First Time Speeding Ticket Help Needed!!

Gordon861

As I understand the law speed traps must be on a 'mostly straight' stretch of road, they are not allowed to setup after a bend or hide behind a wall. In theory at least, the officer is required to observe that you may be exceeding the speed limit and only then are they supposd to point the gun at you. They are not supposed to point the gun at every car they see in the hope that one will show as a ligitimate target.

But of course the fact that they aren't following these rules to the letter doesn't get you off a speeding ticket but can help you build a case if something else doesn't add up with the ticket.

Speeding motorists are a great way to pad the crime detection figures instead of actually removing the really dangerous people from the road.

PS I ride a motorbike every day, the accident figures may have gone down, but it sure 'feels' a hell of a lot more dangerous out there. A lot of people just don't look and have 'learnt to pass the test' rather than 'learnt to drive'.

lovethymini

Gordon861 wrote: »

As I understand the law speed traps must be on a 'mostly straight' stretch of road, they are not allowed to setup after a bend or hide behind a wall. In theory at least, the officer is required to observe that you may be exceeding the speed limit and only then are they supposd to point the gun at you. They are not supposed to point the gun at every car they see in the hope that one will show as a ligitimate target.

But of course the fact that they aren't following these rules to the letter doesn't get you off a speeding ticket but can help you build a case if something else doesn't add up with the ticket.

Speeding motorists are a great way to pad the crime detection figures instead of actually removing the really dangerous people from the road.

PS I ride a motorbike every day, the accident figures may have gone down, but it sure 'feels' a hell of a lot more dangerous out there. A lot of people just don't look and have 'learnt to pass the test' rather than 'learnt to drive'.

Totally agree;- my husband rides a motorbike every day, and I almost wish he wouldn't tell me what he witnesses on the road.
I wanted to do my bike test when I was 17 but my father was against it - he said that there's so much more traffic on the roads and many drivers just aren't aware enough of what's going on around them.

Happychappy

Enfieldian wrote: »

Those that join solely with the intention of graduating into traffic divisions are usually speed obsessed tyrants. They are not known as "Black Rats" for nothing.

Traffic officers who qualify at the end of the advanced driving course are trained to an exceptionally high standard and any traits of "speed obsessed tyrants" is soon identified and the officer deemed unsuitable

As for picking up body parts, surely your OH knew this was going to form part of the job before he applied for the transfer? I don't think that should fall to the police to take care of but one assumes that a coroner is not always available in time.

Another baseless assumption under the statute "If you don't know!! make it up" Coroners do not attend the scene of fatal collisions, the only persons present are members of the emergency services....full stop, and yes every piece of what was humanity is scraped up, evidenced and put into body bags and smaller bags, while the ghouls called Joe Public stare and run ino the back of each oher, not speeding, just totally clueless.

Regarding the arguement of traffic officers being a visible deterrent, I was a traffic Pc and Sgt for 22 years, I didnt go for promotion to fly a desk and sit in comfort away from angry men and sometimes sleepless nights, because I loved the job! I used to turn out a shift of 12 traffic cars covering a large area, some double crewed and some bikes. My counterpart today turns out with 3 x Pc's to cover the same area with none double crewed.

The arguement that speed kills per se, is valid, as is the inappropriate speed arguement, but if we were to allow the public to self police regarding speed and let them set a speed which they feel is "appropriate" then I think you really need to look at some of the drivers on the road, who to quote Alan Sugar "Doesnt have a bloody clue" therefore a speed limit for all is the only option available.

Unfortunately the clueless, distracted, uninterested, unobservant, and "cantbearsed" will always hide behind the inappropriate speed as being the problem but never come up with a workable solution which will cover lifes rich tapestry of young, old, insane, potty, uneducated, dangerous and dithering which makes up the drivers on the roads today. rant over

northstar23

MaximumImpact wrote: »

Why do people continue to slag off traffic officers and the police about speeding tickets when they have nothing to do with most tickets????? quote]

I think it just winds people up hugely when they see 4 or 5 traffic officers manning a speed trap for which the purpose is revenue raising when we have burglaries, knife crime, fraud and all sorts of what we percieve to be more serious crimes going on. I know people will point out that traffic is a specific division but it all comes under the same resource umbrella surely?

Personally I was driving along the M25 a few years back late one Friday night, doing 65 in the slow lane. I was overtaken by a Mercedes doing probably 75 ish... empty carriageway and dry conditions. He suddenly braked heavily having spotted a division of 5 manning a mobile unit that was almost hidden on the far side of a bridge over the motorway out of the driver's eyeline. As far as I'm concerned there was no possible argument for that unit being there to make drivers aware of speed / safety, just to catch people and raise revenue

It's that kind of incident that destroys any public trust and bond in traffic officers. I've had several friends who've had brushes with traffic police and say that they are the most vile arm of the force, whose behaviour adversly affects the relationship between the bobby on the beat and the public, who tar every copper with the same brush. I even had a mate who was training to become a policeman and spent time with the Kent traffic police... by the end he understood why the general public hated them so much.

I realise that most of the above paragraph is heresay and whatnot but I tried to explain the perception of what traffic officers are, and I realise this may not correlate to the truth, but it does go some way to answering the initial quesiton.

Enfieldian

Happychappy wrote: »

Enfieldian wrote: »

Those that join solely with the intention of graduating into traffic divisions are usually speed obsessed tyrants. They are not known as "Black Rats" for nothing.

Traffic officers who qualify at the end of the advanced driving course are trained to an exceptionally high standard and any traits of "speed obsessed tyrants" is soon identified and the officer deemed unsuitable

As for picking up body parts, surely your OH knew this was going to form part of the job before he applied for the transfer? I don't think that should fall to the police to take care of but one assumes that a coroner is not always available in time.

Another baseless assumption under the statute "If you don't know!! make it up" Coroners do not attend the scene of fatal collisions, the only persons present are members of the emergency services....full stop, and yes every piece of what was humanity is scraped up, evidenced and put into body bags and smaller bags, while the ghouls called Joe Public stare and run ino the back of each oher, not speeding, just totally clueless.

Regarding the arguement of traffic officers being a visible deterrent, I was a traffic Pc and Sgt for 22 years, I didnt go for promotion to fly a desk and sit in comfort away from angry men and sometimes sleepless nights, because I loved the job! I used to turn out a shift of 12 traffic cars covering a large area, some double crewed and some bikes. My counterpart today turns out with 3 x Pc's to cover the same area with none double crewed.

The arguement that speed kills per se, is valid, as is the inappropriate speed arguement, but if we were to allow the public to self police regarding speed and let them set a speed which they feel is "appropriate" then I think you really need to look at some of the drivers on the road, who to quote Alan Sugar "Doesnt have a bloody clue" therefore a speed limit for all is the only option available.

Unfortunately the clueless, distracted, uninterested, unobservant, and "cantbearsed" will always hide behind the inappropriate speed as being the problem but never come up with a workable solution which will cover lifes rich tapestry of young, old, insane, potty, uneducated, dangerous and dithering which makes up the drivers on the roads today. rant over

Fair enough.

I think "making things up" is a bit harsh though, more like a hazy recollection....

I will "agree to disagree" as your 22 years outweighs my 7 as a PC in the Met.

Lemonade_Pockets

Can any of the coppers on here confirm whether or not you are targeted to give out certain number of speeding tickets by your superiors?

FARE-COP

MaximumImpact wrote: »

That comment has quite angered me...My OH is a traffic officer and he doesnt see this as an easy way of not doing his job. Perhaps you would like to do his job??? I have lost count of the number of times that he has come home, quiet and subdued because he has had to knock on someones door and give them news that has destroyed their world.

You have absolutely no idea what a traffic officer does do you??? And I bet you wouldnt have the guts to do it either??

Could you pick up body parts off of a road, could you come home and pretend that it hasn't affected you and then go in the next day and do it all over again????

Speed tickets are the least of their worries and the smallest part of their job. So get your facts right before you make sweeping statements.

Ask a traffic officer, ambulance tech, paramedic, fire officer, what they have seen as a result of speeding rather than some know it all on a speeding forum and then try doing a day in their shoes. If you cant or wouldnt, then slow down or at least be prepared to take the consequences if you get caught.

I wouldn't normally get too angry about these kind of posts, but do these emotive arguments really help?

Why is it that we always hear that the traffic cops' job is so difficult?

Is it harder to do that than be the fireman that has to bring the cooked body of a child from an arsonists' target, or the train driver knowing that he cannot stop, but momentarily has to look into the eyes of the man hell bent on suicide when he is at the controls as that man walks toward him?

Do you think it's easy for the train operating staff faced with a man who jumps from a platform in front of a passing train and has to clear up the result? Is it worse still for the operating staff and the paramedics that have to see that man's suffering when he isn't killed outright, but knowing that he cannot survive and they cannot help?

I can speak from experience in some of those scenarios, so I hope that you can see I think I do understand a tiny bit of your argument, though it doesn't help the facts of this particular case. There are countless other comparisons and all these people are doing their job, nice or nasty, and that's what the traffic officer has to do to, his job. He knew what he was getting into when he applied for that post.

Maybe a speeding driver could be travelling home from dealing with one of those incidents decribed above? Would that have a bearing on the traffic officers' action? Would he know? I doubt it, but whilst we are asked to spare a thought for him, let's balance the emotive argument.

I don't seek to trivialise this at all, but I would prefer to leave all that emotion out altogether. The world isn't necessarily nice, but we can try to make it safer.

Some of these posts have actually angered me much more than the emotive issues.

It seems one dangerous driver with multiple offences, who posted earlier will never learn, or accept that he's doing wrong. That's just because in each case when was caught, the officer concerned wasn't painted day-glow yellow and stood in the middle of the road with a neon sign flashing 'speed trap ahead' every 500 yards for the preceding mile before he got caught!! Maybe, when the licence gets taken away? Maybe not!!

The fact is that the law is the law, whether we like it or not and no matter how many times we find excuses for speeding, we all know we shouldn't do, but we all do sometimes.

Why not accept the that we know we've done wrong a thousand times and got away with it and take the punishment and learn from the experience when we get caught??

I know that I did.

Treadway1

I find it interesting that the OP still hasnt confirmed or denied whether he/she was infact speeding or not?, and rather, that purely they cant remember seeing a Police Officer, or speed camera.

The answer to that may well negate any of the arguments Ive just read. If they were speeding, then they shouldnt have been, youve been caught so own up to it. It really is as black and white as that. Ive had two lots of speeding points on my licence, and yes it royally p****d me off, but at the end of the day, I had been speeding so I had to accept the punishment. Its not the end of the world.

goldspanners

Treadway1 wrote: »

I find it interesting that the OP still hasnt confirmed or denied whether he/she was infact speeding or not?, and rather, that purely they cant remember seeing a Police Officer, or speed camera.

The answer to that may well negate any of the arguments Ive just read. If they were speeding, then they shouldnt have been, youve been caught so own up to it. It really is as black and white as that. Ive had two lots of speeding points on my licence, and yes it royally p****d me off, but at the end of the day, I had been speeding so I had to accept the punishment. Its not the end of the world.

just because your happy to take it lying down then thats fine,doesnt mean everyone else does.
speed limits arent everything.
i too have 2 sets of points on my liscence, one set totally deserved,the other not so.
one set i was going to fast for the area i was in and time of day. the other was late at night,dual carridgeway 30 mph limit and at 12.30 on a wedensday night,caught at the bottom of a hill doing 44 mph.nobody around except me and a police car.

bargepole

FARE-COP wrote: »

... It seems one dangerous driver with multiple offences, who posted earlier will never learn, or accept that he's doing wrong. That's just because in each case when was caught, the officer concerned wasn't painted day-glow yellow and stood in the middle of the road with a neon sign flashing 'speed trap ahead' every 500 yards for the preceding mile before he got caught!! Maybe, when the licence gets taken away? Maybe not!!

The fact is that the law is the law, whether we like it or not and no matter how many times we find excuses for speeding, we all know we shouldn't do, but we all do sometimes.

Why not accept the that we know we've done wrong a thousand times and got away with it and take the punishment and learn from the experience when we get caught?

Hmmm, you talking to me? BTW, I haven't been convicted of any "offences", I have a clean licence.

Here are some facts instead of your wild conjecture: In the five years from 02-07, I worked for a car leasing company, delivering and collecting cars from locations all over the UK. I had up to 100 colleagues all doing the same, and in that period I covered around 500,000 miles and travelled every single mile of every UK motorway. I never had an accident.

Due to the nature of the job, and the tight schedules imposed by the employer, it was inevitable that speed limits would be exceeded on a daily basis, and sometimes a NIP would come through via the company.

I took it upon myself to study the law regarding motoring offences, and to become the first port of call for the drivers when they got a speeding ticket.

In the vast majority of cases, my advice was "yes, you've been caught fair and square, pay the fixed penalty".

However, there were instances when the police paperwork, or the photos of the "ping", suggested that there was something amiss with their procedures, and these are the ones that I fought, or helped others to fight, through the Court process, winning on 20 out of 24 occasions.

The successful defences had nothing to do with signs, or advance warnings of speed traps, they almost all revolved around the evidence from the speed cameras - fixed and mobile - and in a large percentage of those, the CPS were unable or unwilling to produce that evidence in Court, even when ordered to do so by a Judge on one occasion.

Another case was dropped by the prosecution because "the officer has retired from the force", yet he was still sending out s9 statements several months later, so our public servants clearly can't be trusted.

The law is the law, and it applies to Police and Crown Prosecutors just like everyone else, and if they can't get their facts or procedures right, the Courts will rightly throw their case out.

If everyone just accepts they've done wrong and pays up, the state cash generation machine will grind us all into the dust. Always examine the evidence first, and if they are in the wrong, stick it to them.