Posted on 12/03/2001 11:29:21 AM PST by real saxophonist
Photo radar ticket sent to the wrong car owner
By Peter Sandberg
For the Camera
Richard Philbrick was surprised to find a $40 photo-radar ticket from Boulder in his mailbox in Orleans, Mass., last week.
He has not visited Colorado in 60 years.
"I remember Boulder well, from when I was stationed at Lowry field," said Philbrick, who was training at the Lowry Air Force Base prior to World War II. He was stationed in Colorado in 1941 and has not been back since.
He noticed some clear discrepancies when he looked at the photos provided as evidence for the Nov. 5 speeding ticket. Not only was the car not a car he owned, but the driver looked like a teenager.
"I'll be 86 (this) week," he said. "I think it's pretty ridiculous."
Philbrick contacted his local police chief to make sure the ticket was not a scam.
"He looked at the citation and spotted right away that this wasn't a Massachusetts plate," Philbrick said. But when the police chief called the contractor that administers photo-radar tickets for Boulder, he found them to be unresponsive, Philbrick said.
Philbrick is not alone in his predicament. People who think they should not have been sent a photo-radar ticket can fill out a form and send it to the city along with a copy of their driver's license to contest it.
"We compare the photo on the driver's license with the close-up photo-radar picture," said Jill Spencer, a legal assistant in the city attorney's office. If the two photos do not match, the ticket is dismissed, she said.
Cameras fixed on traffic-signal poles first started shooting pictures used to ticket drivers running red lights in Boulder in late 1998. The photo sent to Philbrick was taken from a photo-radar van, and the driver was going 35 mph in a 25 mph zone. Speeding near the mobile van, speeding through school zones, running red lights, and, since September, speeding through green lights can all result in a photo-radar ticket.
The picture and notice are sent to the registered owner of the photographed vehicle. But sometimes the owner is not the one driving the car. Most of the complaints the city attorney's office receives fall into that category.
"If a friend of mine was driving my car, then it would be dismissed, unless I give them up," Spencer said. The attorney's office does not keep statistics on complaints, but only a handful of them, like Philbrick's, involve a ticket sent to the wrong car owner, she said.
Two employees of the city's contractor look at the license plate photo separately to make sure that they agree on the state and plate number. If the picture is too blurry to use or the employees are not able to agree on the license number, they do not issue a ticket.
"Obviously it is not 100 percent fool-proof, but they do have a double-blind test," said Lynne Reynolds, municipal court administrator. "There's an awful lot of pictures taken that do not result in tickets."
But the picture did result in a ticket in Philbrick's case. He is not worried about paying the ticket because it was obviously a mistake, but he would like to know why it was sent to him.
"They'd have a hard time getting me to pay the fine," he said. "I expect to get an explanation."
-Strelnikoff
?
Takes me back to the days when a group of lads on my street invested in a noisey 125 CC dirt bike, which they ran for hours on end up and down my formerly quiet street.
One nice morning, after a month of this, the lads rolled the dirt bike out for a kick start, only to find it vandalized--every cable had been neatly clipped with side cutters and removed--the MASKED AVENGER had struck !
We never knew who the masked man was. But we were glad he stepped forward and put a stop to such arrogance, once and or all. With a little luck, maybe he'll make an appearance in Boulder.
OK........I guess I'm OK since my hair was long and I had a goatee when my license pic was taken, now I'm clean-shaven with short hair. Ha!
The attorney's office does not keep statistics on complaints, but only a handful of them, like Philbrick's, involve a ticket sent to the wrong car owner, she said.
Don't keep statistics? Wouldn't want anyone to really know how bad you piss people off, now would you? Might lose that cushy government job.
If that is the case then exactly how do you know that 'only a handful' of tickets involve this type of complaint. Don't you just love liberal (il)logic?
What's the matter were you all too chickensh*t to approach the young 'lads'? Cut a cable on my bike and see what happens!
This would be an excellent chance to track the race of the offenders. The camera does not carry any racial bias and it would be informative to track this data. Then compare it to the racial stats the police keep and see if there is "racial profiling".
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