I guess you have never lived in a city that hands out parking tickets. Here is how it works. When the meter maid writes out the parking ticket they log the car's license plate number. And if you don't pay the ticket then you can't renew the registration on the car. So you pay the ticket.
And you may never have seen the ticket before, because some jerk took it off your car and put it on his to make the next meter maid think somebody else already ticketed that car.
Whether or not you were driving, or any other defense you might have doesn't matter. The violation is charged to the registered owner.
As I noted before, the scheme proposed in Berkeley sounds like a bad idea. But if they wanted to do such a thing they could just tie the violation to the vehicle. That's what happens when you get a ticket from a photo based enforcement system, and that's how tolls based on license plate images work.
If your car goes through the tolls in Massachusetts and you don't have an EZ-PASS the car owner gets the bill. It isn't a defense to say you weren't driving your car.
Most city governments would love to be able to collect revenue from moving violations without involving the police. That is a popular way to make money in other countries where speed on highways is checked electronically. If you speed you get an invoice in the mail. No fuss, no traffic stop, just money for the city.