A San Mateo state senator is renewing his effort to have the $500 fine for "California stop" red-light violations reduced to a sum that low-income people can afford.

Sen. Jerry Hill thinks the current punishment for the slow, rolling right-hand turns doesn't fit the crime. He introduced legislation last week that would cut the fine in half.

In California, a red-light violation costs a driver about $500, by far the highest fine in the nation, according to the traffic-watch site TheNewspaper.com. The fine is a whopping $540 in Hill's district in San Mateo County. In most states, it's around $100.

"Many people are making $3,000 a month, $2,500 and when you take taxes, their net take-home pay, this is over a fourth of what they take home," Hill told ABC 7.

In 2014, Redflex Traffic System, which administers the red-light camera ticketing program for the city of San Mateo, issued 4,462 tickets worth $2.4 million, according to TheNewspaper. Sixty-three percent of these tickets went to drivers who made "California stops," also known as "Hollywood stops."

The exorbitant fine can make drivers reluctant to make even legal right-hand turns at red-light camera intersections, causing traffic to back up behind them. Would you trust a camera to recognize that you came to full stop before turning?

This isn't the first time Hill has tackled the fine in the Legislature. A bill authored as an assemblyman passed in 2010, but then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed it, arguing a reduced fine would send the wrong message to drivers about traffic safety.

State Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, took a cut at the issue in 2013, writing a bill to prohibit use of the camera tickets merely to raise revenue, and to make it easier to fight them in court. But Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed it.

"There are accuracy issues, privacy issues and due process issues with these tickets," Simitian told the Chronicle's Kevin Fagan. "The trouble is that more and more cities depend on this for revenue."

Simitian does not advocate that red-light cameras should be eliminated, saying they do have a safety value. "I just don't think the current system gives the public a fair shake," he said.

The state Department of Finance estimated in 2014 that red-light cameras bring in more than $80 million annually to the state and $50 million to cities and counties.