A Speeding Ticket By Mail? It Could Happen To You This Holiday Weekend

This is our most recent national press release. Feel free to forward it your friends who may be traveling this holiday weekend.

The Fourth of July is one of the busiest traffic days of the year and many motorists will be traveling to unfamiliar areas — often outside of their home state.  Local residents are usually well aware of the quirks of their community’s traffic laws, but unfortunately most out-of-state visitors don’t have that luxury.

While the majority of drivers are wary of increased holiday traffic enforcement patrols — and take measures to protect themselves from undeserved tickets — it may surprise even the most experienced drivers that some states are no longer relying solely on human officers to hand out the tickets.

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Getting Your Money’s Worth

By Eric Peters, Automotive Columnist

Do you keep your cars forever?

It’s the smart move, financially. The typical $20-something-k new car takes a five year loan before it’s paid off. But if you only keep it that long, you’ve basically spent your $20-something-k (less whatever you get back in trade) to rent the thing for that period of time. The money’s gone — and you’re starting all over — with another $20-something-k “investment” that will leave you another $20-something-k out of pocket five years from now.

Do this dance over a lifetime of car-buying and you can easily spend $100k just to get from “a” to “b.”

But if you can hold onto that car for 10-12 years (or more) the money hemorrhaging can be staunched. You can even end up ahead — a car that has not only paid for itself, but which is actually saving you money.

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Traffic Enforcement Dollars And Cents

By Eric Peters, Automotive Columnist

Do you think it is ever a good idea to tie a money incentive to law enforcement of any kind? Not me. It is a guarantee of corruption and abuse. (See also: The War on Drugs.)

Let’s consider just one specific example — the use of cameras to catch (and “process”) red light violators. It’s all about “safety,” right?

Not so much. Here’s the truth:

Automated enforcement began as a completely, openly “privatized” operation, run by a private company — which explicitly, brazenly, promised local governments huge windfalls from the system.

And delivered on that promise.

The “profits” were gleefully split between the two. When this fact became common knowledge, they rejiggered it a bit to make it appear less of an obvious scam. But money is still the main motive. If that were not so, these systems would not be so focused on “revenue enhancement,” to use the favored term of the smarmy little bureaucrats who rule us.

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Ticket Cameras Used To Convict Drivers Without Their Knowledge

The law in the state of Oregon (and other states as well) simply says that citations “may be delivered by mail.” There is an article on OregonLive.com today that illustrates why this is a major flaw in Oregon’s red-light camera system.

The following excerpt from the OregonLive.com article, written by Stacy Mitchell, shows how this flaw can lead to drivers being convicted without knowledge of ever even having been charged:

I live in Maine. Several weeks ago I received a call from someone working collections for Multnomah County. He said I owed the county $353. I was baffled.

It took some time on the phone to sort out what he was talking about. Apparently, while visiting Portland two years ago, in May 2007, I was photographed running a red light.

I was driving a rental car at the time. The rental company turned over my name and driver’s license number. But rather than sending the ticket to my current address — the one on my driver’s license at the time and on file with the Maine Department of Motor Vehicles — officials mailed it to an address I had not lived at for more than four years.

The envelope was returned unopened, but county officials made no further effort to locate me. They did not contact the Maine DMV. Nor did they look in the phone book, where I am, and was at the time, listed.

My court date came in October 2007. Since I failed to show up, I was convicted at the highest fine level. A few months later, with the fine unpaid and me still completely in the dark, Oregon imposed additional fees and suspended my driver’s license.

The suspension was sent out on a national database, which means that, had I been pulled over anywhere in the country in the last year and a half, I could have faced a steep fine and even arrest for driving with a suspended license.

That was not the only consequence of my secret conviction. Shortly after the call from the collections agent, my husband and I were, to our surprise, unable to refinance our mortgage. I learned that my credit score had plummeted almost 200 points, all because of a single item reported in March of this year, long before I received that first phone call: a “seriously past due” fine owed to Multnomah County Circuit Court.

You can read the full article here.