A woman drives with both hands on the wheel. Her phone sits face-down on her lap. No officer pulls her over. No lights flash. Weeks later, a $1,251 ticket arrives in the mail. The evidence: a single frame from a Camera surveillance app. The charge: phone use while driving.
Automated camera companies market their devices as automated license plate readers — tools for catching stolen cars, flagging warrants, and aiding serious investigations.
Sold as a Crime Tool. Used as a Fine Machine.
Have you ever fought a traffic ticket? You’re not on trial. You’re not pleading guilty/not-guilty. It’s an administrative/civil thing.
Every traffic ticket in the US I’ve seen requires you to check a box to plead before you pay it (assuming you aren’t fighting it). When you pay it, you are either pleading guilty or no contest. If you go to your court date instead you get asked to enter a plea and it can be not guilty.
Granted, I haven’t been ticketed in all 50 states… yet.
Edit: Apparently the click-bait headline is referencing a person from Australia, despite the rest of the article talking about US law… No idea how traffic tickets work there…
#lifegoals
To be clear I live in Texas so maybe we do things differently wherever you live. We definitely go to court and plead for traffic violations.
MA. Tickets have “I’d like to pay” or “I’d like a hearing”. No mention of guilt.
Hearings are civil, not criminal, and you represent yourself in front of a magistrate (baby judge). If you tried to represent yourself in a criminal case, the judge would give you a very hard time about that choice. Either way, you don’t call witnesses, there’s no cross examination, and no discovery.
I don’t get where people are going full Law&Order, demanding to see their accuser.