A camera clicks catching your car running a red light.

A ticket arrives in the mail.

But what if you weren't driving?

That's the situation facing Byron Pugh. On Aug. 17th, his car was photographed running a red light at the intersection of Highway 85 and Church Street in Riverdale. The problem is, he wasn't driving.

"I went to court, and you know, I couldn't argue that that was my car," Pugh tells Channel 2. "Obviously the tag number matches and everything."

Pugh was in North Carolina on business. He even has the expense reports to prove it. His car was in the shop the day the picture was taken. At first, he was mad at the car shop, but then he got mad at the state because he had to prove himself innocent.

"You have to tell the name and the address of the person who was driving the car. I didn't know the guy's name. I mean, when you go to a shop, you don't know who the person is who's going to be working on your car. Why should I be put in the position to go and do the policeman's job, the detective's job, of discovering who was driving my car that day?"

Riverdale Police Chief Samuel Patterson disagrees.

"The Constitution protects all of us against self-incrimination. We don't have to incriminate ourselves, but it doesn't protect us against incriminating someone else and if we claim that someone else was driving the vehicle, we either have to give that other person's name, give them up, so they can present their side of the story, or we have to pay the fine."

Riverdale's police chief supports the cameras and he says the numbers back him up. He says before the cameras were in place there were a dozen bad wrecks at the intersection every year. In the two years since the cameras were installed, he says there's been just one serious accident.

Pugh believes the cameras though aren't about safety, they're about revenue.

"If the public's safety is really in jeopardy, what these guys need to do is put police officers out there and let them go give tickets to the people driving the cars. Cars don't commit crimes, people commit crimes."

Pugh has already spent $200 taking his ticket to court.

"You know, it just - it frustrated me. It really -- 9th grade Civics class teaches you, you're innocent until proven guilty, that you have the right to face your accuser. Well those two things are thrown out the window with these tickets because you're accuser is a machine and that machine wasn't present in the courtroom that day, I can tell you that."

A Bill in the State Legislature would do away with red light cameras on the grounds they are unfair to motorists. Stay tuned to WSBTV.com for more on it in the future.