Apparently My Fucking Motorcycle Owes Albuquerque Money

I got an interesting text the other day.

Well, interesting is the wrong fucking word.

I got an irritating text the other day. And, quite frankly, it pissed me the fuck off.

“Katelyn, Harris & Harris is a debt collector for City of Albuquerque Automated Speed Enforcement Program. Case/Ticket/Citation #: ABQ001272348. To pay…”

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

Let me turn back the hands of time a little bit.

At some point during my recovery, I was back on a motorcycle. This was around February of 2026, when I was finally back in business on two wheels. And, as fate would fucking have it, I still had a lot of follow-up appointments, many of which were in Albuquerque because that’s where I was airlifted after the crash during the one and only helicopter ride of my life.

Zero stars. Would not fucking recommend.

So I was down in Albuquerque, riding my Lilith replacement bike, on my way to a fucking appointment and trying to figure out where the hell I was going. I went to the appointment, and if I recall correctly, I wasn’t particularly pleased with that doctor, but you can’t win them all. I think that one was to check out my foot, the same foot I’d already been walking and riding on for a few months against doctor’s orders.

What fucking ever.

A few weeks later, I got a letter in the mail from Albuquerque’s Automated Speed Enforcement Program, complete with a photograph of the backside of my motorcycle. Apparently, the City of Albuquerque believed my motorcycle had been traveling about twenty miles per hour over the posted speed limit.

Frankly, that doesn’t really sound like something I would do.

I mean, if we’re being honest, I don’t normally ride that fucking slow.

But here’s my problem with automated enforcement: there’s a whole fucking world missing from that photograph.

How heavy was traffic? What were the other cars doing? Was there construction? This was Albuquerque, so you know goddamned well there was probably fucking construction somewhere. Was there debris in the road? Did somebody start moving into my lane? Did I accelerate to get myself out of a shitty situation? What happened in the ten seconds before the photograph was taken? What happened ten seconds afterward?

A photograph gives you a number.

It doesn’t give you context.

And context fucking matters.

That’s one of the reasons I fucking hate automated enforcement. A police officer actually sitting there watching traffic can see what’s happening. They can see the vehicles. They can see the road. They can see the traffic. They can see behavior. And if somebody is genuinely operating a vehicle in a manner so dangerous that the government needs to intervene in the name of public safety, the officer can do something fucking remarkable: They can stop them.

You know. Stop the allegedly dangerous behavior.

But that's not what Albuquerque's cameras do.

The camera takes the picture.

You keep fucking driving.

Nobody stops you.

Nobody identifies you.

Nobody determines whether you’re actually a danger to anybody.

Nobody apparently gives enough of a fuck about this immediate threat to public safety to actually remove the threat from the fucking road.

Instead, several weeks later, the registered owner of the vehicle gets a bill for a hundred fucking dollars.

And if the registered owner doesn’t pay it?

Eventually, apparently, a debt collector sends them a fucking text message.

And this is where the whole thing becomes fucking fascinating to me.

Because Albuquerque doesn't actually treat these camera citations like ordinary speeding tickets. The City explicitly says automated speed enforcement citations aren't violations of the state traffic code. They're civil infractions under a municipal nuisance ordinance. The City also says they're issued to the vehicle, not the driver. 

Wait.

The fucking vehicle?

Apparently my motorcycle is a person now.

Does she get to vote?

Can I claim her as a dependent?

Does she need a Social Security number?

Because the City never established that I was speeding. It established that a motorcycle registered to me appeared in front of a camera while traveling faster than a number printed on a sign.

And apparently my motorcycle now owes Albuquerque a hundred fucking dollars.

The City's own sample citation makes this weird little legal maneuver pretty fucking clear. It says, “Your vehicle was photographed speeding,” identifies the registered owner, and imposes a $100 civil penalty. Paying it constitutes an admission and waives the right to appeal. 

And that distinction matters to me.

Because criminal matters aren't normally resolved by sending Harris & Harris after somebody to collect a fucking debt.

I didn't borrow a hundred dollars from Albuquerque.

I didn't open a line of credit with Albuquerque.

I didn't buy a fucking service from Albuquerque.

I didn't drive through a toll booth and agree to pay Albuquerque for the privilege.

The government pointed a machine at the road, the machine produced evidence the government believes establishes a violation, and the government's response wasn't to stop the allegedly dangerous conduct.

It was to send a bill.

And that's why I don't buy the fucking safety argument.

If speeding is so dangerous that government intervention is necessary to protect the public, then intervene.

Stop the fucking vehicle.

Stop the allegedly dangerous behavior.

Put an officer on the road who can observe what is actually happening and make a judgment based on the totality of the circumstances instead of reducing the entirety of human behavior to a photograph, a radar reading, and a fucking invoice.

But that's not what happens.

Instead, the alleged speeder keeps speeding.

The supposedly endangered public remains supposedly endangered.

The vehicle continues merrily down the fucking road.

And the government gets its hundred-dollar bill in the mail.

That's not fucking traffic enforcement to me.

That's monetization.

And the City has gone out of its way to build an enforcement structure around that distinction. These automated citations don't add points to your driver's license. The City says they aren't reported to the state as traffic-code violations. They aren't reported to credit bureaus. The City says no legal action is taken against the cited person through collections; instead, unpaid citations can eventually be enforced against the vehicle through parking enforcement. 

Again: The fucking vehicle.

This is where my larger problem with all of these fucking cameras comes back into the picture.

Everywhere I go, I see more cameras. More sensors. More automated enforcement. More machines watching people move through the world. And every fucking time, we're told it's for our safety.

Safety.

The magic fucking word.

Say “safety” and apparently nobody is supposed to question what comes afterward.

Install another camera.

Build another database.

Track another license plate.

Generate another citation.

Send another fucking bill.

All of it justified because somewhere, somehow, somebody might be safer.

Meanwhile, every piece of that infrastructure expands the government's ability to monitor the movement and behavior of ordinary people who are simply going about their fucking lives.

That's not the direction I want this country moving.

Liberty isn't supposed to mean you're free to move around as long as a network of government-owned machines gets to watch you do it.

And law enforcement isn't supposed to be reduced to an automated fucking billing system.

If I've done something so dangerous that I need to be stopped, then fucking stop me.

Put a human being behind the badge. Observe what I'm doing. Look at the circumstances. Make the accusation. Give me the opportunity to face it.

But don't put a camera beside the road, let the supposedly dangerous behavior continue completely uninterrupted, mail the registered owner of some fucking property a hundred-dollar invoice weeks later, send it to a debt collector when they refuse to pay, and then tell me with a straight fucking face that this entire machine exists because you're deeply concerned about public safety.

I don't fucking buy it.

And I don't owe Albuquerque a debt simply because Albuquerque mailed me a piece of paper declaring that I do.

As far as I'm concerned, the whole automated enforcement apparatus can go fuck itself.

The cameras.

The sensors.

The automated citations.

The debt collectors.

All of it.

If you want to enforce the fucking law, then enforce the fucking law.

But stop pretending that mailing people hundred-dollar bills after the fact somehow made anybody safer.