Have you successfully beaten a ticket received from a traffic camera?

October 21, 2011 12:46 PM

Have you successfully beaten a ticket received from a traffic camera?

Received a citation in the mail from the DC police for a speeding violation (+11) that occurred on the edge of the city. It was a cloudy and rainy day and I recall seeing the flash of the camera. My question is: does rain impact the performance of traffic cameras in any way?

posted by wensink to Law & Government (15 answers total)

Heavy rain can reduce the range of radar due to attenuation, but would not affect the accuracy of the measurement.
posted by IanMorr at 1:00 PM on October 21, 2011

Response by poster: Thanks, Ian. Any idea about what sort of scheduled maintenance these cameras require or how often they are calibrated for accuracy?
posted by wensink at 1:05 PM on October 21, 2011

It is incredibly difficult to argue a ticket, justified or not, in Washington DC. I tried to request a hearing for a parking ticket with written statements from 2 of my neighbors, and was denied even a hearing. I'd imagine trying to argue a technicality on a speeding ticket would be even less likely to be successful.
posted by goggie at 1:15 PM on October 21, 2011

Yeah, it's a waste of time. You won't even get to talk to a judge in DC.
posted by empath at 1:16 PM on October 21, 2011

This person beat one. But it is most likely a waste of your time to try. DC can't tax people who work in the city but live out of state, so they give them traffic tickets instead.
posted by procrastination at 1:19 PM on October 21, 2011

I'm pretty sure, based on my own experience with DC traffic cameras, that they're signed off on by some kind of officer every day. If you go to court to fight it, they'll present you with a digital image of the document showing that the camera was inspected and properly calibrated that day, with the signature of the person who inspected it.

On the other hand, if there's anything wrong with the citation which may be obvious to the adjudication official but not to you, you may luck out and they'll notice it and dismiss the ticket. From what I understand, this kind of luck is usually limited to other cars being in the photograph. But it might be worth contesting it via mail just to see.
posted by wam at 1:21 PM on October 21, 2011

Response by poster: Thanks for the link, procrastination. This is staggering (but not surprising):

>As of last month [Sep. 2009], the District's private photo enforcement contractors had mailed a total of 4,019,023 tickets worth a total of $305 million. That is equivalent to one ticket not just for every resident of Washington, DC, but for every single resident of the District plus surrounding Virginia and Maryland suburbs.
posted by wensink at 1:26 PM on October 21, 2011

Wind blown rain could easily fool a radar device, but contesting automated tickets is nearly impossible in most jurisdictions. Sorry you got scammed.
posted by wierdo at 1:33 PM on October 21, 2011

Don't dig too deep into the whole traffic camera business. You'll find that A) cities sign up for these contracts as an easy revenue stream, only to find that the cameras actually "work" in that people stop speeding (excessively) and then they discover that B) the vendors structure the contract with the city to tilt the profits towards the vendor in low-revenue situations.

I have nothing to contribute on the feasibility of getting out of one of those tickets, just wanted to point out the general scamminess of the whole enterprise. Cities started pushing back about a year or two ago.
posted by intermod at 1:53 PM on October 21, 2011

Do any of the pictures have your face? I know in Oregon (quite obviously NOT DC) that they have to get your face in the picture, because otherwise it wasn't necessarily you that was driving.
posted by Mister Fabulous at 2:03 PM on October 21, 2011

Response by poster: @Mister Fabulous No pictures of my face, but since the vehicle was a Zipcar there is a paper trail that points to me as the responsible driver.
posted by wensink at 2:11 PM on October 21, 2011

I came in here to second Mister Fabulous' statement - I know that in California I successfully fought a ticket, despite clear paper trail and completely obvious driving-car-registered-to-me business, simply because my sun visor was pulled down and I had HUGE sunglasses on, which successfully obscured my face enough that I got out of the ticket. I say at least look into if that law applies to DC, fighting tickets for me isn't because I don't want to pay the fines, it is because I don't want the insurance hike.
posted by banannafish at 2:50 PM on October 21, 2011

In Portland, OR in 2002 I went to the police station to identify myself in the picture.

I looked at the photo, said "no, that's not me and a lot of people borrow my car", signed a form, and off I went.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 7:47 PM on October 21, 2011

Can't speak for DC law, but here in IL those tickets are technically like parking tickets and not moving violations, in that they are the responsibility of the owner of the car and not necessarily the driver.

As for beating them, I have gotten a couple of those tickets, and if you go to the website, they include a nice little video of the violation. And both times, I was clearly in the wrong.

The only way to really beat the ticket, if the basic facts are correct, is to see if there is some technical violation of the rules. Like for example, the law here states specifically how those intersections need to be marked. No sign, no fine. Other things could be that the yellow signal is too short for that type of intersection, and that someone going the legal limit couldn't possibly stop in time, or get through the intersection in time.
posted by gjc at 8:46 PM on October 21, 2011

Eek! In the zipcar?! Does that affect your membership?
posted by victory_laser at 3:35 PM on October 22, 2011