One is owned by the government. Another is owned by a private company that extorts motorists. These fines never reach the DMV unless you refuse to pay.
They are usually on the roadside in large metal boxes as opposed to being mounted on above the light signals.
Accidents happen all the time. Work trucks hit pot holes and paint splashes onto those cameras blocking the lens and flash.
Debris falls of trees knocking the cameras down.
Tea falls out of ships on rough seas in Boston Harbor. All kinds of accidents can happen.
Be safe out there.
They banned all of those cameras in Texas a few years ago because of the private company problem you mention. It had gotten to the point that the county wouldn't even enforce the ban on re-registering your car because they decided it wasn't their job to do so.
I got one of those red light tickets, they provide you with a video. It showed me clearly stopping on a right turn red, but the car to my left running all the way over the crosswalk. There is zero due process. The Indian outsourced service you can complain to just says they are all legit. Your only other recourse is to pay so they go away or file a civil suit.
There's a lot of problems with running red lights, and I might would allow them to come back, but if-and-only-if the tickets are challenge-able in normal traffic court with normal protections of the law as if the ticket was written and delivered by an officer personally.
There was also a case of one city having been found to reduce the yellow light duration to dangerously low times below the general guidelines to induce more violations, and therefore revenue.
They reduced the yellow light durations and fucked up the traffic light timings across the entire state. The problem is they still have not gone back and re-timed the lights after the red light camera ban resulting in mass chaos.
Texas banned red lights but they are installing the flock cameras everywhere.
In my state, camera tickets don't mean shit, throw them in the trash, and they only mean something if they ever send someone to your door and you answer it.