English Law

[Tinkerbelle]

Originally Posted by Tealeaf

Historians now attribute this to dyslexia. However, his son Murdoch II, who ruled 832 - 865, was known for a prolifigate literary output; thus we can only conclude that his spelling was somewhat superior.

As always I bow to your knowledge Mr T ......

....... but ... well ... I only meant Mad Murdoch from the A-Team

[SPUGGIE J]

Is this anything to do with the two bods that are raising a challange in the European courts concerning speed cameras??? Sorry but I think of them as pieces of Health and Safty equipment.

[AccyJay]

I've just read the story about 2 men who are taking their fight for not revealing who was driving their car to the European Court of Human Rights.

http://www.channel4.com/news/content/news-storypage.jsp?id=11174185

May i point out that the article doesn't state how fast they were traveling. C4 news stated that one of the drivers was caught traveling at 47 mph in a 30 mph zone.

[SPUGGIE J]

Originally Posted by AccyJay

I've just read the story about 2 men who are taking their fight for not revealing who was driving their car to the European Court of Human Rights.

http://www.channel4.com/news/content/news-storypage.jsp?id=11174185

May i point out that the article doesn't state how fast they were traveling. C4 news stated that one of the drivers was caught traveling at 47 mph in a 30 mph zone.

Ok now I am worried. If the Europratts find in favour of these two arrogent butt wipes then how many other laws of ours are going to be chalenged.

We are a Soverign State not some add on to to a wider U.S.E. Its time to start acting like one and give Brussels the I.S.S.D.

[AccyJay]

This is what annoys me. Lots of people are against the European Courts intervening in our everyday life. However, they go running to them when it suits them & UK laws don't work in their favour.

[SPUGGIE J]

Succesive govenments have handed that much power to the Europratts that I dont think we will be able to tell them to take a hike. Our laws have been chipped away for years and this motoring carry on shows how bad it is. To jambutty's point about it being English Law the same applies under Scottish Law if in a somewhat different form and the same for Northern Ireland.

While people can go running to the Europratts with their arguments about infringed rights then all laws in the UK might as well be defunct.

[bullseyebarb]

Originally Posted by SPUGGIE J

Succesive govenments have handed that much power to the Europratts that I dont think we will be able to tell them to take a hike. Our laws have been chipped away for years and this motoring carry on shows how bad it is. To jambutty's point about it being English Law the same applies under Scottish Law if in a somewhat different form and the same for Northern Ireland.

While people can go running to the Europratts with their arguments about infringed rights then all laws in the UK might as well be defunct.

Oh, how true!

[cashman]

i think if its your vehicle (not been stolen) and its clocked speeding unless you shop the driver, its the owners resposibility cos he let whoever use his car. so on that basis fine the owner. p.s. unless its me.

[jambutty]

I appreciate the point about people complaining about being ruled from Brussels and then running to the European Courts when they don’t like the English laws but that pre-supposes that it is the same people doing the running as well as complaining about Europe. There will be some, of course, but in the main the anti-Europeans are just that, totally.

However unless I have misread some posts the readers are missing the point. That being that a witness to a criminal act is liable to a fine if they do not give evidence against the criminal or they can choose to admit to the crime and take the rap. In this case the crime being that a driver of your car exceeded the speed limit.

Maybe my opening post wasn’t clear enough?

Now entrenched in ‘Motoring Law’ it establishes a precedent and could be enshrined in criminal law in the future.

Let’s just recap on what happens. You lend your car to someone and they get flashed for exceeding the speed limit. Although I understand that there are some cameras that can see and photograph the face of the driver, in the main the only evidence is the vehicle number plate, the model and make of vehicle and the time and place. You, as the registered owner, get ‘that’ letter. You have a choice, take the rap yourself or snitch on the driver. If you don’t want to do either you can get fined up to £1,000 and also get 3 points on your license.

Now apply that same principle to other criminal activities. You witness a crime but the criminal threatens your life if you snitch before running off. The police suspect that you witnessed the crime and you are told to testify or face a fine. Now I know that is not exactly the same but the principle still holds good.

I accept that in theory it is every person’s duty to report a crime when they see it being perpetrated but it is not an enforced duty. It is purely voluntary. There is nothing in English Law that states you MUST report a crime and MUST give evidence against the criminal if you witness a crime and subsequently you cannot be fined or imprisoned for not doing so.

Then, as someone has already mentioned there could be a moral dilemma.

You already have 9 points on your license and you lend your car to your son or daughter because his/her car is in the garage for its regular service and MOT, so that s/he can go to work some 40 miles away. Let’s just stick with daughter – it’s less complicated.

Your daughter also has 9 points on her license and part of the journey to and from work is a nice long country road that has a 50 mph speed limit on it. If your daughter sticks to the speed limit it frustrates some of the other drivers behind and they start to take chances in overtaking. So she goes with the flow, which to me is the sensible thing to do if good driving conditions prevail.

The local police know that on any day they can get plenty of drivers for speeding on that stretch of road set up a mobile camera and sure enough she and the rest get clocked.

If she takes the rap she loses her license and unless she can get a lift the job has to go as well. So your dilemma is – do you take the rap and lose your license or do your shop your daughter and she suffers the ensuing consequences. That’s a rhetorical question and I do not expect anyone to answer it. I know one thing, I wouldn’t like to be faced with that dilemma.

The point I am making it is unfair to put people into that situation and to do so hammers yet another nail into the civil liberties coffin.

During the five years that I have lived in my present flat the police have knocked on my door on four occasions to ask if I saw or heard anything happening at the school across the road from me or during an incident outside our block. On each occasion I hadn’t because my living/sitting room is at the back and with the TV or radio on I am not aware of anything happening on the road out front. However on each occasion I could see from the copper’s face that my denial was met with mistrust. Indeed on one notable occasion the cop hinted very strongly that I should have heard or seen something.

If those two motorists at the European Court lose their case then it is a definite possibility that some time in the future we could be forced to give evidence or risk being fined for not doing so. And this raises another point. No one but me KNOWS what I saw or heard. The best that they can do is assume that I might have seen or heard something. So to fine me for not giving evidence they would have to prove that I had that information. But that ‘motoring law’ allows a person to be fined on an assumption not evidence and that drives a coach and horses through English Law.

Let me just put another scenario forward. You lend your car to your son and daughter in law, both of whom are qualified drivers but their car is not available to them. Your daughter in law is driving as you wave them off to collect her mother from the airport. During the journey they get flashed by a speed camera. You have no idea who was driving at the time of the incident because either of them could have been driving. You truthfully state that you do not know who was driving and your son and daughter in law say, “it wasn’t me, it was him/her.” Not having any evidence that a particular person was driving you get the fine because you didn’t say who was driving.

Fair???

[garinda]

Originally Posted by SPUGGIE J

Succesive govenments have handed that much power to the Europratts that I dont think we will be able to tell them to take a hike. Our laws have been chipped away for years and this motoring carry on shows how bad it is. To jambutty's point about it being English Law the same applies under Scottish Law if in a somewhat different form and the same for Northern Ireland.

While people can go running to the Europratts with their arguments about infringed rights then all laws in the UK might as well be defunct.

I'm going to take a case to the European Courts, to find out why bloody MPs from Scotland can particpate and vote for legislation that only affects England and Wales.

Hope this post isn't seen as racist to our friends north of the border.

[Neil]

Originally Posted by jambutty

The point I am making it is unfair to put people into that situation and to do so hammers yet another nail into the civil liberties coffin.

How do you suggest the Police enforce the speed limits then?
I get the impression from your posts that you are against cameras and think they affect our civil liberties.

[AccyJay]

Fair play, i understand your point a little more clearly now. Two points spring to mind though.

1. Your son and daughter need to tell the truth, as to who was driving.

2. We get the German style camera's that take a photo of the driver as the vehicle approaches the speed trap.

The German camera's are much better, but who would fund such a project to replace all the existing camera's? The answer to that one is ....... The motorist will by paying bigger fines.

[Neil]

Originally Posted by AccyJay

2. We get the German style camera's that take a photo of the driver as the vehicle approaches the speed trap.

Fixed sites get the rear of the vehicle, mobile laser type do take a picture of the front including the driver.

Why don't motorbikes have front number plates?

[AccyJay]

Most of the German speeding tickets have always had a picture of the driver on them.

[jambutty]

How do you suggest the Police enforce the speed limits then?

It would take a greater brain than mine to solve that one Neil. Some people have argued in the past that if we had more traffic police on the roads it would deter most drivers and they would stick to the speed limits. And it does. It is like Blackpool illuminations when someone spots a police car some way in front. They can’t slow down fast enough. But what happens when a speed cop sees someone exceeding the speed limit? On come the blues and twos and he chases the guy and pulls him over. Then whilst he is busy writing out a ticket all the rest take the opportunity to put their collective feet down and are off into the distance.

But let me ask, how would you enforce the mugging law or the burglary law or any of the thousands of laws in existence? Surely the answer has to be to make the punishment harsh enough to deter people from breaking the laws in the first place. But that in itself is a can of worms I don’t care to open at this time.

I’m not against speed cameras Neil, in fact I’m all for them if they stop people from speeding.

What I am against is this law that forces people to give evidence under pain of punishment if they don’t.

For over 300 years it has been enshrined in our law that a person can only be convicted on the evidence produced. The way that certain evidence is gathered like phone taps is not acceptable evidence in a British Court. If the police cannot get the evidence they should not try and force people to give evidence to help their cause under pain of punishment if they don’t.

It was only yesterday on the news that it was alleged that even the police have used the “I don’t know who was driving” excuse to protect a fellow officer and the cases were dropped. If we are to have a law let it apply equally to all.

However also on the news yesterday was one chief constable who prosecuted himself for not revealing the name of a speeding police driver. It’s a crazy world!

I agree that the son and daughter need to tell the truth but in the real world when someone is accused of doing something what is the usual response? Not me?

Much obliged for the German camera info AccyJay – I only knew of their existence and not where they came from. If we had to have those types of camera what’s the chances of drivers shielding their face somehow. You could wear a full face crash helmet.
Magistrate – Why were you wearing a crash helmet whilst driving your car?
Prisoner – To protect my head in case of an accident your worship.
You can’t argue with that no matter what you might think. Don’t forget it is the body that is strapped in and the head is free to bang around at will.

Does the German camera flash a bright light to illuminate the car and driver? If it does it would need to be at head height to see the driver’s head and if it is at head height and it does flash the flash could blind the driver and cause an accident. If it is set at the same height as normal speed cameras driving with the sun visor down would prevent it from capturing your face.

Why don't motorbikes have front number plates?

Good question, they used to. Was it something to do with when hitting pedestrians they were getting badly injured on what to all intents and purposes is a knife over the front wheel?