Get A Tesla If You Want to Avoid Speeding Tickets

Aretnap

jimjames said:

Slightly tongue in cheek but it appears if you have a Tesla on finance that they aren't very good at providing details of drivers to the police.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0r44zpprg7o

Are they though? I imagine given the scale of Tesla's leasing arm, a certain number of admin errors or letters going missing in the post must be inevitable. Does it happen particularly often with Tesla?

The BBC article says that it happened 18 times in two years. Is that a high out low number? It's out of how many s172 requirements which were responded to? How does that ratio compare with other comparable companies? We don't know any of those things - the article just presents a single factoid with no context and invites us to tut tut about how terrible it is.

Aretnap

TooManyPoints said:

The Chelsea tale is interesting. I wonder if there might have been scope to consider Attempting to Pervert the Course of Justice? I think probably not.

I don't think so either. The act of setting up the company and registering the cars to it can't be PCOJ, as there is no course of justice to pervert until one of the cars is actually detected speeding. And my understanding is that PCOJ requires a positive act that interferes with justice - doing nothing (like staying silent in an interview, or not responding to a letter) can't amount to PCOJ.

Having a registered keeper who doesn't drive and won't be affected by points or a ban also works. Common with Motability vehicles I believe, where the car is registered in the name of the disabled person for whose benefit it is intended, who may not drive it and who may even be a child.

Baldytyke88

TooManyPoints said:

"Where a body corporate is guilty of an offence under this section and the offence is proved to have been committed with the consent or connivance of, or to be attributable to neglect on the part of, a director, manager, secretary or other similar officer of the body corporate, or a person who was purporting to act in any such capacity, he, as well as the body corporate, is guilty of that offence and liable to be proceeded against and punished accordingly."

[Road Traffic Act, s172(5)]

Of course it’s very unlikely a Tesla employee would fall foul of that section. I just thought I’d add it for completeness..

Myself and three other drivers collected four vehicles from our workshop on Friday, I don't believe anyone filled in any form to say who was driving, on the four mile journey.

So the topic interests me. We have paperwork to fill in on our regular routes, but it does not state the time, so if two drivers drive the vehicle on the same day and get a ticket, it would not be clear who was driving.

So perhaps it's common for the police not to get the name of the driver?

paul_c123

Baldytyke88 said:

TooManyPoints said:

"Where a body corporate is guilty of an offence under this section and the offence is proved to have been committed with the consent or connivance of, or to be attributable to neglect on the part of, a director, manager, secretary or other similar officer of the body corporate, or a person who was purporting to act in any such capacity, he, as well as the body corporate, is guilty of that offence and liable to be proceeded against and punished accordingly."

[Road Traffic Act, s172(5)]

Of course it’s very unlikely a Tesla employee would fall foul of that section. I just thought I’d add it for completeness..

Myself and three other drivers collected four vehicles from our workshop on Friday, I don't believe anyone filled in any form to say who was driving, on the four mile journey.

So the topic interests me. We have paperwork to fill in on our regular routes, but it does not state the time, so if two drivers drive the vehicle on the same day and get a ticket, it would not be clear who was driving.

So perhaps it's common for the police not to get the name of the driver?

If its for a company, someone should be a "fleet manager" and they should be keeping a log of which drivers are in which vehicles. If its not granular enough to log the time too, then it ought to be. The danger is, the first driver of the day is recorded, but any swaps thereafter aren't.

Mildly_Miffed

Baldytyke88 said:

TooManyPoints said:

"Where a body corporate is guilty of an offence under this section and the offence is proved to have been committed with the consent or connivance of, or to be attributable to neglect on the part of, a director, manager, secretary or other similar officer of the body corporate, or a person who was purporting to act in any such capacity, he, as well as the body corporate, is guilty of that offence and liable to be proceeded against and punished accordingly."

[Road Traffic Act, s172(5)]

Myself and three other drivers collected four vehicles from our workshop on Friday, I don't believe anyone filled in any form to say who was driving, on the four mile journey.

So the topic interests me. We have paperwork to fill in on our regular routes, but it does not state the time, so if two drivers drive the vehicle on the same day and get a ticket, it would not be clear who was driving.

So perhaps it's common for the police not to get the name of the driver?

You should have been logged for PRECISELY that reason. The business is negligent if they do not track who was driving which vehicle when.

And, yes, many are.

TooManyPoints

Then I'm surprised that your workshop does not keep a log of who drives vehicles.

Where the recipient of a s172 notice is a “body corporate”, in order to avoid conviction they will have to show that they could not establish who was driving, having exercised “reasonable diligence”. But, unlike an individual, they will also have to show that failing to keep records was reasonable.

Whilst it’s true that no points can be imposed on anybody if they fail in that task, courts tend to impose hefty fines. The maximum is £1,000 (£667 with a guilty plea). 

It makes absolutely no sense for any company to fail to keep records of who is driving vehicles for which they are responsible.

Okell

Woodstok2000 said:

Okell said:

jimjames said:

Slightly tongue in cheek but it appears if you have a Tesla on finance that they aren't very good at providing details of drivers to the police.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0r44zpprg7o

Badly written report even for the BBC.

I wonder whether the Press Association checked other leasing companies to see how often they'd been fined

Seems to be fairly well written to me...

The problem I have with that report is that the body of the text does not support the purported headline.

From the BBC's tag Elon Musk's Tesla fined for repeatedly failing to help UK police over driving offences - BBC News the first actual example we get is that:

 '... In one incident, South Wales Police wrote to Tesla Financial Services in a bid to identify the driver of a Tesla which had been speeding at 80mph (128km/h) on the M4 near Llantrisant, Rhondda Cynon Taf, in July 2025.

Court papers show a Tesla company director, Becky Hodgson, pleaded guilty for the firm by email in late November, saying it had tried to enter the plea online but "encountered a technical issue on the Online Plea Service portal".

Although the company admitted the criminal charge, Hodgson suggested in her email that it had complied with the police request, adding that its internal processes were followed and the nomination was sent via post...'

Now that seems really badly written to me, for two reasons:

First, because it has nothing to do with Tesla failing to ID the driver, rather it's to do with Tesla's lodged plea not being recognised by the Online Plea Service portal.  Unless you are explicitly accusing Becky Hodgson of lying I'm not sure what you're point is.

Second, what has Elon Musk done to be specifically identified?  Is the BBC implying - quite disingenuously - that Tesla has not identified the driver's because Tesla is connected to Musk?

It's a non story as reported by the BBC

Woodstok2000 said:

Okell said:

jimjames said:

Slightly tongue in cheek but it appears if you have a Tesla on finance that they aren't very good at providing details of drivers to the police.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0r44zpprg7o

Badly written report even for the BBC.

I wonder whether the Press Association checked other leasing companies to see how often they'd been fined

... Are you contesting any of the points in the report, or just suggesting other companies might be as bad as Tesla? If so, do you have any evidence to back that up, and does it release Tesla of their responsibilities? 

What I'm questioning is why the BBC have decided to publish a story specifically about the legal entity Tesla, but have deliberately linked it to ElonMusk, the obvious inference being that they are worse than other car finace/leasing companies because they are linked to Musk.

It's not for me to show that other companies are less bad/as bad/ worse that Tesla.  It's for the BBC, who have decided to publish this story, to demonstrate why they have singled Tesla out, over and above other companies.

I'm sure you would agree that if Tesla really are worse than other finance/leasing companies then the BBC should be able to provide the concrete proof.

(I speak as somebody who would never dream of having a Tesla as I think they're rubbish.  Now if the BBC criticised them for for being rubbish, I might agree...)

Aretnap

Okell said:

Woodstok2000 said:

Okell said:

jimjames said:

Slightly tongue in cheek but it appears if you have a Tesla on finance that they aren't very good at providing details of drivers to the police.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0r44zpprg7o

Badly written report even for the BBC.

I wonder whether the Press Association checked other leasing companies to see how often they'd been fined

Seems to be fairly well written to me...

The problem I have with that report is that the body of the text does not support the purported headline.

From the BBC's tag Elon Musk's Tesla fined for repeatedly failing to help UK police over driving offences - BBC News the first actual example we get is that:

 '... In one incident, South Wales Police wrote to Tesla Financial Services in a bid to identify the driver of a Tesla which had been speeding at 80mph (128km/h) on the M4 near Llantrisant, Rhondda Cynon Taf, in July 2025.

Court papers show a Tesla company director, Becky Hodgson, pleaded guilty for the firm by email in late November, saying it had tried to enter the plea online but "encountered a technical issue on the Online Plea Service portal".

Although the company admitted the criminal charge, Hodgson suggested in her email that it had complied with the police request, adding that its internal processes were followed and the nomination was sent via post...'

Now that seems really badly written to me, for two reasons:

First, because it has nothing to do with Tesla failing to ID the driver, rather it's to do with Tesla's lodged plea not being recognised by the Online Plea Service portal.  Unless you are explicitly accusing Becky Hodgson of lying I'm not sure what you're point is.

Dunno how you come to that conclusion. The conviction was for failing to identify the driver, or at least for failing to identify the person the car was leased to. There was some fairly uninteresting stuff reported about how the company tried to plead guilty through an online portal which didn't work so they pleaded guilty by Email instead, but they were pleading guilty to failing to identify the driver either way.

Second, what has Elon Musk done to be specifically identified?  Is the BBC implying - quite disingenuously - that Tesla has not identified the driver's because Tesla is connected to Musk?

You are probably over-thinking this. Elon Musk gets mentioned in any story about Tesla because unlike most CEOs, he has decided to turn himself into a major public figure, a globally recognised celebrity, someone whose name in a headline will attract lots of people to click on it. Whereas if you tagged the name of pretty much any other car manufacturer's CEO - if you referred to "Koji Sato's Toyota" - the universal response would be "Who?"

It's the sort of bad story that you get on a slow news day, but there's no need to try to identify any particular agenda behind it.

TooManyPoints

"Hodgson suggested in her email that it had complied with the police request, adding that its internal processes were followed and the nomination was sent via post...'"

Then the company should have entered a not guilty plea.

Aretnap

TooManyPoints said:

"Hodgson suggested in her email that it had complied with the police request, adding that its internal processes were followed and the nomination was sent via post...'"

Then the company should have entered a not guilty plea.

Well, indeed... I wonder if their cost/benefit analysis suggests that it's better just to plead guilty and pay this fine when that happens though.