has anyone gotten a ticket from a photo radar?

Red light tickets here in SoCal are $420-ish...





Anyways, the law is that when your vehicle crosses the first crosswalk line, you are in the intersection.



If you are in the intersection before the light turns red, you are not in violation.
 
Setec Astronomy said:
There has been a lot of reporting about how big companies approach cities and offer to install red-light cameras at intersections at no cost to the city. The company installs and runs the system, and give the city a cut of the take. In exchange, the city hands over control of the light timing to the company.



This sounds like a win-win, the city gets safer intersections and ticket money, without having to do anything. Unfortunately, it's been found that once it gets publicized, red-light infractions go down, and then the company is left with a situation where they can't make any money to recoup their investment. So what do they do? They adjust the light timing in ways that will increase red light infractions (shorten the yellow), which is the opposite of what you want to do for safety purposes.



This is very common. Most cities cannot afford to pay for all the equipment so the cities barter deals with the photo enforcement equiment manufacturers to supply, and often operate, the equipment for a perecentage of each ticket.



Unfortunately, it is supposed to be illegal for companies to issue the citations. This happened in Colorado where the photo radar vehicles were being operated by the photo radar manufacturer employees. Moving violation citations are only to be handed out by sworn in law enforcement officers and the tickets must be delivered either in person by a LEO or via certified mail.**



**drawing from Colorado examples. your local state laws are different and should be researched.





Anyways, photo radar presents other legal issues which may or may not be covered by statutes - such as: Possibly violating your 6th Amendment rights because the tickets are usually worded in a manner to coerce you to forego your right to a speedy trial and you are unable to question your accuser (California gets around this by having an officer review the traffic video to verify that it was a legitimate ticket).
 
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