Missouri Court of Appeals strikes down municipal red-light camera ordinance, reversing its own decision a few years back.
http://www.courts.mo.gov/file.jsp?id=67236To recap, one of the initial problems with camera citations was that it was pretty easy to get out of them - just say you weren't driving the vehicle and the city could hardly prove otherwise. So, cities developed a clever scheme to treat these as non-moving violations. By not assessing points to an individual's license, they could instead simply fine the registered owner(s) of the vehicle, much like a parking ticket, and never have to prove that they were actually operating the vehicle at the time. Kansas City and St. Louis followed suit.
The Missouri Court of Appeals initially upheld the scheme, but has now reversed itself in a subsequent case. It has concluded that the municipal ordinances are contrary to state law, which evidently requires that points be assessed to licenses for running red lights. I was hoping the court would reach the more common-sense conclusion that's it just stupid to pretend that running a red light is a
non-moving violation (how is that possible?), but at least the Kansas City ordinance is invalid, for now.
