Help against motoring fines

zierisaver

Just read a really interesting article in the Telegraph about a camera that has taken £1m in a year. The article is here http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/8068422/Yellow-box-camera-raises-1-million-a-year.html

Interestingly though, one of the comments at the bottom gave some really good advice which I'm sure they wouldn't mind me copying and pasting on to here:

Visit www.tpuc.org and www.lawfulrebellion.org to understand how to deal with this kind of thing.

The important thing to undrsatnd here is that you are not breaking any laws when you infringe statutory regulations like the Road Traffic Act. Speeding is NOT a crime. Getting involutarily stuck in a yell box junction certainly isn't either. No injury or loss has been suffered by a 3rd party.

A fixed penalty notice is nothing more than a notice. It is not a demand for payment either. It is 'an offer' and you voluntarily accept that offer when you fill in their notice and return it to them. Ignoring them just results in another more substantial 'offer' being made. It's all a gigantic scam actually.

There's a lot of interesting stuff about this subject on the internet so get researching!




As someone who has suffered at the hands of parking fines (when a carpark had no spare spaces apart from a disabled bay and so I parked in an undesignated 'space' and got a ticket for it - I refuse to ever park in a disabled space) and speeding tickets it's good to know that there is info out there.

peter_the_piper

""fixed penalty notice is nothing more than a notice. It is not a demand for payment either. It is 'an offer' and you voluntarily accept that offer when you fill in their notice and return it to them. Ignoring them just results in another more substantial 'offer' being made. It's all a gigantic scam actually. ""
If you mean the ticket that a private parking company gives you then you are right. If you mean the FPN that a policeman gives you then you would be in far more trouble, involving the Maggies court if you did not take it seriously.
If you mean that the offence of speeding is not a crime you may be right but speeding is an offence which could result (in certain circumstances) in a jail term.
On the whole quite debatable advice IMHO.

flyingscotno1

I really wouldn't try this the next time the police send a speeding ticket- it will end badly. I think considering people took things like this to the European Court twice on different aspects (like keeping silent) and failed they may have noticed this first before spending loads.

And just because there is no injury or loss doesn't mean it isn't a crime. If I stood with a gun firing they would still prosecute whether or not someone got hurt!

Mark_Hewitt

zierisaver wrote: »

Speeding is NOT a crime.

Erm, it's contrary to the law, so yes, it's a crime!

kwaks

@OP, ignoring any FPN from police or council will bring you no end of trouble. The article itself is concerned with a camera at a yellow hatched box. In my experience the majority of tickets handed out from these cameras are fataly flawed for a number of reasons including:

1 The road markings are not correct (hatching should reach the pavements, invariably it does not)
2 The offence did not occur. The offence is entering and stopping when the exit is not clear due to stationary vehicles. All the bolded parts of that statement must be present to make the offence complete, so stopping because someone cut you up, or stopping for a pedestrian etc etc means you have done nothing wrong.
3 Mistakes on the tickets. Apart from the usual council mistakes, they invariable describe this as entering and stopping when prohibited to do so. This is not an offense (see above for the required wording and conditions).

Councils know the problems, they know the VAST majority of their tickets would not stand up to scrutiny, however they will continue to send them as long as the uneducated masses continue to pay them.

flyingscotno1

kwaks wrote: »

2 The offence did not occur. The offence is entering and stopping when the exit is not clear due to stationary vehicles. All the bolded parts of that statement must be present to make the offence complete, so stopping because someone cut you up, or stopping for a pedestrian etc etc means you have done nothing wrong.

Well, this can be argued two ways and as ever is open to interpretation as always!

TSRGD states that "Area of carriageway, other than at a roundabout*, which vehicles must not enter in a manner which then causes any part of the vehicle to remain stationary within that area due to the presence of stationary vehicles except..." and then on to dealing with right turns and if used with priority to oncoming vehicle signs (which interestingly is not shown as a sketch) .

You could read and argue that the "which then" separates the entry from the actual act of stopping and means that vehicles infront do not have to be completely stationary when you enter. Technicality perhaps, but might be possible. Otherwise what is the point- you could inch behind someone and stop blocking up junctions without committing an offence.

Of course it is entirely reasonable not to fine people cut up.

*Also what is a roundabout is open to question, often larger ones are gyratories.

kwaks

Yet the relevent legislation is clearer:

"Prohibition conveyed by markings in diagram 1043 or 1044
7. - (1) Except when placed in the circumstances described in paragraph 8, the road markings shown in diagrams 1043 and 1044 shall each convey the prohibition that no person shall cause a vehicle to enter the box junction so that the vehicle has to stop within the box junction due to the presence of stationary vehicles."


So enter, stop within box due to stationary vehicles. Any one of those missing then no contravention.

Coupon-mad

Yellow box junction contravention info websites including PATAS cases where appeals succeeded:

http://www.logiclaw.co.uk/pages/Steve.html#c4

http://moneyboxjunction.wordpress.com/

'Getting involuntarily stuck in a yell box junction certainly isn't a crime' = agreed.

'Speeding is NOT a crime' = disagree as it has the potential to lead to a criminal conviction. There's a world of difference between a Police Fixed penalty for speeding and a Council penalty charge for an alleged box junction contravention, which is fairly simple to appeal.

And to the OP, zierisaver, the info you've quoted from the person who commented isn't great I'm afraid and it doesn't even mention the most useful websites, sorry.

But I sincerely hope when you said this (below) you didn't mean you'd actually PAID a private parking ticket scam???:

QUOTE
As someone who has suffered at the hands of parking fines (when a carpark had no spare spaces apart from a disabled bay and so I parked in an undesignated 'space' and got a ticket for it - I refuse to ever park in a disabled space) and speeding tickets it's good to know that there is info out there.
QUOTE

Basically there are 3 levels of motoring tickets:

1. Police ticket (pay it unless you have rock solid grounds to go & put your case before a magistrate and really fancy your chances of them siding with you instead of the BiB).

2. Council ticket (appeal it every time, get advice from pepipoo forums, most can win).

3. Private parking ticket = unenforceable bog roll, ignore the scammers.

HTH

HO87

I have previously read the Lawful Rebellion stuff at length and must also say that I admire the approach that John Harris has taken with TPUC. He, and others, have certainly caused a degree of consternation with their approach to the extent that I would really, really, really like it to be true........but unfortunately it isn't. Their success has, IMO, rather more to do with catching people unawares than having a coherent argument.

By all means ignore tickets (beyond the obviously mickey-mouse speculative invoices from Private Parking Companies) and learn to your cost what happens if you do when either bailiffs seek to distrain on your goods for a substantial debt owed to the council or, better still, the boys in blue arrive on your doorstep with a warrant for your arrest for failure to appear. Claiming the rights of a freeman on the land in those situations is likely, at best, to raise a giggle and at worse to see you being visited in the cells by a mental health worker.