If you are driving:
You say "Me", then they give you the points
You lie, say it "Bob", then you're guilty of perverting the course of justice. They then write to Bob,
If Bob agrees, then he's also guilty of perverting the course of justice, but most of the time you'll both get away with it.
If Bob disagrees, then they look more into it.
If you refuse to answer then you're guilty of not saying who was driving the car, a completely separate offence to the original speeding one, and one which is typically more serious
In the US you can mow down a child, drive away, and despite people having your plates and giving them to the cops, they can't actually arrest you because it was only your car which was used to kill someone?
Not quite. In the US you get in trouble for driving off, but drivers that wait for the police to show up and then blame the child that they mowed down have a decent shot at having zero consequences, especially if the child was riding a bicycle.
https://nextcity.org/features/how-much-is-a-cyclists-life-wo...
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/livable-city/la-oe-schultz-p...
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/30/opinion/why-drivers-get-a...
I certainly support civil liberties, but they need to be balanced against the government's strong interest in preventing the bloodshed that comes from the reckless operation of vehicles.
Most of these systems take a photo of the car, which you can often use to verify who the driver was. For serious offenses you could chose to investigate who was driving and issue a normal ticket rather than an administrative fine. You can create laws about window tinting levels (where they don't already exist), and if you can't identify the driver because the car is violating those laws you can revoke the registration.
You could also institute a point system for vehicle registrations, where if an offense cannot be assigned to a person, it is assigned to the vehicle, and after points exceeded a certain limit the registration is revoked.
I don't know about NYC in particular, but in many jurisdictions a major reason that red-light cameras are treated like administrative fines rather than civil or criminal offenses is to avoid full due-process rights, making it harder to contest the fine, and saving money by making everything automated. Our safety is more important than that.
