Automated speeding fines madness.

peter_the_piper

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-33008967

What a waste of money.

harveybobbles

Sounds about right! We've had parking tickets on ambulances in hospital grounds. But thankfully Highway PArking are currently suspended from getting keeper details of vehicles using that carpark.

Ebe_Scrooge

I saw the same story, and the same thought struck me. Yet another argument for getting rid of speed cameras, and replacing them with real police officers who can ( hopefully ) use a dollop of common sense when dealing with misdemeanors. Then again, I suppose an officer on patrol is somewhat more expensive than a camera.

martinsurrey

Ebe_Scrooge wrote: »

I saw the same story, and the same thought struck me. Yet another argument for getting rid of speed cameras, and replacing them with real police officers who can ( hopefully ) use a dollop of common sense when dealing with misdemeanors. Then again, I suppose an officer on patrol is somewhat more expensive than a camera.

So to avoid using a few hours of some letter jockey in a council office (more than likely near min wage) to correct these, you propose to hire 4 police officers per camera (8 hour shifts + holiday cover)... sounds like the kind of financial madness that might actually have got traction 10 years ago!

Car_54

It's certainly not an argument for getting rid of speed cameras. That would be a classic example of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

The simplest and most cost-effective approach would be for the ambulance trusts to stop wasting time and money in investigation, and simply to reject them all. They'd be right over 98% of the time.

Car_54

The BBC's explanation of "the law" is misleading: it isn't the law, butguidance to the police.

The first paragraph is a quote from the Act accurately, but it's incomplete. What it actually says is "No statutory provision imposing a speed limit on motor vehicles shall apply to any vehicle on an occasion when it is being used for fire and rescue authority, ambulance or police purposes, if the observance of that provision would be likely to hinder the use of the vehicle for the purpose for which it is being used on that occasion." which is rather different.

The second para isn't the law at all.

facade

The ambulance trust administrator checks the vehicle registration against vehicle records to get the radio call sign for the vehicle
The call sign will then be checked against the 999 incident logging information for the date and time of the ticket to check whether the vehicle was on a blue light emergency call. With the vast majority of tickets this is the case
The administrator will then confirm this to the police in a formal letter

And that takes 40 hours a month?
They really need an overhaul of their computer system as the BBC figures work out to about 1600 tickets a year, 133 a month, so they are spending 20 minutes on each one. Even the computers we have at work are faster than that, including switching on.

rich13348

The problem with cancelling all tickets before they go out when a blue light is visable is that the ambulance driver would only have to put lights on for 10 seconds or less while passing a speed camera and the get off with speeding for no good reason. I've seen plenty of police cars put blues and toos on just to get to the other side of a roundabout then turn them off again. So I wouldn't put it past ambulance drivers either.

Richard53

rich13348 wrote: »

I've seen plenty of police cars put blues and toos on just to get to the other side of a roundabout then turn them off again. So I wouldn't put it past ambulance drivers either.

I've seen this too, and I assumed it was because they only put the blues and twos on when they need to, i.e. when they might need to alert other traffic, and keep them quiet if there is no traffic about. I was passed on my way to work tonight by a police car with sirens and lights on, when there was no-one else on the road, and I thought it was quite unusual.

straighttalker

Richard53 wrote: »

I've seen this too, and I assumed it was because they only put the blues and twos on when they need to, i.e. when they might need to alert other traffic, and keep them quiet if there is no traffic about. I was passed on my way to work tonight by a police car with sirens and lights on, when there was no-one else on the road, and I thought it was quite unusual.

Weren't you on the same road as the police car hence them having to put the sirens and lights on?

Mankysteve

Richard53 wrote: »

I've seen this too, and I assumed it was because they only put the blues and twos on when they need to, i.e. when they might need to alert other traffic, and keep them quiet if there is no traffic about. I was passed on my way to work tonight by a police car with sirens and lights on, when there was no-one else on the road, and I thought it was quite unusual.

Sometimes they need approach an incidence discretely.

Problem is that if they start just simply not issuing speeding fines to emergency vehicles will claim that they getting away with speeding all the time.