Article from: www.thenewspaper.com/news/32/3210.asp

7/24/2010

Arizona, Australia: Bogus Camera Tickets Issued, Refunded
Australian officials refund bogus speed camera tickets. Arizona mails them out anyway.

Officials in Tasmania, Australia last week reluctantly admitted that some of its speed cameras produced unreliable readings. The automated ticketing machines on Tasman Bridge were found to be issuing speeding tickets to vehicles that were not speeding, forcing a refund of 440 tickets issued between June 5 and July 5. According to The Mercury, a test of the device against a handheld speed gun showed inaccurate readings.

In Arizona, officials have no problem with the inaccurate output provided by the speed cameras. State law require that tickets be issued to the driver of the vehicle, not simply mailed to the the first name on the vehicle registration, as is the case in many other states. The law requires positive identification based on a comparison of a driver's license photo and the image generated by a photo radar unit. The group CameraFraud produced a ticket that Redflex Traffic Systems had mailed from the recently canceled statewide freeway camera project. The driver of a white Chevy Silverado pickup truck can barely be seen as sun glare reflects off of the vehicle's dirty windshield, yet Redflex mailed the ticket without making the required positive identification. There is no penalty for failing to abide by the law.

In January, the same camera system issued tickets to Arizona Cardinals star Larry Fitzgerald, a black man, even though the photographs clearly showed a white man behind the wheel.