(Little Audi Content) Intersection Big Brother & Countermeasures

[tsal2@juno.com (Timothy C Salazar II)]

Fellow Auto Unionists,

I live in San Diego, California, and have an interesting question to
pose.  Recently I've noticed a proliferation of intersection cameras, to
stop people from running red lights.  Now I'm all for enforcing traffic
lights, (I hate it when people continue through a left turn when their
light is OBVIOUSLY red!), but what happened to my friend really got me
thinking.  She was in the left hand turn lane, with one wheel over the
line because of the angle she was at, and got cited for running the
light.  The state now wants to charge her something like $200 for bail,
or for an extra $100 hush money and traffic school, they'd let it slide. 


 I have already taken measures to defend myself against these things long
ago.  The painters "accidentally" broke my front licence plate holder
when painting my car.  (That's my story, and I'm sticking to it!)  The
top 15% of my windshield is covered with a "AUDI COUPE GT" decal, and I
sit far back in my car.  Both of these practices are wide spread where I
live, so the police rarely roll people for such minor infractions.  (I
also wear a hat and a moustace and a goatee, both should be removed if I
were to appear in front of a judge, so to look as clean-cut as possible.)
 Mind you people with icthy trigger fingers on the napalm switch:  I
don't run red lights, period.  And I'm not out to brake laws and endanger
myself and others.  I will do what I must to fight an expensive ticket
because of a mechanical glitch, though.  Unfortunately, my friend didn't
know about these things until she got the pictures in the mail.

OK, so what am I missing here?  Are their any legal ways of fighting
these cameras?  Are the cameras even legal?  And I don't remember
authorizing any of my tax money to this little photographic endeavor. If
anyone has hard legal info on these things, I'd be very grateful if you'd
share it with me and my friend.  Thanks in advance!

Love, Like, or Just Plain Tolerate,

Timothy

`86 CGT (R.I.P.)
`82 Coupe (R.I.P.)