As photo radar becomes more popular with City Hall, enterprising violators are coming up with strategies for beating it. If you get caught speeding or running a red light by photo radar, the evidence against you–a photo or videotape of the violation–is pretty clear-cut. But there is at least one legal strategy available to you.
Arizona law requires that you get your traffic citation from a police officer or a process server. Since the tickets that are mailed to violators don’t meet that legal standard, you have the option of tossing the citation in the trash.
If you do that, however, police officers or the company that runs the cameras can then send a cop or a process server to deliver the summons–and you’re going to have to pay for it. In Scottsdale, it adds $26 to your fine.
Here’s the trick: The city has only 120 days to serve you, so if you can dodge the process server for about four months, the ticket is dismissed.
You can also make it harder for authorities to find you by listing a post-office box as your address on your car’s registration. That will require police or the company to do a little extra detective work to hunt down your address. You can make it an even more tangled legal trail by registering your car under the name of a corporation.
There are also devices that drivers can use to try to thwart the cameras. “Radar” Roy Reyer, a retired Maricopa County police officer, runs a Web site, radarbusters.com, that offers a range of devices.
Reyer fights technology with technology using a GPS gizmo that alerts drivers when they approach fixed red-light cameras and well-known speed traps. Cost: $239.95.
He also sells a plastic plate to cover your license plate. He maintains the covers–which sell from $24.95 to $69.95–will distort your license number when the camera takes a photo of it.
Reyer insists that the plastic covers work. “We tested our stuff,” Reyes says. “The covers are effective.”
Mike Phillips, a spokesman for the city of Scottsdale, dismisses the idea that the cameras are fooled by the covers. “This idea that you can somehow put a plastic cover over your plate, and it’s going to thwart the camera–all the things that I’ve seen show that it’s ineffective,” says Phillips.
Tucson’s call for bids specifies that the cameras must work on plates that have plastic covers, which Pryor also calls ineffective.
But people who go to the trouble of installing them worry him. “If people are doing that just so they can speed, they’re probably dangerous on the road,” Pryor says.
This article appears in Apr 5-11, 2007.
When are people going to wake up to the fact that government is spending our money on wasteful crap? The surveillance state is just another revenue grab. Cameras have nothing to do with making the streets more safe.
Here’s a suggestion: don’t speed.
This article needs an editor. “Radar” Roy changed his last name several times, it went from “Reyer” to “Reyes” and finally to “Pryor.”
Peril, you rock! Yeah people stop speeding for the love of god! The camera takes a picture at 11 miles over the speed limit…ELEVEN… Take some damn responsibitly and quit breaking the law and getting pissed when you get caught.
What worries me about these cameras is what I see every time I go down River Road and pass the one there. Even when people are going UNDER the speed limit, they see the camera and hit their brakes slowing down more “just to make sure” they don’t get a ticket. People don’t trust technology and I’m waiting to roll up to a pileup because someone hit their brakes and the person behind them plowed into them.
Yes RFS Buck, that is what gets my goat on these stupid cameras. As I am busy extending my middle finger to remind the county, city, and DPS of the fine job they’re doing, I have to avoid idoits who slam their brakes as they approach those unconsitutional devices. Hey dumb ass, the damn things don’t trigger unless you’re going eleven miles over the limit!
The cameras are just another way to control the masses,so we will lay off more officers,and buy more cameras,its no wonder the economy is in the dumpster, we are being replaced with machines,I am all for tech,but the control factor for the masses is getting out of hand–whats next ROBO-COP?
Has anyone had their license suspended after a process server left a ticket in their door? My “friend” managed to avoid one today but just read something about the state suspending licenses despite the violator never having actually been served in person.
I read a statistic that rear end collisons at intersections with red light cameras has gone up 3%(I believe it was a statistic from 2006). Arizona has more red light runners than nearly any other city in the country. The cameras are working but simultaneously causing accidents. I wonder if the accidents they are preventing are greater in number than the ones they are causing?
11 miles above the speed limit? Wow! That’s like somebody riding a slow bike above the posted speed limit. Yeah, lives will be lost.
Yes of course don’t drink and drive, or don’t enter an intersection if it is Red.
Did you know that ~95% of stop lights are only Red for 60 seconds or less.
Count it while you wait. See how much a life is worth.
A minute will not make much of a difference in the arrival time.
Better to be safe than sorry. Slow down when entering an intersection.
Also, the radar guns our police and sheriffs use are given to the city or county law enforcement by our insurance company we pay our car insurance to. You cannot win.
Photo enforcement does serve a purpose. Unfortunately the original intent for it’s creation was to make money for the end user’s who employ it – and of course it’s Creator. Technology designed to generate money and it’s called “Free Enterprise.” Lets not forget that our local & state goverments utilize our tax dollars to employ such extreme measures to obtain/extract more money from whom? The tax payer? Your call, safety or opportunity? If you say both think about this; When the speed limit was lowered to 55mph in the 70’s it reduced car accident fatalities by the millions. At 70mph you have “Zero” percent chance of survival in a crash and where is the speed limit here in AZ? 75mph on I-10 between Phx and Tucson! If that 0% chance of survival thought alone doesn’t slow speeders down… What do you think a camera is going to do? Now you know why they are there..$$
Agreed, RFS_Buck, these do nothing to inhibit speeding. I travel Arizona’s highways quite frequently and encounter these radar vans often. The only thing that happens is a massive precautionary reflex, and the requisite speedup once passed the location. This seems more inherently dangerous than nothing at all.
Peril,
Get real, fool.
The speed limits almost everywhere are lower than needed just so they can catch us going a resonable speed and then charge us for it.
You ever notice that they put the cameras in places that the speed limit is artificially low. For instance Broadway at Plumer. No way the limit should be 30 mph anywhere on Broadway.
And also you cannot go to traffic school if you contest the ticket. That’s harassing you into admitting guilt before you have your day in court.
Also it is just another form of taxation.
Here’s a suggestion, don’t allow the goverment to make laws for “victimless crimes”. How is it, that our goverment has deemed it prudent to punish us when no one has been hurt. Shouldn’t punishment be for the crime, not the laws?!
“It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right” Thoreau
I received a photo radar ticket. I didnt pay the ticket and had a process server come to my house. I answered the door and did not identify who I was and told him he had the wrong address and closed the door. He left the ticket in the door. Does this mean I have been served?
It is the job of traffic control, to facilitate the flow of traffic not slow it down. The cameras are some companies way to make money for them and the city. Since it is after the fact that you get the ticket, it has no way of making it safer at the time where they took the photo. This serves only one purpose and that is to generate revenue for the city that is already overspending OUR money.
Can it still go to a credit collection agency if you ignore the ticket, do not pay the fine, and are not hand served the ticket? After the 180 days that they have to serve it to you has passed, and if you have not been served, are their any possible negative effects, or does it just dissappear? What if it is taped to your door? ( that obviously by law can’t be considered hand serving the ticket, or can it???) I will say having to deal with and worry about this is enough of a hassle to make me watch my speedometer more closely, and make sure to leave for work a little earlier… I got my ticket on 4/29/10 at US Mile Post 182 (Gilbert RD) W/B, at 77 mph. I’m really confused and not sure what to do. Don”t speed is the obvious answer, I got that …Now what about the ticket? Will I be feeding into “Big Brother” tactics if I pay it? Am I admitting to guilt if I pay it? I heard that they are taking them down, and not prosecuting the tickets in certain areas…I reside in Chandler. Has anyone in Chandler been hand-served their ticket? Would appreciate any input…
The radar cameras are a joke. I was driving along at 34 mph with a friend going west on Broadway when I was flashed. Two weeks later I received a ticket in the mail which clearly showed a picture of me and my car but the stated speed was 46 mph! I wasn’t even doing 35 mph which was the speed limit! So I tried to fight the ticket but the judge stated that radar cameras are calibrated regularly and so the ticket stood. My attorney told me to just be happy that they didn’t state that I was doing 100 mph because, as my attorney put it, ‘The State can say anything they want and you are at their mercy’. These radar photo stations are truly scary.
Wow, how to beat a red light ticket. Cool, who cares how reckless I drive? As long as you are on a roll I would like to know a few other tricks: How to get around a bank surveillance system; How safe tumblers; How to beat my wife without leaving tell tale makes; and How to break into my company’s financial software. I mean as long as you are giving tips on getting out of the responsibility of breaking the law, let’s get serious with some really good stuff….you should be a politician.
I was going about 44 or 45 on River and got flashed at night. Darn near blinded me. 2 weeks later, I get the photo ticket stating I was doing 51 in a 40. Hmmmm. Then, when I went to look on the web site to see what else they showed, it stated that the numbers input were not valid. I put the correct numbers in multiple times on another computer with the same result. Something seem fishy again. Am I being denied due process? What are the State requirements for checking the radar equipment?
“If people are doing that just so they can speed …”
No, people are doing “that” because they don’t want the government using tax dollars to spy on them. The year is 2011, not 1984.
This is the reason, every time I go through one of these speed traps, I put my visor down just low enough enough that I can still see the car in front of me.
http://www.camerafraud.com
I think these cameras are an abomination. If you want the cameras – let them install one in your dash and take a picture everytime you break a traffic law (thats what these cameras will eventually come to). The speed limits also need to be revised – 35 mph on a city/county street is ridiculous!. The bad drivers should be stopped at the licensing department and not let on the roads in the firrst place. Slow drivers are no doubt responsible for more accidents than fast drivers. You typically don’t drive fast unless you are a competent driver.
The folks that need to stay in the right lane or get off the road are those that don’t go the speed limit, stop at green lights, wait in the right hand turn lane to turn when the light turns green – even though its been clear to turn for minutes, and generally show no common courtesy for fellow drivers who do know how to drive.
Today I was doing 45 MPH in a 45 MPH zone on old Nogales hwy. I had one eye on the speedo. The camera flashed. There’s no way I was speeding. I don’t know if I’ll get a ticket in the mail, but something ain’t right and it isn’t me.
The last time I had to go to traffic school was many years ago, but it was after they installed the cameras on roads and intersections. Since it was admittedly not the first time for me I was struck by a difference: the class was now full of very elderly senior citizens who were probably crawling through intersections. More than half the class were elderly, and many said they were first timers. It’s a RACKET.
is there anything for when the person is not you and the car is not yours, but you somehow ended up with the ticket?
I hate the red light cameras also, but I live with them simply because I stop on red and go at or below the speed limit. I have been all over the country and Tucson is ranked #2 for the worst drivers on my list, after Chicago. The people who are complaining about red light cameras here are the once that break the laws. How about your follow the laws and don’t speed next time or run a red light.
There’s always been a standard regarding safe flow of traffic. If you drive too slow, it is even more dangerous, but there is no ticket for driving 36 in a 45 mph – 6 lane hwy, where everyone is driving 56 or faster as the norm? Wake up, ..this is an illegal revenue grab, plus you are being spied on w/state cams. Keep giving up your rights & money!! I’ve been driving since i was 16–over 40 yrs, in several states, and was NEVER given a speeding tik, now I got one of these cam pics in mail…I know I was not exceeding…5 mi over has always been waived within normal flow by a real officer. Sheesh, I was driving to an evening church service. I AM SAFE–If I got one of these, everyone must be getting them.
The Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices does not allow for prolongation lines used in Red Light Camera Intersections in Tucson. The line is usually more than 20 feet pass the crosswalk and according to that same manual the crosswalk is part of the intersection. It is also stated in the manual and in Arizona Revised Statutes that if you have entered the intersection on the green light or yellow light, you have the right of way to finish your exit in that intersection even after the light turns red. In addition most of the signs at these intersections are incorrectly posted. The ARS state clearly that if any one of the signs is incorrectly posted a person should not be held accountable for the violation. The FHWA has put out an official letter declaring the prolongation line specifically in Tucson to be illegal. With all that evidence if you go to court on a red light camera ticket they will find you culpable regardless of what you have to say and regardless the fact that the law alone wins the case for the defense. It took me a year to get my ticket dismissed after I appealed an illegal culpable finding by a corrupt Judge.