Oak Ridge’s traffic camera program hasn’t started yet, but it’s never too soon to be forewarned about things that can go wrong with camera-based traffic enforcement. It seems (based on this article) that teenagers in Montgomery County, Maryland, are playing some elaborate pranks with speed-enforcement cameras. First they use a computer and printer to create a fake license plate bearing their chosen victim’s license tag number, then they attach the fake plate to their own car and drive at high speed past the speed-enforcement camera. A few days later, the hapless victim gets a ticket in the mail, and has the challenge of proving that the speeding vehicle wasn’t their car.
I figure that this one can’t go on for very long before the pranksters get caught — “the jig is up” as soon as one of the victims recognizes the vehicle photographed with their tag number. But forewarned is forearmed.
