Ouch, I can feel the discomfort. It sucks that she had to pay a fine and be in financial distress... But to do injustice to another person is simply 'an eye for an eye' and that's not how I believe these things should work.

I don't know how this normally goes in the US, but here a fine is pre-defined, so it's a fixed price for a fixed rule-breaking. Stop signs are there for a reason, and there's no excuse as 'it was quiet on the street' or 'I was really looking out'.

She should have stopped, that's the rule, and she broke it. She 'deserved' the fine, the only way I would feel injustice is done is if the standard fine is 40$ and somehow she got 175$. This is not possible 'here' but again, if that's what happened I understand she wanted to 'fight' this.

But then the fight should have been about that, getting a quadruple fine for a relatively innocent situation - and the 'system' should have figured out ifs he was right or not.

Now there's a person who simply did his job walking around with a stain on his name for something he didn't do. Again: he didn't hit on her, she did ignore a stop sign. She didn't get any punishment, but he might have.

It's easy to be writing this, but this would have been a difficult thing to say at a dinner table where you somehow always feel like 'it has to be fun', right? You don't want to be spoiling a perfectly pleasant mood when you've prepared food and/or haven't seen each other for a while. I have no solution for this either, except for maybe asking a simple question that at least makes the other person think, instead of sharing your own opinion immediately. A question like '...how do you think your accusation will impact this persons life/career'? might get the other person thinking, at least, and hopefully think a bit harder next time they feel they are treated wrong.