So now I have to take a day off of work (and I’m lucky because I can burn vacation to do it but a lot of people would have to forego pay) to go to court and explain that I wasn’t driving so that I can only have to pay a fine for something I didn’t do rather than also having to pay out the nose to the insurance company for something I didn’t do.
Especially in light of civil asset forfeiture, which is another government program which is for unfathomable reasons legal, in which cops can accuse property of being involved in crimes, and then seize and sell the property whether the crime actually even happened or not, I’m highly uncomfortable with assigning criminal charges to property.
CAF has been used to steal people’s vehicles, houses, money, and other possessions. If you’re carrying any cash, and a cop “believes the cash may have been used in commission of a crime,” the cop can legally take that cash from you, and then you have to prove in court that the cash was not used as part of a crime, or you don’t get it back. The cops can then take the money and spend it on anything they want, including a margarita machine for department parties.
Because of abuses like that, I’m much more comfortable with accusing people of crimes because the people have the ability to contest those accusations before a court. How am I supposed to contest my car being accused of a crime? I wasn’t there. Maybe the crime happened. Maybe it didn’t. And why should I have to contest my car being accused of a crime? That’s a huge waste of time, and expense, for me to contest charges over something that I did not do.
This is why I like MN’s test approach. The cameras will not be used to accuse anyone (or anything) of crimes. They will be used to alert cops, who can then pull the car over and assess for themselves whether or not a crime was committed.
In MD, the authorities can’t give you points unless they can prove that the registered owner is the driver. On at least one of our cars, my wife and I are both listed as the owner’s on the registration. Do they give multiple registrants points? The authorities in your part of MN would spend too much time in court and lose every time someone wanted to contest the ticket. If they can’t prove who is driving, there is a reasonable doubt.
not much you can do about cheaters in the HOV lanes unless cop sees them. but. i like the idea of having a redlight to stop the HOV entrance lane drivers where there is an infrared camera to detect 2 or more people in front seat. have a BIG sign that says cheaters will get tix in mail. back seat passengers? babies in car seat? tough. you can choose to proceed thru light and get tix in mail. or make a side lane for the cheaters to go over to the 1 car lane
You make a great case against charging property with a crime, and on that I agree … mostly.
If your car is stolen, I don’t think you should be responsible, but I do think I should be responsible for loaning my car to someone who can’t be trusted to stop at a red light. By loaning that person my car, I’m putting the public at risk.
I agree a car owner should be less culpable than the person who is driving the car in your scenario, but I don’t object to there being laws that punish someone who loans his car to someone who he knew was dangerous, reckless, or careless. There are often good reasons to hold one person responsible for another person’s behavior if the first person enabled it knowing the risk.
I see where you’re coming from, but if I lend my car to you, how do I know that you’re going to run that red light? I don’t. What if you’re my kid, and you take the car to go on a date and you run a stop sign because you’re busy looking at the girl? Am I gonna be held responsible for that, too? Maybe you get caught necking in the park by the cops, and they give you an indecent behavior ticket. Should that go on my record?
And it can be argued that if I let my teenaged son take the car I have a good reason to suspect he’ll do something dumb behind the wheel because almost all teenagers are bad drivers. And I have a good reason to suspect that at some point he’ll make out with someone, because an awful lot of teenagers do that too. Does that make me a vehicular or, worse, sexual criminal?
I’d argue it doesn’t, even though I “enabled it” knowing that teenagers are bad, horny drivers.
Hopefully, you wouldn’t lend me your car unless you felt you could trust me. To do otherwise seems rather irresponsible.
Well, if I’m really a kid (a minor under the age of 18), it would be my parents’ responsibility to make sure I can drive a car safely before handing me the keys.
Now you’ve crossed over into the absurd, because that didn’t put the public at risk, and that is where I clearly drew the line.
In the end, I don’t think its hard to make a case that: “Judge, my son behaved responsibly, got good grades, and proved to me he was a safe driver before I gave him the keys, so I had no reason to expect this kind of reckless behavior.”
Conversely, a prosecutor or plaintiff in a civil suit might say, “Judge, this kid had known behavioral issues and his parents knew he had a drug and alcohol problem, so they should have known better than to buy him a Camaro and unleash him on the public.”
Can we please leave sex out of this and stick to public safety?
It’s between you and your son to determine who pays the fine. IIRC, you were hypothesizing about moving violations caught on camera in your state because they don’t have them yet. We do, and there is only a fine. As for “parking” violations, the officer would get your son’s driver’s license info and you would not be implicated.
I do feel I can trust you. You have Captain Picard as your avatar.
But even people we trust make mistakes. You are human, and you might screw up while driving my car.
Then they’d never hand you the keys - as I’ve said many times through the years on here, driver’s ed does not teach you to be a good driver. Only on-road practice with a focus on improvement will do that. Teenagers suck at driving - either we accept that they suck and work around them as we do now, or we start demanding more intensive driver training and more strict driver testing, which I am personally in favor of but am aware will never happen.
Not really. Especially these days, society does (and I am not saying that I always agree) take the attitude that any sort of indecent/sexual exposure does lasting harm, especially to children, and therefore shedding clothes in a car where others can see them puts the public at risk.
A news headline just today discussed a school district requiring teachers to report any sexual activity they are aware of among their students to the police because apparently in their state any sexual activity involving underaged people (including when both parties are under 18) is rape.
If we advocate assigning crimes committed in a car to the car and therefore to the car’s owner, then when my teenager “rapes” another teenager in the back seat of my car, it gets assigned to my car and therefore to me.
Bottom line, I don’t draw a legal distinction between charging me with murder, rape, or speeding as far as the “you have no actual evidence that I committed those crimes” aspect is concerned. Justice is justice. It is not justice to assume someone committed a crime simply because they own mobile property that was involved in the crime.
Well, there are already cameras that can take a picture of you and your occupants as you drive by- day or night. If they see only one body emitting heat, they snap a picture of your license plate and viola, you are caught. They already exist and they produce amazingly detailed pictures of the occupants…
Not criminal, but civil law has this happen all the time! For instance, your employee is your AGENT, and as such, you are civilly liable for whatever harm they cause, as if you did it yourself. If I work for you, take the company truck to a bar, get drunk, and crash into a school bus, YOU’RE liable, even if you gave explicit instructions NOT to go to a bar, not to drink on duty, etc.
That’s a punishment for a person, not for a car. It’s exactly like a parking ticket: either you pay it, contest it in court (that you didn’t do the parking doesn’t excuse, only that the parking didn’t happen, an unlikely event), or don’t get its registration renewed.
Unfortunately this is happening in a whole lot of law, even uncontested violations. There’s no good reason to exempt moving violations.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. In MD, I think the reason for the cameras is public safety give that they are located at dangerous or school intersections, or at construction zones (speeding cameras). In DC I think they are revenue generators. These cameras can be just about anywhere and are often not associated with construction.
well, of course self driving cars will never go in hov lanes or use hov ramps or speed or go thru red lights and so on. cars have sensors for passenger seat occupants. pretty easy to add them for rear seats. your car with its onboard wifi will talk to traffic monitoring equipment and alert the authorities. you can drive your self driving car but you cant tell it to lie about number of occupants.
