I had an interesting conversation with a driver who went down to the courthouse to fight one of his tickets. It was a no right turn on red, where the sign was so small that he couldn’t see it. This is one of the tricks they use: they put signs up when they’re doing construction, and maybe you’ve been taking a right on Sansome, day after day, but all of a sudden there’s a tiny sign. You don’t know when these signs are going to go up, you don’t know if they’re new or if you’ve just never seen them before. All you know is that you want to turn on red, and a cop’s in a bad mood and sees you, and now you have a $350 ticket. That’s half your week’s salary, if you drive full time.

Another interesting thing is that there are now cameras on the buses. The bus drivers think it’s really funny if they see you drop somebody off in a red zone, because that’s a $300 ticket. Their picture comes to your house with a $300 ticket, then the DMV adds another $150 or so, and you might be out $500 just for dropping somebody off, because your back tire was a foot into the bus zone. It’s as bad as running a red light, and Red-light cameras are a similar problem, but the bus cameras are human-driven, and they may even be betting on how many they can catch a month. Maybe the bus driver hates Uber drivers, and now he’s looking for you. Very expensive, and very scary.