Help!!! Appealing against penalty charge for stopping at yellow box junction

LuciferTDark

peter999 wrote: »

Important: the offence is not stopping in a yellow box junction, but entering when your exit is not clear.

If your exit was clear & you have stopped for whatever reason , you have NOT committed an offence.

peter999

peter you can see from the picture his exit wasn't clear as he had to stop with part of the car in the box, he's guilty however it might be spun to make him look snow white.

WestonDave

I think you need to forget about the half road rule - there is little in the actual guidance which suggests this is a wrong application in this situation. There is one ray of light for you in the guidance :-
http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roads/tss/tsmanual/trafficsignsmanualchapter5ro4183

If you go to page 78 section 12.8.v it states

(v) the carriageway beyond the junction
should be free from obstruction (this
may necessitate the imposition of
waiting or loading restrictions, or the
adjustment of bus stops on the lengths

concerned),

You might, just might have an argument that the siting of the bus lane beyond the junction and the consequent forced merging of traffic controvenes this guidance and also makes it more likely that an offence will occur because of the sudden slowing of traffic to allow merging.

Other than that I think you are wasting your time as the box is probably OK, and you are in it which is prima facie against the law. If anything is at fault its the bus lane.

mkoprulu

ollyk wrote: »

... as others have suggested there clearly wasn't a gap before you decided to enter the junction...

That's the problem you see... there's no proof to indicate the traffic was not flowing prior to me entering the junction. And that's what i want the council to produce.

If i remembered the exact situation, i would have said yes it was moving, or no it wasn't moving. But i can't. If they can prove that the traffic wasn't moving before i entered, fine then.

I'm not only appealing against this because i don't want to pay, but i'm also sure of how i drive, and that i would never knowingly get myself into such a situation.

mkoprulu

peter999 wrote: »

Important: the offence is not stopping in a yellow box junction, but entering when your exit is not clear.

If your exit was clear & you have stopped for whatever reason , you have NOT committed an offence.

How many pictures do you have ??
A single picture does NOT prove anything whatsoever.

peter999

Good point Peter999. After your post i checked on the second picture which i initially thought was just a magnified one to show my licence plate. However, the time mark on it is 10 seconds after the first one showing i was still at the same point.

Therefore it proves that i was there between 12:28:30 and 12:28:40 for 10 seconds.

Unfortunately it's still not enough to indicate that the traffic was not flowing as i entered the junction. It simply says after i stopped there, i was stationary for at least 10 seconds, which is quite possible with a red light ahead. See, these are all possibilities, and i believe law says i'm innocent unless evidence says i'm guilty without a doubt.

I'll visit the site in the weekend to get some of my own pictures, and i'll have a clearer view of the location by then.

mkoprulu

WestonDave wrote: »

I think you need to forget about the half road rule - there is little in the actual guidance which suggests this is a wrong application in this situation. There is one ray of light for you in the guidance :-
http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roads/tss/tsmanual/trafficsignsmanualchapter5ro4183

If you go to page 78 section 12.8.v it states

(v) the carriageway beyond the junction
should be free from obstruction (this
may necessitate the imposition of
waiting or loading restrictions, or the
adjustment of bus stops on the lengths

concerned),

You might, just might have an argument that the siting of the bus lane beyond the junction and the consequent forced merging of traffic controvenes this guidance and also makes it more likely that an offence will occur because of the sudden slowing of traffic to allow merging.

Other than that I think you are wasting your time as the box is probably OK, and you are in it which is prima facie against the law. If anything is at fault its the bus lane.

hmm. that's an interesting point. I'll definitely take that on board. Thanks for indicating it WestonDave.

As for the validity of the box though, i still think it's not valid. Again quoting from the same document:

"
12.10 Half-boxes, in which only half the area of the
junction is marked (diagram 1044) are appropriate at
“T” junctions and other junctions where the traffic
blocks back from one direction only. Half-boxes may
be used only in the position shown in the lower
drawing in figure 12-1, i.e. on the minor road side
of the main carriageway.
"

The traffic was indeed flowing from one direction. (i think it means flowing when it says blocks, right?) I had a look at google maps again with satellite images.

Please have a look at it yourself HERE

If you look at Fairfield street coming from the right hand side, it flows in both directions, therefore possibly contributing to the congestion that the bus lane creates in the first place. I don't think with the triangular island in the middle and the fact that the right hand lane flowing in both directions, the junction at that point would be classified as a normal junction.

System

It only says that they are appropriate, meaning that a half-box may be used instead of a full box if they so wish. A full box is still valid in this situation.

WestonDave

I did look at the location. My interpretation of "half boxes" is that they cover the entirety of one direction. Where there is only one direction then they cover the whole road, where there is two, they cover the relevant part relating to the direction of flow nearest the junction.

A half box as you suggest would be a nonsense in this situation and I suspect that a judge would therefore find against you. If only one lane was covered, all traffic from the side road would be forced (because traffic following your path would block across the junction) into lane 1 which immediately terminates in a bus lane.

The reason you have to be very careful is that this document is only guidance and not law - although as with the Highway Code (which is equally not "law") it will guide the courts. My point is arguable on the basis that failing to follow the guidance has resulted in a nonsensical position where cars are almost forced to block the box because of the unexpected merge. You are trying to argue that the guidance should be applied even tho it results in a nonsense - I suspect that it would be judged to be an appropriate circumstance to depart from the guidance.

That said it might be worth arguing the two in parallel - that the box is wrong because it covers both lanes and/or because it is obstructed by the nearby buslane.

mkoprulu

WestonDave wrote: »

I did look at the location. My interpretation of "half boxes" is that they cover the entirety of one direction. Where there is only one direction then they cover the whole road, where there is two, they cover the relevant part relating to the direction of flow nearest the junction.

A half box as you suggest would be a nonsense in this situation and I suspect that a judge would therefore find against you. If only one lane was covered, all traffic from the side road would be forced (because traffic following your path would block across the junction) into lane 1 which immediately terminates in a bus lane.

The reason you have to be very careful is that this document is only guidance and not law - although as with the Highway Code (which is equally not "law") it will guide the courts. My point is arguable on the basis that failing to follow the guidance has resulted in a nonsensical position where cars are almost forced to block the box because of the unexpected merge. You are trying to argue that the guidance should be applied even tho it results in a nonsense - I suspect that it would be judged to be an appropriate circumstance to depart from the guidance.

That said it might be worth arguing the two in parallel - that the box is wrong because it covers both lanes and/or because it is obstructed by the nearby buslane.

I understand where you're coming from. It's all down to interpretation anyway. The guidance on bus lanes say that "the carriageway beyond the junction should be free from obstruction" which can also bring another question in mind. How far is considered free from obstruction?

As far as i can see from the aerial photo, the bus lane markings start about one and a half car lengths away from the box junction, but the actual bus lane is further away. Bus lane initially starts with the dotted line which indicates drivers to merge into one lane but it's not the actual bus lane yet.


So as well as arguing the validity of a full box, the distance of the bus lane could be argued depending on where you look at it.

I'll still try my chances anyway :rolleyes:

peterbaker

I have to say I agree with peter999. Box junction offences cannot possibly be proved by a single snapshot. I take it all the vehicles in the picture were doing about 60 mph? No? Then how do you prove otherwise?

I am completely against the use of cameras for this type of allegation of an offence - this appears to be a complete barstewardisation of the logic used in approval of the use of cameras to identify offenders in speeding offences. In a speeding offence one piece of the system detects the offence and I will give you a clue that it is not a camera, and then the camera is instructed by the first part of the system to take the snapshot.

So would someone care to give us even the slightest approximation to the logic algorithm that that detects the offence in this case, please??

I myself went to court to defend myself in a speeding conviction case not so long ago and was appalled to conclude that it is abysmal how poorly the police and magistrates understand the exact nature of what the systems are actually capable (or incapable) of detecting and discerning. You end up with magistrates making crass statements like "You may have a physics degree from a top university, but I have to disregard your evidence of how you say the system works because you are not an acknowledged expert, and anyway the police let me try one so I know it works" when you suggest that something else entirely could have been detected and the wrong conclusion used. And the policeman just says "I just use it like I was told and they told us it was a pencil beam. No, I don't know how it works or how wide the pencil is at 500 metres. I just aim at your number plate and it tells me how fast you are going!"

I am still driving, but the day I get banned for any period because of the misapplication of one of these ludicrous systems will be the day you see me suggesting the start of the revolution


In this case it is not even the police that are 'doing you' is it? Probably some jolly wheeze from Capita (aka "Convictions-on-Commission").
Power to your elbow mkoprulu :money:

mkoprulu

Thanks for your support Peterbaker. It's Transport for London that's robbing me at this time.

I'm trying to write down a formal appeal letter but i'm having a dilemma at the moment. The legislation document namely : "Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2003" [FONT=&quot]is £40 to buy. I can't really purchase this because it would beat the point of appealing as the fine with the discount is £60 anyway.

I can only quote from the freely available document "[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Traffic Signs Manual Chapter 5: Road Markings (2003)" and i don't know if this would be enough to support my case or not...


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