Reply #75: What do you want, a sliding scale?

[Sapphocrat]

You should pay less than Bill Gates for running a red and endangering the lives of everyone else on the road?

Yeah, it is equal justice for you and Bill Gates to pay a $300 fine for the same infraction. You want it any other way? I sure don't. In this case, the rule and the consequence are the same for everyone.

You do have the nugget of an idea nobody's yet mentioned to the OP: Don't like the system? FIGHT IT. Hit up your city council/county supervisors/state legislators to get a law (that you think is unjust) changed. But if you don't fight to change it, then you can't complain about it when it catches you.

There is such a thing as believing in and abiding by the spirit of the law, whether or not you agree with that law. If you don't agree with it, then do something about it. But even if you fail to change it, you are nevertheless obligated to live by it.

Congrats on fighting your seat belt tickets -- whether or you won or not. That is exactly what I'm talking about: You did something about it.

Back to red-light cameras: If they deter just one person from killing me or one of my loved ones, so be it.