Chalk one up for the populace. The thirty two headed Hydra seems to finally been cut down. Yes, I’m talking about the Red Light cameras that “infect” 32 intersections in the City of Los Angeles. I say “seems” because given the fickleness of politicians, these things can become once again operational after one or two brief meetings by the City Council… once they realize how easy it was to collect a few additional millions of dollars in traffic fines at our expense.
What we know so far is that the contract with ATS, the Arizona company that runs these cameras for the City of L.A. has expired as of July 31st. This, of course, leaves a lot of questions unanswered… we hear that if you got one of these tickets prior to the end of the contract you can disregard it… should you? Here’s what happens. You receive the notice from the Los Angeles Superior Court which tells you about the ticket… you ignore it. You then receive additional notice(s) regarding said citation which you also put aside. Eventually your ticket will be sent to collection and the FTA (Failure to Appear) will be documented in the L.A. Superior Court Records. We are told that these records will not be sent to the DMV which means that your insurance company won’t know about the ticket.
Renowned traffic ticket attorney Sherman M. Ellison tried to contact GC Services, the entity in charge of collections for traffic citations in the City of L.A. to ask about the repercussions of unpaid tickets and your credit report… no one returned his various calls and so we don’t know.
Many questions regarding this subject remain unrequited, for example… what if you get another ticket, say sometime in the near future and the court looking at their records see that you have an FTA pending, will that affect your new ticket ?
And before we start celebrating and zooming through those dreaded intersections, remember that many of the municipalities surrounding Los Angeles have not and will not relinquish their Red Light Cameras (Beverly Hills for example) as well as the rest of the state. So don’t light up your sparklers just yet… minus those 32 cameras things are the same as it ever was… yes, another musical reference.
