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Comment by joshuamorton | Hacker News Reader

Everything you've said applies to parking tickets too. You can't prove that the owner parked the vehicle.

Tha owner is ultimately civily liable if the vehicle is parked in a way that it shouldn't be. Extending that same civil liability to the active operation, as opposed to only the consequences of active operation, seems perfectly reasonable.

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> Tha owner is ultimately civily liable if the vehicle is parked in a way that it shouldn't be. Extending that same civil liability to the active operation, as opposed to only the consequences of active operation, seems perfectly reasonable.

As this judgement reveals, such a suggestion is patently unreasonable, for the reasons listed in the judgement

Having read the order, it doesn't really justify the central claim, that these are criminal, and in my opinion a lot of the context cuts against that (the liability being only a fine and some other things).

That is a fair view to hold as a prior. Indeed, the judge took that context into account when judging that it was a criminal matter. Other states which do things differently might have received a different judgement based on their own context.

The key difference is a parking ticket isn't $500.

The mentioned fines are $1-200, which is in the same range as parking tickets.

I think the best argument is that license points are criminal in nature, but I don't really buy that.

And in fact the law at issue doesn't even assign points.

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