So this has been a thing in Germany since forever. The driver must pay the penalty, not the owner. So what they do is take a picture of the driver and send this to the owner. They have to either pay up, or state the name of the person who drove. If the driver claims that they did not drive and do not know the person on the picture (and if a cursory investigation fails, not sure how much time the authorities will invest in finding the driver), they will be told to record all rides with that vehicle from now on. If they fail to do that, I guess they get a greater penalty the next time, I'm not sure.
So yeah, in some cases you might get out of it by feigning ignorance, but it seems to be a sensible compromise between facial recognition and giving up.
Oh, that is a great third path! Thank you for that. I wonder how effective feigning ignorance will be when the officer can just compare the picture of you and your ID / IRL face.
Yeah it might only work in edge cases. Someone I know got caught speeding in his wifes car wearing a hat and sunglasses and looked to the side at the time, so he managed to get out of it somehow.
So yeah, in some cases you might get out of it by feigning ignorance, but it seems to be a sensible compromise between facial recognition and giving up.