do that so the court said, "go fuck yourself" and last I heard they were working their way through the appellate process.