Caught speeding but moving house?

dannyrst

Common sense policing.

If they see Margret driving her Honda Jazz at 41mph in a 40 zone on her way to bingo with Judith, the police won't bat an eyelid.

If they see Gaz in his Audi S3 with blacked out windows driving at 41mph in a 40 zone, they might pull him over to check insurance/tax/drugs blah blah (depending how busy they are).

It all comes down to common sense and that feeling of someone up to no good.

Ebe_Scrooge

Well said Dannyrst :T






Many years ago I was friendly with one of the local traffic cops, he told me that in general he would never bother even stopping a car doing 80 on the motorway unless something about the car or the way it was being driven sparked his "spider sense". I don't know if the aforementioned ACPO guidelines were even invented then, this was a long time ago. But as you say - good old common-sense policing.

Car_54

BigBopper wrote: »

No that was just guideline, 41 in a 40 is not ok unless you can show us somewhere in law it is ok to drive up to 45 in a 40?

The offence is exceeding 40 not doing 46 in a 40.

My post was simply correcting previous posts which had misquoted the guidelines. By "usually OK" I was not suggesting that a speed of 45 was legal, simply that it would nomally resullt in action.

BTW, while people regularly quote the "10% plus 2" part of the guidelines, they rarely mention the part which says that "These guidelines do not and cannot replace police officer's discretion".

Ebe_Scrooge

Car_54 wrote: »

BTW, while people regularly quote the "10% plus 2" part of the guidelines, they rarely mention the part which says that "These guidelines do not and cannot replace police officer's discretion".

Absolutely - which is why, when I provided the link to the CPS site, I highlighted the quote from that site that reads :


"Note that these are guidelines and that a police officer has discretion to act outside of them providing he acts fairly, consistently and proportionately"


I think this is probably where a lot of confusion comes in - people mistakenly think they will not be prosecuted as long as they don't exceed <limit + 10% + 1mph>. Whilst it's probably fair to say that in some/most cases you're unlikely to get a fine if you're within the "guideline margins", there's absolutely no guarantee of this. End of the day, speeding is an absolute offence - you break the limit by 1mph and you can be fined.

inhoping

i got the course offer.

I cannot understand though because the online booking system shows lots of dates free, some even tomorrow and the day after, with 2 of 23 spaces left and so on but when i come to book it states the next one i can officially book is 16th of december! what the hell!?

inhoping

Oh i give up just booked one thats an hours drive away, i just want it over with!

inhoping

Did the course, was good!

Only thing is, how can we check if the course leaders have submitted that we have passed to the police/dvla etc?

bowlhead99

inhoping wrote: »

Did the course, was good!

Only thing is, how can we check if the course leaders have submitted that we have passed to the police/dvla etc?

You can't really. But the fact that you booked yourself on a course against the reference number causes them to flag it as booked on a course and stop chasing you for the other options of fixed points or court appearance - presumably you've had no further chasers since you booked on the course so the process seems to be working so far.

At your course they will have checked ID and signed off the register of all the people who showed up and the reference numbers, and all the details from the registers will get passed back to the powers that be. If you were a no show and hadn't (in advance) rebooked to a later course within the time limit you will go back to the default option which is prosecution. If you did attend and they didn't see you sneak out early then you rely on them to pass the registers on properly so the fact that you actually attended can be recorded on the database(s).

What you could do 'just in case' while it is fresh in your mind, note down the names of the course presenters as well as the date and time and location which are on your booking confirmation, and keep that for a few months. So if there has been a crazy mixup and you hear something back saying you are now going to court because you never attended the course, you can say yes I did, it was 5pm on 25 November at XYZ House and the guys running it on that date and time were Big Dave and Jim Bob. Please check the records and you will see that I signed in.

At least that was how they would have explained it to me, erm, if I'd recently been made to do one of those courses m'lud.

Also you might have found out on the course that the current main criteria for being offered a course was not having already done a course to get out of speeding points for an (alleged) offence that happened within the last 5 years, and being caught at no more than 10% + 9mph. So at 53 in a 40 you could get a course but not if you were going faster, or similarly up to 86 in a 70 you could do the course, if you hadn't already done one in recent past. There are other courses for things like mobile phones while driving.