Americans, did you ever receive a traffic violation through email?

I just found the strangest thing in my mailbox:




Note that I live in Europe and have never even been in the USA.

It's probably just spam, but it made me curious if you guys actually receive something similar when you break a (traffic) law.

Google is your friend. hoax-slayer

In 1993 I was driving a 1963 Ford Fairlane convertible (not mine) in North Dakota. It had an improperly installed metric conversion kit (my buddy and I are Canadians and use metric). I was caught going about 30 mph over the limit. Explained to the officer (was still given a ticket), so he paced me so that I could find out what speed really was 55 mph.

He left. I ripped up the ticket and threw it away because after all....I live in another country. Forgot about it and 1/2 year later I received a default conviction and license suspension in the mail. Suspended by virtue of DMV in another country?! So I ignored that as well.

Tom

Yeah I've heard of those, by people who got hit by photo radar after running a red light. They get a nice ticket in the mail with a picture of them in their car.

Yes and they had to STOP issuing those in Arizona because the law says that getting a ticket in the mail is not being properly, legally, served so people found out you can just throw them away and nothing happens since the issuing agency, for the "ticket" was actually a foreign corporation.

t-dub

Bouldorado said:

Yeah I've heard of those, by people who got hit by photo radar after running a red light. They get a nice ticket in the mail with a picture of them in their car.

Click to expand...

I have heard from multiple folks here in California that tickets received for running a red light do not actually have to be paid and if you don't, there is really nothing that can happen from it.

Anyone have any information that can confirm that statement or prove it false?

I don't currently have any withstanding red light tickets, just curious for future reference.

EDIT: Well t-dub pretty much answered my question, thanks!

cluffy said:

Google is your friend. hoax-slayer

Click to expand...

Ah, there it is. I tried googling the senders email address but that came up empty, which was conspicuous enough by itself. Good thing I never opened the attachment

VaporNation said:

Bouldorado said:

Yeah I've heard of those, by people who got hit by photo radar after running a red light. They get a nice ticket in the mail with a picture of them in their car.

Click to expand...

I have heard from multiple folks here in California that tickets received for running a red light do not actually have to be paid and if you don't, there is really nothing that can happen from it.

Anyone have any information that can confirm that statement or prove it false?

I don't currently have any withstanding red light tickets, just curious for future reference.

EDIT: Well t-dub pretty much answered my question, thanks!

Click to expand...

these cams are all over STL. ive gotten one myself and honestly they are a joke. they are a revenue generator. in fact a percentage of each paid ticket goes to the manufacturers of the cams themselves. its actually a violation of the constitution.

say you let your brother barrow your car... and he runs a red light. guess who gets the ticket? guess who record those points go against? not very fair eh?

its purely to generate revenue. not to make the roads safer. there was a story a couple of years ago about a town in Nevada where a study was conducted... basically they found that this town had shaved 1/8s and 1/10s of a second off of the yellow lights time. in turn causing the red light to come on sooner than normal which caused a huge rise in these cam tickets and a big jolt of revenue.

if you stand up against it you will not have to pay. in fact just dont pay them. they wont come after you... from my experience anyway.

The whole thing is a scam. /ignore

t-dub

2clicker said:

say you let your brother barrow your car... and he runs a red light. guess who gets the ticket? guess who record those points go against? not very fair eh?

Click to expand...

That's actually not true, at least here in California. All you have to do is show up at the court with the picture you were sent, and show the judge that you are not the person in the picture, and they will dismiss the charges.

That said, here in California it has also become a well known fact (as mentioned by others) that simply ignoring the ticket will not have any repercussions.

I'm guessing you guys don't have the fixed speed cameras that snap everyone going over the limit? The UK is probably the capital of the world for these- I think there are around 6000 of them installed on the roads of our tiny islands. The justification is that they are installed near to accident blackspots, but I'm not sure that there's an awful lot of evidence that they do reduce accidents- in fact I have read that they can contribute to an increase as so many cars touch the brakes to ensure that they're well under the limit. One thing that is for certain- these 6000 odd cameras certainly do generate a lot of income :/

It's actually got even harder to speed here now- on the motorways where there are repairs or ongoing works they often reduce the speed limit to 50mph for the duration of the works (sometimes for years). To implement this they have average speed cameras- these little buggers are installed every couple of miles along the road and they log your number plate (license plate). They take the time taken to travel the distance between the cameras to work out whether you've exceeded the speed limit or not. It's down to the registered owner of the car to state who was driving at the time of the offence.

These average speed cameras do actually work though- you really do see all of the traffic keeping within 10% of the limit, and they get around the issue of people braking dangerously before a camera as happened with the traditional style.

Yeah, we have those as well, the ones that track you constantly too on some roads. Some of them even measure the distance you keep to the vehicle in front of you and if it's not a certain distance (various per speed) you get a ticket for that as well. You can have your GPS warn you for them though, or add new ones through it to keep the database updated through the internet. Radar detectors are not allowed here, our cops even have radar detectors detectors, lmao.

Whoa, I didn't know you could just ignore them. I wonder what the rules are like in WA state.

My mom's gotten like 2 and paid for both for around $300 total in the past year. As far as I know it is not considered a moving violation so it doesn't go on your record/insurance, so it would make sense if you could just ignore it.

VaporNation said:

Bouldorado said:

Yeah I've heard of those, by people who got hit by photo radar after running a red light. They get a nice ticket in the mail with a picture of them in their car.

Click to expand...

I have heard from multiple folks here in California that tickets received for running a red light do not actually have to be paid and if you don't, there is really nothing that can happen from it.

Anyone have any information that can confirm that statement or prove it false?

I don't currently have any withstanding red light tickets, just curious for future reference.

EDIT: Well t-dub pretty much answered my question, thanks!

Click to expand...

L.A. Country right now has a hold on the cameras until they decide if they want to take it down or not. Same thing for parts of the O.C., but be careful there as cops/law enforcement is a little more strict there(specially in Irvine/Newport area), and they don't believe in online traffic school. I got a camera ticket there once and its not fun, neither is it in Riverside or so I hear.

2clicker said:

VaporNation said:

Bouldorado said:

Yeah I've heard of those, by people who got hit by photo radar after running a red light. They get a nice ticket in the mail with a picture of them in their car.

Click to expand...

I have heard from multiple folks here in California that tickets received for running a red light do not actually have to be paid and if you don't, there is really nothing that can happen from it.

Anyone have any information that can confirm that statement or prove it false?

I don't currently have any withstanding red light tickets, just curious for future reference.

EDIT: Well t-dub pretty much answered my question, thanks!

Click to expand...

these cams are all over STL. ive gotten one myself and honestly they are a joke. they are a revenue generator. in fact a percentage of each paid ticket goes to the manufacturers of the cams themselves. its actually a violation of the constitution.

say you let your brother barrow your car... and he runs a red light. guess who gets the ticket? guess who record those points go against? not very fair eh?

its purely to generate revenue. not to make the roads safer. there was a story a couple of years ago about a town in Nevada where a study was conducted... basically they found that this town had shaved 1/8s and 1/10s of a second off of the yellow lights time. in turn causing the red light to come on sooner than normal which caused a huge rise in these cam tickets and a big jolt of revenue.

if you stand up against it you will not have to pay. in fact just dont pay them. they wont come after you... from my experience anyway.

Click to expand...

Not sure how it works in STL, but in California they give you the option of putting info of the person driving your car so you don't get in trouble, but the person who was driving does. Or you can just say it wasn't you in the car and they dismiss it, at least that's what my pops did when a red light cam got me on his car. These things can be a joke. specially since the company that makes the camera is from Australia, and the pictures are being sent out from Arizona(at least that what my tickets say).

It all comes down to this:

If it gets delivered to you "Certified Mail" meaning you have to personally sign for it, then you HAVE to pay it

If it comes like normal mail, they can never do anything to you because you technically "never got it"

This applies to most things...

The one I got in the O.C. was certified, but this is good know.

Well I guess except for Jury Duty, which last I remember they send it to you via regular mail and if you don't go you are kind of fucked.