What should you do when a photo enforced camera ticket has an unclear photo of you?

Those red light cameras tickets you receive in the mail can be tricky to deal with. Many find themselves stuck with a ticket that says they were the driver but doesn’t actually have clear photo of the driver’s face.

If you receive a ticket in the mail that says you were the driver but it doesn’t have a clear picture of your face it can be frustrating because without a clear picture how can you even tell yourself if it was you driving? There is a way you can send in a form saying that someone else was the driver, but with a blurry picture how can you tell who it is.

You could of course go into court and let a judge see for himself that there is no possible way you could be identified as the driver based on the picture on the ticket. You could also explain to a judge that you can’t identify anyone else as the driver because of the poor picture quality. But going into court can be a hassle and scary for some, so it’s much easier to handle situations like this without going into court, with a Trial by Written Declaration. Using a Trial by Written Declaration you can explain the situation and even include a recent photograph of yourself for the judge to use as a comparison to the picture of the driver on the ticket. In situations like this there is a good chance your ticket will be dismissed.

Blog contributed 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.

If you receive ticket a notice in the mail issued to you by a police department or even an out of state camera company what you shouldn’t do is freely give them information requested of you. Often times these notices are sent out to fish for information like your driver’s license number and to get you to tell on yourself (or someone else) for a red light violation.  These are known as snitch tickets.

A red flag should go up if you were not the driver, if you don’t see a due date, a fine amount, and if you don’t see a court house listed on the notice. If you’re still unsure, check the notice for the city and county where the violation allegedly occurred (this will be on the front side of the notice listed along with information like the location and violation code). You can then go to the Superior court website for that county and many courts allow you to do an online search for your ticket and fine information. You may be able to search by your driver’s license, last name, or violation number. You could also try calling the court you think the ticket would have been issued in and inquire with a traffic clerk as to whether there is a ticket issued to you in their system, most likely there will not be.

If not then in that case, the ticket hasn’t been filed or registered with the court yet so it’s not an official ticket. Before you just roll over and comply with the first notice, you may want to wait and see if you ever do get a notice from the court, because you may not. If you don’t fill out the back of the first notice and send it back to the agency requesting the information from you then they won’t have enough to pin the ticket on you and a get a real ticket issued to you through the court.

If you’re not sure of how to handle a red light photo ticket notice you received, before you do anything, it’s a good idea to consult with a professional who is well seasoned with dealing with red light camera tickets. Remember, a ticket that hasn’t been filed or registered with the court yet is not an official ticket and may never become one if you don’t help them by tattling on yourself.

Contribued 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.

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.

Don't tattle on a friend or a family member for driving your 

Red light camera tickets cost about $500 per ticket in California and a point on your license. Since the tickets add a point on your license, the police must obtain the name of the actual driver before they can file the ticket at court. Since the photo of the license plate will only lead to the registered owner ("RO"), and often he/she often was not the person driving the car. The police will go to great lengths to get registered owners to identify who was driving the car that was ticketed. Technicians reviewing the photos will check to see if the pictured driver is obviously not the registered owner (male / female mismatch, age difference, or a rental car). Sometimes the photo is too blurry to identify who it is and will send the registered owner an official-looking notice telling him that he must identify the driver. About 40 California police departments will mail out Snitch Tickets to fool the registered owner into identifying the actual driver of the car.

Snitch Tickets have not been filed with the court, so are recognizable because they don't say "Notice to Appear," don't have the court's address, and say (on the back, in small letters), "Do not contact the court." Since they have NOT been filed with the court, they have no legal weight. You can ignore a Snitch Ticket. Snitch Tickets are designed to look like a real ticket but are legally very different. Real tickets and Snitch Tickets both ask the registered owner to turn-in or identify the person who was driving the car. Despite all that, there are some differences that you can rely on. One of the best ways to identify a Snitch Ticket is the small print on the back of the page, "Do not contact the court about this notice." Snitch Tickets will also lack any wording directing you to contact or "Respond to" the court. In fact, on a typical Snitch Ticket there is no phone number for the court, and the court's address usually is missing or incomplete. (Please note, however, that in some towns the real tickets carry an incomplete address.

A real ticket will ask you to contact ("Respond to") the court and you should. If your ticket says this it's likely a real one and you should look it up on the court's website. If it's not on their site, it still could be real. Make sure you are looking on the court's website, not the website of the camera operator Redflex (PhotoNotice) or ATS's. Your ticket is real if you have received a Courtesy Notice and it asks you to contact the court. Please note that your ticket could be real even if the court's phone number is missing and its address is incomplete. This is often the case because some cities are leaving this information off their real tickets, to make it harder for defendants to fight their ticket in court.

Depending on the state, county or province, the laws regarding red light camera ticket citations are different. Some red light camera ticket photos can't be used or enforced for different reasons. These are the top 10 reasons for the tickets not being enforced:

1) Both images do not show vehicle through intersection during the red light
2) Unreadable license plate due to glare, lighting or obstruction of license plate
3) No license plate or the dealer plate logo is showing from transfer of ownership
4) Out of State plates - Not sure about this one in every State?
5) Weather related image distortion due to rain, snow, dust or wind
6) Invalid or temporary license plates
7) No DMV match to the registered vehicle driver, some states only require photo of the vehicle
8) Traffic signal, camera, flash malfunction
9) Poor image quality or focus
10) The driver was not you and you may submit a Declaration of Non-liability.

As always we would appreciate here feedback about your experiences related to the enforcement of tickets due to these circumstances and any others we are missing. We are especially curious about #4) out of State plates and the enforcement of tickets.

Please do not consider any of the information on this page as legal representative advice to be used in any court of law. PhotoEnforced.com will not be held liable for any information in this article.

Red light camera photos taken by road-rule enforcement cameras must be viewed by a person before any infringement notice or ticket is issued to the driver, and judged to be satisfactory or not. Verifiers typically must check some or all of the following:

1) no sign of interference with the vehicle detector by objects other than the vehicle
2) license plate readable according to a legal standard
3) make and model of vehicle matches the recorded license plate nunber
4) appearance of the driver in the images is adequate or that it matches the picture on the drivers license of the vehicle's registered owner.

 

Authorities have sent 37 speeding tickets to Dave Vontesmar, claiming he'd been captured each time by speed camera. Dave denies he's at fault, saying he doesn't resemble the monkey driver portrayed in camera images.

Police claim to have done surveillance on Vontesmar and observed him putting on a monkey mask before hitting the Arizona street, proving without a shadow of a doubt he's at the helm of the distinctive Subaru, thus the issuance of the many, many tickets. Faced with the evidence, Vontesmar responded, "Not one of them there is a picture where you can identify the driver, the ball's in their court. I sent back all these ones I got with a copy of my drivers license, and said, 'It's not me. I'm not paying them.'" Ballsy. It seems to us the police have a case for one of the traffic tickets, if it were issued on the day of their surveillance operation, but all of them? While this might seem like a technicality, one is innocent until proven guilty, even in traffic court, and unless police can prove it was Vontesmar who donned the mask every single time, it seems he's got a point. Maybe instead of relying on unrepresented tax collection systems speed cameras, police should, you know, pull people over and alleviate that burden of proof.

If your red light camera "ticket" does not have the address and phone number of the Superior Court on it, or if it says, "Do not contact the court," it's not really a ticket at all. It is a Snitch Ticket (a.k.a. "Nomination"), generated by the police
A real ticket will tell you to contact the court. Snitch Tickets are designed to closely resemble a real ticket. To add to the confusion, real tickets and Snitch Tickets both ask the registered owner to turn-in (or snitch on) the person who was driving the car. Despite all that, there are some differences that you can rely on. One of the best "tells" is the absence of any court information printed on the Snitch Tickets. If you're curious, the official format for a real ticket is on the website of the Judicial Council of California.

The owner is responsible for the vehicle. In the event the owner was not in the vehicle, operating the vehicle, the owner can submit an affidavit of liability stating who was in possession of the car at the time. Then that individual will become responsible for the citation. For a California see the following two situations:

1. If they issued you, the RO, a real ticket but you weren't the
driver, you DON'T have to name the driver - the RO can go to court and
tell the judge "it's not me" and he will dismiss the ticket.
2. If they issued you, the RO, a Snitch Ticket (one not filed with the
court), you can ignore it.

Red Light Cameras take pictures and video of red-light runners.  However, if a positive photo ID is not obtained the ticket is usually dropped.  For example, the police must be able to match if the driver is a woman or a man and if the person is white or black.  If the image is not you that is driving in the car the police may ask you to snitch on who might have driven the vehicle and this is also called a "snitch ticket".