I don't think anyone challenges the usual traffic violation fines in China...you do know China has a >99% conviction rate in court! The fines are pretty small, and the points on the license are re-set every year, so the chance of losing one's license for minor violations is extremely slim. The biggest hassle is the paying of the fine; my wife has always "volunteered" for us, since she's more flexible during the day...

tb

Do traffic tickets affect your social credit score?

I don't believe the scoring system is supposed to officially launch until next year, but I would guess "yes".

It means that you disobeyed road markings. Usually it is crossing a solid white line to change lanes.

These days you can get ticketed by the driver behind (or around) you recording you on their dash-cam which they can upload to a police app. It doesn't even have to be a dash-cam. A passenger could record you on their phone and upload it too.

I don't think you can show up in a court at all. There is an administrative review process but like most criminal trials in China I wouldn't expect anything out of it.

However, if a genuine mistake has been made by the authorities I would complain though. I once had a violation after my car got impounded by the police due to an accident. Turns out that whoever was driving my car from the yard to the inspection place (possibly a police officer) was breaking the law.

Anyway I got it sorted out with the officer who was dealing the original accident and he charged the fine to his personal card. No points were deducted nor was it recorded against any drivers licence.

I don't know but it definitely makes your insurance rate go up for the next year.

I am aware that this is the case not just in China, but in most of Asia. But there's another factor to consider here too, and that's return on investment. I always tell everyone to challenge every ticket, even if they're guilty of what is alleged. Why? Because if you just roll over and pay the fine, the government hardly has to do any work to get the money. If you take it to court, sure, you might end up getting convicted in the end, but you'll have forced them to process a crap ton of paperwork, the officer will have to show up in court (which means he can't be writing tickets at that time, OR they will have to pay him overtime), they have to pay the court clerks, judges, and a whole bunch of other people to process this stuff. So they get the revenue, but you decrease their margins and ROI in the process. Also, if you force the prosecution to dot their i's and cross their t's like by not waiving time, scheduling your court case as close as possible to the 45 day speedy trial limit, and sending your discovery request exactly 21-22 days before the trial because the prosecution has exactly 20 days to respond to discovery requests, then if they screw up on any administrative issue, you win. I've been convicted of speeding in court exactly once (complete BS ticket, driving I-880 northbound in Fremont, no traffic in any of the 4 lanes next to me, sunny and clear, and no traffic ahead or behind for 1/4 mile), and after this, I lined up at the clerk's window to pay my fine. But at least I cost Alameda County as much of this revenue as I could before I paid it.

I'm still unclear about whether being caught by camera means you get assessed points on your license or not. Running a red light in China is 6 points; do it twice in a year and your license gets revoked, and if camera tickets count toward that total, that's actually not hard to have happen. Especially if you live there full time.

In California, I've been told that red light camera tickets can only be issued if they can identify you as the driver in the photo, similar to what the rules are in Germany, where this guy got out of a traffic ticket because of a bird https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48431612 So whenever I go into an area with red light cameras, I put the visor down. But even so, you'd have to get caught FOUR times in a year in order to get your license suspended for this here.

I wouldn't be surprised if China allows tickets to be issued without a photo of the driver but if the driver cannot be identified, do you get points? Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if California eventually allows this too. You're dealing with a corrupt system which is concerned not with safety, but with generating revenue, and that's true on both sides of the Pacific. And here we go, first thing I found in a Google search: https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/06/...e-suspensions/ This isn't about anything except allowing the state/counties/cities to collect more revenue by decreasing costs in processing tickets and encouraging even more people to just pay the fine instead of fighting this stuff in court. A long time ago (like before I was born), I heard that California actually issued points for parking tickets too, but decriminalized them because there were too many people who got parking tickets who were clogging up the court system. So instead of hiring more judges, they just made it easier to collect revenue by decreasing penalties (no points on license, just money is at stake, civil instead of criminal trial). That tells you where the motivation lies.

A better question: Do foreigners who don't live in China have a social credit score?

Well I have dashcams running in all of my vehicles whenever I drive now, and I just got one (VIOFO A119 V2) for use in vehicles I drive when I am on trips. I'm sure I'll have a ton of footage of other people being morons the next time I visit, and it would be nice to put those videos somewhere other than my Youtube channel and link to the videos on "idiot driver's threads" on other forums.

If you are in any government databases, such as licensed drivers, I'm guessing that you will end up being scored.

大哥is always watching. :)

If you pass a red light twice in a year, then I think that they should revoke your license. In any case a red light is 3 points, not 6.

In discussing your "complete BS" ticket, you mention every fact other than whether you were actually speeding, which would seem to be the only relevant detail.

I have a simpler defense: I don't run red lights.

That's true, but if there's a malfunctioning camera, it's pretty easy to "run" the light 5 times in a week if it happens to be right outside your hotel or other temporary place of residence. The problem with camera tickets is that the camera doesn't TELL you it got you, you have to wait for it to come in the mail. Talk to some of the people in places like Edmonton, which deployed a ridiculous amount of photo radar/lidar and some people got like 3-5 speeding tickets before the first one even arrived in the mail. If it had been an officer pulling people over, they probably would have modified their behavior on that stretch of road, but cameras will continue issuing tickets without the feedback getting to the driver until many days pass.

Legally, yes, all the officer must do is prove to the Judge that the defendant was doing PSL+1, and the defendant is guilty (at least in maximum speed law cases). Basic speed law is a bit different, but the burden of proof is on the defendant to prove it was safe to be going faster than PSL.

In a practical sense though, every single driver on the road within my sights would have been ticketed if that was the metric being used. Of course, officers are allowed to use personal discretion and "But everyone else was doing it and didn't get ticketed, Your Honor" is not a valid excuse in court.

Still, there are plenty of ways to get tickets tossed, as the instruments used to obtain speeds are not infallible. Check out this presentation done by another software engineer (not me): https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B941...lQMGdGXzQ/edit

After I got my ticket, I actually bought a LIDAR gun (the same LIDAR gun the officer used to get my speed, the LTI TruSpeed) to see if the so-called "sweep effect" discussed in the presentation is actually real, and I found out that it is. By manipulating it in a specific manner, I have been able to get readings of about 8 mph off of parked cars. Too bad I didn't do this before I got convicted, so that I could show video I took through the scope on the gun to the Judge.

Also, in the case of cameras, and for LIDAR and RADAR guns, not only are they vulnerable to hitting different parts of the car and returning the wrong speed, but they also must be properly calibrated. In the US, they must be calibrated every few years with equipment traceable to NIST. In China, the equivalent of NIST is NTSC but in any case, one thing you can do is you demand to see the evidence that the thing was properly certified. If it hasn't been, then all tickets issued by that camera/gun are invalid.

Good luck putting these techniques to the test in China.:D