Is it fair ?

I have a little problem with this news story - part two.

Not in the fact that some serious driving convictions cannot stand up in court because of technicalities - there is no excuse for the case mentioned in that news report where a driver escaped a drunk driver conviction due to a police balls-up with evidence collection - and thats not to mention that the driver was only persued for a drink driving offence when he had allegedly caused an extremely nasty road crash.

No, the problem that I have is in the way that the simple stuff will be targeted first, the simple, money raising stuff like speed camera convictions for instance.

It happens thoughout the public service sector, there is a finite amount of money to spend on specific projects and initiatives, and the success of those projects are measured by the amount of cash they bring in.

Which is why the introduction of speed cameras at random intervals throughout our land has been so successful, the ratio of cash income against initial cash outlay for the equipment is immense and if a private company had been set up to run the UK's speed camera network it would by now be quoted on the FSTE100.

And which is why, in the BBC report, the heart-rending stuff about serious road accidents and crippling injuries to innocent road users is just a smoke screen to hide the paragraph that states that people who wish to appeal against a simple 3 penalty point £60 speed camera notification may be put off by the fact that the defence costs will be quoted at £4000.

I have had three speed camera convictions in the past and I paid every one of them without fail, no excuse, i was wrong, I now watch my speed far more than I ever used to, so the speed camera debate is dead and buried as far as I'm concerned - it works and its better for all of us that it does.

But for most citizens the plop of the speed camera notification on their doorstep is probably as close an involvement in the public prosecution process as they'll ever have, its bad enough being told that you're in the wrong, its bad enough paying a £60 fine, but if you genuinely doubt that you were the driver on a particular day, or that you were indeed speeding on that particular location, then it is just not on to be threatened right at the outset with a £4000 cost if you dare to appeal.

I appealed against one speed camera notification, I won.

I won because the authority who issued the notification were inept and incapable of doing the job that they had been appointed to do, but I seriously doubt that I would have appealed if the threat of a huge cost to me had been made and in that case ineptitude and careless administration in the law would have been rewarded.

It wasn't my speeding that caused the arrival of the self-convictiing letter, the one that says "we have a photo of you speeding, you know you did it, we have the proof that you did it, now tick this box and send us £60 and your drivers licence", no it was my brother - or to be precise, we think it was my brother, in fact I'd better be careful here, it was a pool car and so it could have been any one of three of us who were driving on that date.

How could you not remember I hear you all asking ?

Well, here is where the ineptitude comes in - the date of the alleged offence was 12th June - we recieved the notification on 4th November.

I spoke to a lawyer friend and he advised that the notification should be sent to you within 14 days - I wrote back to the authority and told them that because more than 14 days had elapsed we couldn't ID the driver without seeing the photo and in any case was their approach absolutely legal at this time ?

They replied that the 14 day rule only applies when vehicles can be instantly traced to their owner, our vehicle was leased and so they were allowed to take as long as they liked when tracing the registered keeper of the vehicle, which was me, and PS they don't release the photo as its their evidence, they'll show you it in court - if you dare go that far.

I replied to inform them that the leasors of the car were Peugeot UK and had been since the car had rolled off their own production line, they were the only people on the registration document and they knew who I was, and they would have informed the authority within 14 days of who I was as they would have been prosecuted if they hadn't done so - I asked them again what th ereason for the five month delay was and explained why the five month delay made the ID of the driver so hard and could I see the photo as it was the only way that I could help them.

They eventually sent me a copy of their evidence - the five month old photo that they were hoping to present in court.

We pissed ourslelves laughing when we saw the picture of the front of our car on a very sunny day in June with the windscreen completely bleached out by the sun and the knuckles of the driver just about visible on the steering wheel, and nothing else to ID him/her/whoever.

We had a quick meeting in the office and agreed that we'd all love to have our day down at the magistrates court where we could all stand in line and hold our knuckles out for the magistrate to decide who the driver was and I wrote back to the authority to inform them so.

That was two years ago - they haven't replied to me yet.


The Road Safety Partnership that was involved had obviously made a huge balls up of this case and I dare say that our photo was one of a batch from that June day which had been misplaced and only discovered five months later, but the authoritiy had the brass balls and arrogance to still send out the speeding notices in the smug knowledge that a good percentage of those folk involved would simply cough up the £60 and stand the 3 points on their licence - when we stood up to them they backed down (or at least I think they've backed down, I wouldn't put it past some fuckwit civil servant to write to us again sometime soon).

And that is where we are heading with this new initiative, only those willing to risk a £4000 cost will question the validity of their speeding notifications, and ineptitude and crass bad evidence handling will be swept under the carpet.

Financial threats for asking question is not how the justice system should work .