The city of Cleveland is facing a precarious situation regarding those pesky Red-light and Speeding Ticket Cameras. Four yeas ago Cleveland began using cameras to ticket traffic offenders. The law as written stated, “Driver owned vehicles can be ticketed.†However, the law contained a major loophole, it failed to mention drivers of vehicles that lease or rented the automobile. Despite the city having knowledge of the language flaw it collected millions of dollars from rental and leased drivers. Their logic was premised on drivers forfeiting their right to appeal based upon payment of the ticket. In February of 2009 attorney Blake Dickson beat two camera tickets by stating the ordinance was illegal. One month later the loophole was plugged.
Since 2005 the city has collected 25 million in fines from the traffic cameras. 10 million of those dollars was collected from drivers of leased or rented automobiles. Lawyers are attempting to file a class-action law suit on behalf of the drivers which were driving rented or leased automobiles and paid the fine. The potential class-action lawsuit claims that the city of Cleveland devised an appeal process that would require drivers to spend hundreds of dollars to appeal the $100 dollar fine. Collection of the fine is an easy step because the majority of the drivers would rather pay the small fine than go through an expensive and time consuming appeal process.
Traffic cameras are supposed to improve the quality of driving on our roads. However, it seems that the large amounts of revenue being generated are more important than safety.
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