Can i legally avoid a Speeding fine/points?

vikingaero

goldspanners wrote: »

why dont these vans sit outside schools rather than safe roads?

Because the vast majority of motorist slow down or are slowed down outside schools by Lollipop persons, traffic movement as people park and move out when collecting their kids.

On a motorway or dual carriageway a significant percentage speed. The camera partnerships need revenue to pay for the operators, ticket issuing clerks, PR, offices, equipment etc so they need to tap revenue sources.

goldspanners

vikingaero wrote: »

Because the vast majority of motorist slow down or are slowed down outside schools by Lollipop persons, traffic movement as people park and move out when collecting their kids.

On a motorway or dual carriageway a significant percentage speed. The camera partnerships need revenue to pay for the operators, ticket issuing clerks, PR, offices, equipment etc so they need to tap revenue sources.

but its supposed to be about safety, not revenue. as we are so often told.

scrap the vans,clerks,pr,offices,equipment and then no need for the revenue. simple.

if its about safety put the vans in areas where speeding motorists could cause some real harm. not on long straight motorways and dual carrigeways.

nuckinfobhead

in answer to the op original posting

yes you can avoid the points, no you cant avoid a fine!

just ignore all mail, requests for driver info, threats etc.....

you will then just receive a larger fine, my original fine was £60 ignored everything then got a fine for with holding information instead which was 120! no points and no speeding record tho.

i have done this twice now with success both times. i should be banned.......... but im not.

this was for a fixed camera unit and not a mobile one tho so if they chased you and pulled you my guess is ur nadgered



i also am in north wales, just outside conwy.

vikingaero

goldspanners wrote: »

but its supposed to be about safety, not revenue. as we are so often told.

scrap the vans,clerks,pr,offices,equipment and then no need for the revenue. simple.

if its about safety put the vans in areas where speeding motorists could cause some real harm. not on long straight motorways and dual carrigeways.

The safety part is the justification given to Daily Mail readers and Guardian readers. Only proper Sun readers like your good self realise that all travel has a human cost and that your van is generating wealth for GB PLC,.:D

HO87

nuckinfobhead wrote: »

in answer to the op original posting
you will then just receive a larger fine, my original fine was £60 ignored everything then got a fine for with holding information instead which was 120! no points and no speeding record tho.

i have done this twice now with success both times. i should be banned.......... but im not.

If this is the case then I strongly suspect that your experience predates the change in the law in Summer 2008 when the penalty for "failing to furnish" was increased to a mandatory 6 points and an uplift in the fine currently averaging £300. If you were tempted to go for a hat-trick I'm sure the addition of a MS90 endorsement will endear you to your insurers who, you might just discover, want a whole load more premium from you just at the time when you are trying to pay the large fine. Not a good combination and not a course of action I'd suggest you recommend.

goldspanners wrote: »

but its supposed to be about safety, not revenue. as we are so often told.

Absolutely and if the real commitment was to improve safety then there would be a far greater emphasis on improving driver training. The real "killers" on the roads are inexperience and poor driving both of which may well include an element of inappropriate speed, especially in the case of the inexperienced, but it is being far to simplistic to ascribe the death toll to speeding per se and even the most cursory examination of the government's own statistics show that to be so.

As for the "holier than thou" brigade my earlier post was as much for their benefit as anyone else because the message I was trying to get across is that whether you speed regularly, occasionally or never we are all being unnecessarily (and I would suggest egregiously) exposed to the risk of being wrongly accused, and ultimately convicted, of offences of which we are entirely innocent.

For example, laser guns do not produce (as it popularly believed) a pin-point beam. At 300 metres it is (model dependant) between 2.5 - 3' wide and the guns are approved for use out to a maximum range of 999m. Even when tripod mounted attempting to keep the beam (which is in any event entirely invisible - even to the operator) steady on the front grille or number plate of a target vehicle is at best difficult and if through vibration (hardly something that can be avoided) the beam slips from one part of a the vehicle to another or suffers a spurious reflection from, for example, a vehicle in front, passing or behind the target vehicle, then this will effect the reading. It has been shown in independant tests that this effect - all invisible of course - can be gross.

Gatso's have been shown to be wrongly sited in breach of the manufacturers instructions - to the extent that the installations have been demonstrated to have been set out in feet when the manufacturers intended them to have been in metres; There are ample cases where they have malfunctioned and completely misrecorded the actual speed of vehicles even when calibration checks had been allegedly carried out; and, more importantly (and accordingly worryingly), the secondary checks (examining the number of road lines crossed between the two photographs and calculating the speed independant of the radar evidence), supposedly built into the process when the photographs are intially examined, have been shown to be widely ignored and I don't mean by individuals but by entire areas.

Breaches of the Codes of Practice governing the use of speed detection equipment are routinely excused away in court on the basis that the CoP are merely "guidelines" (though I've rarely come across "guidelines" that contain the words "will" and "must") even when breaches of them are described within the CoP themselves as being grounds for prosecutions to be dropped, or rather, not commenced.

There are at least two cases I can immediately quote (one in Dorset and the other in Cheshire IIRC) where the Traffic Regulation Orders have been shown to be fatally flawed to the extent that they had no standing in law. This means that the speed limits they were designed to established were legally void. In the case of the Dorset faux pas many, many people had been caught by the two Gatso's in the village in question before the fault was discovered and received fixed penalties, in some cases were taken to court and some were banned as a result (with all that entails in respect of loss of employment and the knock-on on homelife). Even now very nearly 18 months afterwards no refunds have been made though "discussions" are still underway. The sums involved at very large.

In other cases signage has been shown to be grossly defective to the extent that strangers have been caught totally unaware of the reality of the limit (not just locals who were well aware of the limit but were just "wriggling") simply because they had passed no signs at all or such signs as existed were totally misleading and that that state of affairs had existed for years. Bearing in mind that when cases had actually got as far as court (which is a very small minority of the whole) evidence was given that on each occasion the signage had been checked and had been found to be correct. Something is very wrong here!

It is very difficult, once you become aware of the extent of the problems with the speed-based revenue machine, to avoid the conclusion that the game is rigged. There is a saying that it is better that 10 guilty men walk free than for an innocent man to be convicted and whilst I would never seek to suggest that huge numbers of innocent men are convicted my own experience and that of many is that the number is nevertheless far too great.

For the record, my own experience is that my then partner received an NIP alleging that she had been doing 52mph in a 40mph detected by Gatso. At that time no photos were attached and only on the first morning at court (9 months after the event) did we have sight of the photos. A very quick check immediately and clearly showed that she was actually only doing 38mph and the other car in both shots was the one doing 52 as it overtook her. However, it then took another two appearances for office staff to be called as witnesses for the matter to be dropped as the prosecutor would not accept our calculations (and nor would the court Legal Adviser who, I might add, tried repeatedly to persuade my partner to plead guilty and became very aggressive when she wouldn't) even though it is schoolboy maths. It also transpired that no action had been taken in respect of the real culprit because the registration number was obscured. Being cynical one could say that that may well have been a case of taking the line of least resistance and "trying it on".

Finally, sit and gloat and enjoy it while you can but one of those dreaded letters might well drop through your letterbox on Monday morning and all the claims in the world of "I never speed" aren't going to cut it in terms of a defence. I assure you, however, that in that eventuality I won't be gloating and nor will I say "You were caught. Pay up". :rolleyes2

louismcd

goldspanners wrote: »

yes i do watch it, probably while you and the rest of the holier than thou brigade that all suggest pay up now type statements were watching songs of praise.

74 in a 60 is hardly the end of the world, the road being a 60 zone would indicate the likelyhood of pedestrians being present to be low.

hang me while your hanging louise, i speed, i speed regularly,infact when im driving im rarely under the speed limit ( unless conditions require me to slow down) but on a clear road marked as a 60, i will be speeding.
camera vans on roads like this are nothing more than government revenue collectors.

why dont these vans sit outside schools rather than safe roads?

here here
:beer:

louismcd

nuckinfobhead wrote: »

in answer to the op original posting

yes you can avoid the points, no you cant avoid a fine!

just ignore all mail, requests for driver info, threats etc.....

you will then just receive a larger fine, my original fine was £60 ignored everything then got a fine for with holding information instead which was 120! no points and no speeding record tho.

i have done this twice now with success both times. i should be banned.......... but im not.

this was for a fixed camera unit and not a mobile one tho so if they chased you and pulled you my guess is ur nadgered



i also am in north wales, just outside conwy.

Thanks, given the response by HO87 and the new reg's think i will avoid...

I'm just in England but Wrexham is only 14m away

goldspanners

vikingaero wrote: »

Only proper Sun readers like your good self realise that all travel has a human cost and that your van is generating wealth for GB PLC,.:D

i dont know whether i should take offence to this accusation of me reading the sun?

Louise03

louismcd wrote: »

Well i'm flatterd by the number of replies so thanks.:T

I just feel that the government get enough money out of us as it is and that speeding fines are an extra way of getting more money. They say that it is for safety, that is bullsh*t, it is for extra income. If you take a look at reports since speed camera's have been introduced accidents have actually increased.

Given some of these responses, you would think i had driven past a primary school at 74mph. Not the case at all.

So in response to my original question, before we got side tracked, i guess there is no way of avoiding these points!

Just trying to save a little bit of money, just like all of you who are on here.

Thanks

A few months ago I got caught speeding 17mph over the limit. If I can squirm out of anything I will. However in this instance I knew I was in the wrong paid the fine and had the points......and learnt my lesson!!!

nic_santorini

some police forces offer a driver awareness course that costs £80 instead of your 3 points, so in total the speeding will cost you £140 but would probably be better on your car insurance and 74 in a 60 in a clear offence and is motorway speed - so I would not advise court because the magistates will just double or treble your fine for wasting their time.