#luckily traffic school is online but that just goes to show how illegitimate it is

[random2908]

I learned something important and stupid about California. The main purpose of red light cameras is to catch people who don't sufficiently stop at the intersection before making a right turn. The fee is exorbitant, about $400-500, because a big chunk of it has to go to the privately owned company that installs and monitors the cameras; this is also the company who identifies who has to pay fees for not sufficiently stopping for their right turns. (The fine is $35 because this is such a minor offense, the rest is fees.) Plus you then have to pay a traffic school so that your insurance won't go up, which is such a racket. It's a triple racket, and it's government sanctioned because the local government is part of it.

Every so often there's a big class-action against some city or another over this, but unfortunately for me, there is not currently one against my city that I could try to join in instead of paying this fucking stupid fine for a non-crime.

As far as I can tell from a lot of google research, this is such a routine thing in the cities that do it that there's no real way to fight it (a laywer is cheaper than the fine! so I considered that as an option). That is, short of joining one of those periodic class-actions, which is unfortunately not happening right now. I'll keep an eye out in case I can join a later one and maybe recoup some of my money.