I mean this sincerely: what's the alternative? Your friend/kid/husband/roommate/mom borrows your car, injures a biker running a stoplight, and nobody is held responsible because no cop was on the scene?

I don't dispute there are technical issues that need to be ironed out with cameras. But it's worth looking at how those could be addressed rather than rejecting the concept. There are equity concerns at the heart of them, you're right. But there are other equity concerns about not doing anything that to me bear equal consideration - without real traffic enforcement, anybody who's not driving is a target for harm with no accountability to the drivers responsible. The status quo is not okay.

In general, I also think "if you own a car, you are responsible for what people do with it" isn't a terrible approach to making our streets safer. If we had cameras, there's no reason the laws couldn't be written to avoid the worst-case outcome you list there.Scaling the fines by income would be great starting place.