Chicago's Traffic Cameras Looking in Your Wallet - Supposedly for an Insurance Card
On March 16, 2009 Ald. Ed Burke proposed using the city’s photo-enforcement cameras to check vehicles for up to date auto insurance when a red light ticket is being issued by that camera. I guess you might as well send a second ticket for another $100.00 fine if you can slip it in with the first, right, Mr. Burke? After all there is a budget deficit.
But the legal waters are becoming a bit murky here. Let’s start with the Red Light ticket which is issued to the owner of the vehicle, no matter who is driving the car. As reported by theexpiredmeter.com in defense of at least the second Class Action lawsuit filed regarding the camera violations the City’s argument has been that the owner is responsible for these tickets, the same way that they are responsible for parking tickets. It doesn’t matter who drives the car. They pretend to soften the blow of these costly tickets by claiming that their purpose is “public safety”, not revenue and by not reporting the tickets on the owners driving record. Well, of course, they are not going to report it; they have no idea who was driving! So, whose driving record would they report it to?
In a normal scenario, if I drive my friend’s car and I go through a red light, get pulled over by the police and find out the car is uninsured I would be issued two tickets. In Court, I, the driver, not the owner, would pay a fine for the moving violation and if my friend did not have insurance, but I did have insurance on another car I could show it to the prosecutor and that ticket would be dismissed because I was insured.
I know this because as a young prosecutor for the Corporation Counsel of the City of Chicago in Traffic Court and the for the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office I saw this scenario literally thousands of times. I use it as a proper defense to insurance violations for my clients today.
As these street cameras are unable to differentiate one driver from another, how will the city be able to determine that a vehicle is uninsured? Presumably they will claim that the plates on the car have no registered insurance policy associated with that vehicle. However, my policy covers any car that I drive, so whatever car I’m driving is in fact covered by my policy, even if it has no policy of its own. So, where’s the offense? Well, the real offense will occur a few weeks later when the owner receives two tickets in the mail.
If things continue to go along with these tickets at 400 W. Superior, Chicago in the manner in which they have been it will be a travesty. No tape or photos of the incident, no party from the City is required to appear to testify that the cameras were in proper working order on the date, time and location and the Administrative Law Judges, which are lawyers who work part time paid by the City, rubber-stamp hearings in favor of the government.
When a person’s only accuser is a camera there is something mighty rotten in the Windy City.
