So many big US mapping companies ask me what I think is a really stupid question:  Is it illegal in the US to publish red light camera or speed camera locations?  The answer is emphatically NO! There is one reason why.  Free Speech which is the first amendment in the US Amendment in the constitution protects citizens and businesses from this fact. Would the US Federal or State Governments ever ask companies like Google, Navteq or TeleAtals to not publishing the location data?  I continually ask myself why I have been gathering this data for the last 10+ years yet US mapping companies are still afraid of publishing the information?

You have to ask yourself why these well educated people and businessmen are asking this question?  As I am told it is currently illegal in German to publish red light camera and speed camera locations and use a warning device while driving. Police officers reportedly have the right to take about your navigation device or smartphone if they see you using an application that warns you of these locations.  Sounds a bit strange does it?  I would suspect that these laws would give a company like BMW some hesitation if they were considering to use this data for their in car navigation experiences.

Well, it turns out that this conservative thinking of not wanting to publishing the information has trickled down to navigation, map and big car companies.  These companies don't want to be perceived as helping their drivers evade the law when in reality it actually helps them drive safer.  Why, because it is a known fact that other drivers tend to do erratic things when they see warning signs or cameras.  There are proven examples that people tend to slow down suddenly hitting the brakes.  So as a result more fender bender accidents are created.  

The first step to fighting any traffic infraction is to look up the vehicle code section you were cited with. The second step is to pick apart that vehicle code section in order to find out what the elements of the infraction are. If any of the elements necessary to be present in order to find someone guilty of the infraction are missing in your situation then you’re well on your way to getting your ticket dismissed.

Now a red light camera ticket will have the violation code listed as California Vehicle Code (CVC) section 21453. You can go online to legalinfo.ca.gov to look it up. However there is more involved to fighting a red light camera ticket.

You not only need to look up that code section which you were actually cited for, but you also need to look up a few additional code sections, like what vehicle code section authorizes red light camera enforcement. Once you know what sections actually lay out the rules or requirements for the operation of red light cameras, you can write down those and then check to see if any of the rules were violated or requirements not followed in your case. Check out CVC§21453, CVC§ 21455.5, CVC§21455.6, CVC§ 21455.7, CVC§40518, if any rules listed in these code sections were violated, or requirements not followed, then you have ammunition in court for getting the ticket dismissed.

Article submitted by ticketbust.com, helping drivers contest and dismiss their traffic tickets.  If you get cited for a red light photo ticket, contact us at www.TicketBust.com or call us at (800) 850-8038. For Spanish, please visit www.Combatesuticket.com or call (818) 584-3689. For more information on how TicketBust can help to beat your cell phone ticket, visit www.fightcellphonetickets.com or call (800) 850-8038.

Have you noticed police officers getting aggressive about looking in your car to see if you are texting or holding your phone?  The fines range from $150-$250 in California and are similar in other States.  Despite the fact that most smartphones have two headphones you should use caution when you use both ear buds.  Be careful if you are driving with headphones in your ear because it is illegal in most states to drive with both headphones in your ear.  We recommend that all drivers only wear one headphone or ear bud while driving and think its best that you wear it in your left ear.  Why?  Because it a police officer catches you with both headphones in your ear its a $250 fine.  Putting the headphone in your left ear reduces the suspicion a police officer might have if the see a cord hanging from your ear.   Wearing both headphones is a safety issue and the rational is that you need to be able to hear emergency vehicles around you.  

The issue of image tampering has been brought to our attention by an anonymous source and we would like to raise the awareness for others to help us investigate.  Do you suspect that your red light camera ticket has been photo shopped or the image has been edited?  Many people have used this defensive successfully and it raises bigger questions of the photo process handling.  How do you know your digital image has not been edited?  It turns out that all images are first processed by a third party like RedFlex and TCS before the police officer even has a chance to review the violation.  How do we know that these images have not been edited?  Have the photos been certified by an outside independent agency?  We will be investigating this issue further in the coming months so stay tuned.  If anyone has direct feedback or proof of this happening around the US we would like to know.  Please post your comments and feedback below. 

If you find yourself thinking you have no defense to a red light photo ticket, don’t give up yet! You can still try to argue you could not have stopped safely within such a short time and short distance from the limit line and slamming on the brakes would have posed a greater danger to yourself and others then continuing through.

Look on your ticket for the late time (for example on a Red Flex ticket this will be displayed on the black bar across the top of the photos displayed vertically on the right hand side). If the red light camera ticket you received has a very short light time for example, one tenth of a second (0.1), wouldn’t it have been very difficult to stop behind the limit line for the light when it changed? Even more so if it was raining. Perhaps slamming on the brakes would have resulted in you skidding into the middle of the intersection where you would have blocked traffic.

If your ticket does not show a late time then you can usually judge how long the light had been red by the position of other vehicles around you. If there were other vehicles turning left at the same time as you or going straight through and cross traffic hasn’t moved past their limit line, then it’s likely the light wasn’t red for long at all. Of course if you were turning right, it’s more likely than not that the light was already red and that you rolled through, so it’s chancy if you don’t have the red time.

The majority of tickets do show the red time and you stand a better chance if the red time is below five-tenths of a second (0.5) because although the law does not mandate them to do so, some local governments employ grace periods of up to before their red light cameras will begin taking photographs. Grace periods such as these are employed because it is understood that the shorter the red time the less likely the driver could have stopped in time. You stand an even better chance if that red time is three-tenths of a second (0.3) or below because as previously indicated by the Federal Highway Administration, a grace period of three-tenths of a second is commonly used and five-tenths of a second is the international standard.

Article submitted by ticketbust.com, helping drivers contest and dismiss their traffic tickets.If you get cited for a red light photo ticket, contact us at TicketBust.com or call us at (800) 850-8038. For Spanish, please visit Combatesuticket.com or call (818) 584-3689. For more information on how TicketBust can help to beat your cell phone ticket, visit fightcellphonetickets.com or call (800) 850-8038.

Explore Data Information Services is an Altegrity company. Altegrity is a conglomeration of companies to help their customers reduce risk, maximize opportunities, and make better decisions by gathering, processing, and analyzing information; sharing our subject matter expertise; and providing our proven training techniques. Altegrity companies include:

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Explore Information Services - Explore Information Services provides databases to a "trusted partner" to insurance companies and government entities. A provider of database insurance technologies and e-government applications. Explore Information Services licenses databases and scrapes public information available on web to provide a database of solutions to Government Entities and the Insurance Industry. With "exception-based" reporting services for Property and Casualty Insurance Underwriters, Explore helps insurance companies mitigate risk and allows states to reduce fraud while improving public safety. Explore's e-Government Solutions serve the information needs of state government with customized database applications and integration services including: Identification of Uninsured Motorists, Motor Fuel Tax-Tracking and IRP/IFTA Commercial Vehicle Credentialing programs. Through identification, retrieval and reporting of critical data, Explore's programs demonstrate noticeable process efficiencies while offering additional revenue streams to state governments. Learn more here www.exploredata.com

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If you’re the registered owner of a vehicle and are being asked to identify the driver pictured on a red light photo ticket you are faced with several dilemmas.

Scenario One: Know the driver but don’t want to turn them in.

Filling out the affidavit may mean turning in a friend, family member, or even your own spouse. Say the driver was your spouse, but your spouse has more points on their license then you. It may make more sense to leave the ticket in your name. Deciding on whether or not to leave a ticket in your name and choosing not turn in the driver’s name is up to you and legally you cannot be forced to identify the driver. See California Vehicle Code Section 21455.5(c) stating there is no requirement that the defendant bear any burden of proof in defending herself against a charge for violating California Vehicle Code Sec. 21453(a).

Scenario Two: Not sure who the driver is.

On the other end of the spectrum you may very well not know who the driver is. Maybe you own a business and the car is used as a company car. Maybe you have a large family and multiple persons had access to the car. Perhaps the valet could have driven your car without you knowing it, or your car mechanic. In this situation you will not be able to complete an affidavit of non liability truthfully even if you want to because there’s no way to be exactly sure who was driving your car at that exact moment in time. Many courts will be understanding especially if the picture clearly does not look like you or there is a gender mismatch, but you stand an even better chance if can back up your statement with proof. For example, find someone that is willing to testify as your witness that the car is driven by multiple drivers and it would be impossible to tell who was driving the car at that exact time.

Scenario Three: I can’t tell if it was me or someone else driving.

The picture may be too blurry for you to be able to identify the driver. In this situation it would be really difficult for you to complete an affidavit of non liability because you would be taking a wild guess since you can’t make out figure that is supposed to be a close up of the driver. If the picture is too blurry for you to make out the driver, there’s a good chance the judge won’t be able to either and you may be home free. If the picture of the driver is too blurry, the other side won’t be able to prove that it was you driving. See California Penal Code Section 1096 stating that, in a criminal proceeding, the burden of proving the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt is upon the state. - blog submitted by ticketbust.com, helping drivers contest and dismiss their traffic tickets.

If you get cited for a red light photo ticket, contact us at www.TicketBust.com or call us at
(800) 850-8038. For Spanish, please visit www.Combatesuticket.com or call (818) 584-3689. For more information on how TicketBust can help to beat your cell phone ticket, visit www.fightcellphonetickets.com or call (800) 850-8038.

The telematics, mapping and mobile applications industry is growing and so are crowdsourced traffic companies.  The race to build or acquire the biggest crowd data has taken hold with the first acquisition of Trapster by Nokia / Navteq. Navteq reportedly out bid by five other potential acquirers. Trapster attracted a large app following putting it ahead of TCS / (Networks in Motion) with about five million probes, but behind Telenav, with more than 17 million. Who else is in the game? Onstar, RIM, Google, TomTom, Inrix, Waze, Telmap who track mobile phone and device location speeds.  Read more in the article The Race to Scale Crowd-Sourced Traffic Data is On.

How do map companies get traffic data?  These hardware and software companies have access to the GPS feeds associated with your mobile device or phone and use it to map traffic on maps.  They also accept reported incidents from users and have tools to filter the information before publishing.  Trapster had many locations reported by users but it was never very clear how the filtering process worked and how many false positives they had by spammers using the app.  These are some of the filtering challenges to companies like this face as they source data on the handset.

Check the Certificate of Mailing Date and Get Your Red Light Camera Ticket Dismissed. 

After a careful review of the red light camera ticket you’ve received, you will notice that there is an area titled “Certificate of Mailing” and listed here will be the date the ticket was mailed to you.

You will want to compare this date to the date when the alleged violation occurred (usually listed in the upper left corner). Should the date the ticket was mailed to you fall past 15 days after the date of the alleged violation, then you’ll be glad to hear the California Vehicle Code section 40518 (a) requires a written notice to appear based on an alleged violation of California Vehicle Code section 21453 must be delivered to the registered owner within 15-days of the violation.

This California Law gives police only a limited amount of time to deliver a genuine notice to appear to the registered owner. Logically this make sense because most people have no recollection of even going through a red light, so they should be given ample notice if they did so they can remember where they were, what they were doing, or if someone else was driving their car at the time.

So if you are the registered owner of the vehicle pictured on the ticket and the ticket you received was mailed to you 16 days or more past the date of the violation, then there is a good chance you can get this dismissed on a technicality. - blog submitted by ticketbust.com, helping drivers contest and dismiss their traffic tickets.

If you get cited for a red light photo ticket, contact us at www.TicketBust.com or call us at
(800) 850-8038. For Spanish, please visit www.Combatesuticket.com or call (818) 584-3689. For more information on how TicketBust can help to beat your cell phone ticket, visit www.fightcellphonetickets.com or call (800) 850-8038.

What LA Courts are Doing if You Don’t Pay Your Red Light Camera Ticket

Pursuant to a recent LA Times article about camera tickets, word has gotten around that LA courts don’t report to the DMV if a person fails to respond to a Camera Ticket. Some people are saying what’s the point of fighting it then?

Well, if the registered owner fails to respond, the court will send a notice stating additional $300 will be imposed if not paid within 10 days. After that the registered owner’s name is sent to collections. So although the DMV won’t be notified to suspend the driver’s license, a collections agency will be harassing them and could have a major negative impact on their credit score.

LA Superior Court may be one of the only counties, if not the only county, having this policy and it has this policy because in the court’s opinion, since the registered owner may not necessarily be the driver it is not fair to suspend the registered owner’s license without knowing they were the driver.

Keep in mind that the LA Times article is only specific to registered owners whose name appears on the ticket. So you will be taking a gamble if you are not the registered owner and your name was turned in by the registered owner and yet you still choose to ignore the ticket.

Also in choosing to ignore ticket and let collections come after them, all persons are taking a gamble that the court doesn’t choose to change their policy at that time. It is a policy the court has elected to make, they were not mandated to do so, so really it could change at any time without notice.

blog submitted by ticketbust.com, helping drivers contest and dismiss their traffic tickets. If you get cited for a red light photo ticket, contact us at www.TicketBust.com or call us at (800) 850-8038. For Spanish, please visit www.Combatesuticket.com or call (818) 584-3689. For more information on how TicketBust can help to beat your cell phone ticket, visit www.fightcellphonetickets.com or call (800) 850-8038.

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