Pimpdaddy:
When caught speeding i think there should be an option of £60-3points or £120-no points…
Nah, don’t be so soft. If they can’t read big signs or know the highway code they should have their licence removed. I mean either way they don’t know what they’re doing or they’re just ignoring what they’re supposed to be doing. Lets be so lenient on drink drivers and see how that goes?
Anyway i’ve had two court appearances for Gatsos. A43, Green man, before it was all dualled. I went to Towcester Magistrates, i was going to plead not guilty due to getting the summons several months later. This was before i knew about the 14 day rule (i’m aware thats for the vehicle owner). My argument was as an agency driver i could not be expected to recollect what i drove three months ago, i got a solicitor. He told me the court would expect that with ‘due diligence’ i could find out and advised me to plead guilty. So i did. He also argued for me that had i know this before i elected for court blah blah they did let me off with just the FPN price of £30 (or £60, can’t quite remember).
Then got another one on the A15 coming home from Lincoln. Got two notices in the post, one on Monday and one on Tuesday, just a replica of the first but with a different sending out date. Wasn’t sure what to do so i sat on them and ignored them. Got a letter a while later to say if i was going to court for not sending details off. So i contacted them and said i never recieved anything and they sent me a photostat copy out. I signed to say i was the driver and i was not guilty. Went to court. It got thrown out because there was no request on behalf of the chief constable for my details and they could not submit the evidence. The brief did argue that the details where on the reverse of the note i recieved, but they never photocopied that bit !!! As was shown when he produced it.
Why not, bottom line is that they want to make money out if us, always has been & always will be about the £££. if you can’t pay the fine then you don’t speed #simples
Under the Geneva Convention, you have a fundamental right not to incriminate yourself.
You recieve a NIP through the post, and you know you were driving.
Then you have 2 options:
1; Fill out the form with your details, incriminating yourself and getting a £ + points punishment for the speeding or
2; Exersize your right not to incriminate yourself and don’t fill out the form, getting you 6 points and a massive fine for ‘failure to furnish details’.
In Finland they have a system where your fine is calculated on your ability to pay.The boss of Nokia was fined the equivilent of .25 million for speeding.Driving quickly is not the same as bad driving.I wish that the police would get of their butts and prosecute the bad drivers sometimes.
cieranc, it has been established in the European Court of Human Rights that there is no “right to silence” in the discussed circumstances, e.g. :- news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6251936.stm. Identifying the driver is not necessarily incriminating, I believe, if they committed no offence. If the driver denies doing anything wrong then he can have his day in court. Isn’t the Geneva Convention to do with conduct in war?!!!
briscoe05:
If you were caught speeding then its pretty much case closed, why would you fight it? you would need bloody ■■■■ good excuse to be able to get out of it - to which im unaware of any!
I was “caught” by a Gatso, allegedly 36 in a 30. Tacho showed cruise control had been on 50kmh max for about 5mins when offence happened. After a heated discussion with TM (didn’t want the firm to be seen to argue with Police) I was given a photocopy which I sent to police. Got a letter basically threatening the usual crap. I couldn’t afford to fight it and to add insult firm docked me £68 load bonus. They took this over two weeks as I’d not earned enough the week the NIP came through. 40mph and dragging jobs out ever since.
that is a bit cack lol, wonder how they will take that then if you have proof you were going slower?
Snudger:
cieranc, it has been established in the European Court of Human Rights that there is no “right to silence” in the discussed circumstances, e.g. :- news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6251936.stm. Identifying the driver is not necessarily incriminating, I believe, if they committed no offence. If the driver denies doing anything wrong then he can have his day in court. Isn’t the Geneva Convention to do with conduct in war?!!!
Spot-on Snudger. Idris Francis raised a fighting fund of about £10,000 if I remember correctly - most of it from £10 donations from all over Britain.
What peed me off more than the fine, was that TM knew the offence was dodgy, yet still took my load bonus “because otherwise the bonus scheme is illegal.”
My bonus after that was finding any excuse for tea breaks. Apparently if we earn bonus it means the lorry’s making a profit. I then worked out how far off the target I was and if I passed it, hung about onsite or washed the wagon. I did this for weeks so in the end, it hurt them more than me.
alamcculloch:
‘…I wish that the police would get of their butts and prosecute the bad drivers sometimes…’
Let’s not kid ourselves that coppers have much to do with real roads these days.
Face it, cheap ‘agencies’ now do the watching/monitoring, skivvying, administering and doing the ‘disciplining’ on the nation’s arteries: Except the modern idea of disciplining is not the old fashioned, functional and practically useful method (as you alude?) since it’s largely now camera based & done from an isolated ‘HQ’ (located where? Who cares?)
Meanwhile, a supposedly much appreciated (?) but hardly spoken about model of social liberalism - as puked onto us by grey politicians wanting to be European/modern/funky/non-confrontational/popular, is turning these arteries - where we work, into a ‘do-what-you-want’ viper’s nest.
Obviously, as significant contributors to ‘statistics’, the undemocratic DCPC stitch-up is intended to keep us professionals in line
Plod are elsewhere chasing their tails. Where? Reluctantly puffing, red-faced on a knobbly tyred Halfords bike with crap mudguards around a sink estate or looking bored with a shooter at the airport and cannot, due to them no longer having the responsibility to ‘…get of their butts…’ to police the real highways because they’ve been taken off them.
i was caught speeding at 35 m.p.h. in a 30m.p.h road since then i hit the brakes on when i see the camera van go down to 20m.p.h.better safe than sorry ,keep your eyes on that speedo,i mean glued to it…the new severn bridge has a 50 m.p.h limit just before the tolls this is a real money spinner as the speed van parks behind a big sign on a bridge just before the tolls…its all about road safety not money…
ibson:
I got my letter today! £85 for the course and no points, I’m taking it! I will still have a clean licence then
I got offered the chance of a course, but I found a good insurance quote so took points, lesser cost and dawdled about so’s not to get anymore. I couldn’t sit in a classroom and be patronised, nor listen to someone who’s son put his head through his arse hitting a tree in a corsa.
DCPC, other work! 