HONOLULU -- The state is going ahead with new traffic enforcement cameras even though the director of transportation admits there is a major flaw in the law, KITV 4 News has learned.

The system has already been delayed by camera and computer glitches, but the biggest glitch of all is the way the legislature wrote the law in the first place.

Basically state officials said the photo enforcement system was not designed to identify the drivers of the cars. However, the law was not written that way.

As a result, once the system starts issuing citations in the next few weeks, the courts may be bogged down with people claiming they weren't driving when the cars were caught on camera.

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"It would be just a nightmare to track down each single driver with the number of pictures we would be taking," state transportation director Brian Minaai said.

The nightmare will become reality anyway in the next two or three weeks, when these unmarked photo vans and remote controlled intersection cameras lead to potentially thousands of speeding and red light citations.

Even though the photos aren't expected to show drivers clearly, the tickets won't be any different from tickets issued by police officers. That leaves the courts to sort out potentially thousands of challenges from people who say they weren't the driver.

"If they don't think it's a clear photograph I am sure they will want to challenge it but we'll have to see because nothing has really come in for us yet," administrative courts judge Colette Garibaldi said.

The moving violations will affect driving records and insurance rates.

"We wouldn't really know if it was from a photograph or from just receiving a citation from a police officer," State Farm Insurance agent Carolyn Fujioka said.

Why not just put it off?

"Well, we have already put out a contract to the vendor to begin issuing these citations and we've come so far we figure we will just proceed and whatever glitches we will just address it in the next legislature," Minaai said.

As of Monday, the plan was to change the law so that photo citations would be like parking tickets, written to the car owner, and not go on anyone's driving record. The court would be forced to pull out driving records and erase photo citations issued during the six months or so the imperfect law was in place.

If a driver gets a photo ticket in the next few months it will go on their driving record then be taken off if the law changes.

One insurance executive said if the insurance rate went up for that speeding ticket it would stay up.