Lawbreaking motorists (not Electrics)

[ban-all-sheds]

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/filthy-rio-slum-flats-rented-10262576

"He also fined her £2,000 for the illegal extension with three months to pay or face 30 days in jail - as well as pay £11,649 in costs"

Only 2000 pound of the fine was for the ilegal building work

Your point is?

I'll tell you what mine is - if via a framework of tariffs that fine was £20,000, or £200,000, or £2M, and the period to pay was 3 days, or 3 hours, and the alternative was 30 years not 30 days, then I maintain that she might credibly have been a little less gung-ho about ignoring the rules.

Another thing we need to change is the idea of concurrent sentences - to my mind if you are found guilty of X offences for which the punishment is Y years in prison then your sentence should be X*Y, not Y.

David Duckenfield should right now be sh*tting himself over the prospect of, say, 960 years in prison, not, say, 96 10-year sentences to be served in parallel.

 

[JohnW2]

Another thing we need to change is the idea of concurrent sentences - to my mind if you are found guilty of X offences for which the punishment is Y years in prison then your sentence should be X*Y, not Y.

Whilst in many senses and scenarios I agree with you, I think that there are some practical problems - particularly in relation to defining 'an offence', and hence 'a sentence'. For example ...

... if burglary carries a sentence of Y, should someone who steals one item of jewellery from each of X houses get an X times greater sentence than someone who steals X items of jewellery from one house?

If the penalty for speeding is a fine of Y and 3 penalty points, should someone who drives at 85mph along a fairly short stretch of M25, passing X speed cameras as (s)he does, get a fine of X*Y and 3*X penalty points, whereas someone driving at 85mph for the same distance along a road that has only one speed camera in that strench, the penalty is just Y plus 3 points?

Kind Regards, John

 

[ban-all-sheds]

if burglary carries a sentence of Y, should someone who steals one item of jewellery from each of X houses get an X times greater sentence than someone who steals X items of jewellery from one house?

Yes, otherwise you end up with a formula for sentencing based on the value of the items stolen, which means that you're showing that all you care about is property. For an awful lot of people who are burgled (possibly the majority?) the main hurt is not the loss of property, it is the feelings of violation and insecurity, so if you burgle X houses you have put X x as many people through that as if you burgle one.

If the penalty for speeding is a fine of Y and 3 penalty points, should someone who drives at 85mph along a fairly short stretch of M25, passing X speed cameras as (s)he does, get a fine of X*Y and 3*X penalty points, whereas someone driving at 85mph for the same distance along a road that has only one speed camera in that strench, the penalty is just Y plus 3 points?

Once you start down the path of saying that people should not be punished for a wrongdoing because others were lucky not to get caught doing the same thing, where do you stop? Do you bring all police forces down to the level of the worst performing one, for example? If Newtown has a particularly talented CID, but neighbouring Marketown has a bunch of no-hopers, should Newtown have to let go without charge some of the people it catches because Marketown would not have caught them?

With your example, there probably are (should be) guidelines on how far apart camera detections have to be to count as separate offences, but your example could be replayed as someone getting caught by a mobile police radar control, pulled over, processed, and sent on his way, and then a few miles down the road, speeding again, getting zapped by a Gatso.

It might be oppressive if they put, say, 4 cameras on a 200m stretch of road and end up disqualifying people for what could be regarded as one offence, but in general, as long as the spacing between cameras is such that it's reasonable to regard the detections as separate offences, I've got little sympathy for the argument "I should be let off because other people don't get caught".

 

[stillp]

If the penalty for speeding is a fine of Y and 3 penalty points, should someone who drives at 85mph along a fairly short stretch of M25, passing X speed cameras as (s)he does, get a fine of X*Y and 3*X penalty points, whereas someone driving at 85mph for the same distance along a road that has only one speed camera in that strench, the penalty is just Y plus 3 points?

Why not?
If you have 4 illegal tyres on your car, isn't that treated as if it were 4 separate offences?

 

[JohnW2]

Once you start down the path of saying that people should not be punished for a wrongdoing because others were lucky not to get caught doing the same thing, where do you stop?

That's not what I'm suggesting at all. I'm asking whether it is reasonable that one person (who was 'caught') could suffer multiple prosecutions and convictions (and, in the case of motoring offences, probably get disqualified) for what many people would regard as a single offence (e.g. driving for a mile or two at a constant speed of 85mph on a motorway).

With your example, there probably are (should be) guidelines on how far apart camera detections have to be to count as separate offences ....

I would certainly say that there 'should be', but whether or not there are, I don't know. I suspect that it might be down to individual discretion - which, given the large range of opinions probably in existance, could easily result in different people being treated very different from others.

I've got little sympathy for the argument "I should be let off because other people don't get caught".

Nor have I - but, as above, I've never put forward or suggested that argument.

Kind Regards, John

 

[JohnW2]

Why not? If you have 4 illegal tyres on your car, isn't that treated as if it were 4 separate offences?

Yes, my understanding is that it is. However, that's a bit different, since they are 4 different distinctoffences, each of which could be committed separately.

I''m not sure whether, if the police detect one illegal tyre, they will 'forbid' the driver to drive any further with that tyre fitted. If not, then perhaps a better analogy (to the speeding one) would be a scenario in which a car was stopped by police on 4 occasions in quick succession, with the one illegal tyre being detected on each of those 4 occasions - would that we reasonably regarded as 4 offences?

Kind Regards, John

 

[stillp]

would that we reasonably regarded as 4 offences?

Again, why not? The offence is in driving a car with an illegal tyre, so if the driver continues and is stopped 4 times, he'll surely have committed 4 offences.

 

[JohnW2]

Again, why not? The offence is in driving a car with an illegal tyre, so if the driver continues and is stopped 4 times, he'll surely have committed 4 offences.

As I said, "it depends". If, as I suspect may be the case, the (first) police say, or imply (by silence) that the car may complete it's current journey with the defective tyre still on, then (if there are no actual 'rules'), police who stop the car during the remainder of its journey may have different ideas - and, just like you, regard it as a 'new offence'.

Kind Regards, John

 

[ban-all-sheds]

That's not what I'm suggesting at all.

should someone who drives at 85mph along a fairly short stretch of M25, passing X speed cameras as (s)he does, get a fine of X*Y and 3*X penalty points, whereas someone driving at 85mph for the same distance along a road that has only one speed camera in that strench, the penalty is just Y plus 3 points?

I obviously fail to see the difference between questioning Person A getting X-1 penalties vs Person B getting zero, because the lack of cameras meant Person B did not get caught (X-1) times, and starting down the path of saying that people should not be punished for a wrongdoing because others were lucky not to get caught doing the same thing.

If that is not what you are suggesting at all, what is the significance of questioning Person A getting X-1 penalties more than B because B did not get caught those X-1 times?

I'm asking whether it is reasonable that one person (who was 'caught') could suffer multiple prosecutions and convictions (and, in the case of motoring offences, probably get disqualified) for what many people would regard as a single offence (e.g. driving for a mile or two at a constant speed of 85mph on a motorway).

• What if it was one or two hundred miles? Still one offence?
• What if in your mile or two the driver had to slow down once, because of traffic, so had two discrete periods at 85mph, i.e. had made two discrete decisions to break the law. Still one offence?
• What if, in a built-up area, a driver 3 times, along 3 30mph roads within the space of a mile or two, accelerates up to 45mph and gets Gatso-ed 3 times. One offence, or 3?
• Should there be a cap on how many times per day someone can be done for speeding?

I'm not being facetious here - if you are unhappy with the principle of one-camera-one-offence you must recognise that all those are valid questions, and you ought to give some thought to what the answers should be.

I would certainly say that there 'should be', but whether or not there are, I don't know. I suspect that it might be down to individual discretion - which, given the large range of opinions probably in existance, could easily result in different people being treated very different from others.

They already are, and, outrageously, for reasons which have nothing to do with the likelihood of getting caught.

Nor have I - but, as above, I've never put forward or suggested that argument.

As above - I'm obviously missing a subtle but important difference.

If inconsistencies between someone getting caught once and someone getting caught X times is not the issue, is your concern simply that you don't think it should be one-camera-one-offence?

 

[stillp]

What if, in a built-up area, a driver 3 times, along 3 30mph roads within the space of a mile or two, accelerates up to 45mph and gets Gatso-ed 3 times. One offence, or 3?

I'm sure I've read about someone who amassed enough penalty points to be disqualified, in one trip on the Nottingham ring road.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

You may be sure.

And you may be right, and you did actually read that.

Doesn't mean it's true, though.

 

[JohnW2]

I'm sure I've read about someone who amassed enough penalty points to be disqualified, in one trip on the Nottingham ring road.

I've certainly heard of that happening with multiple illegal tyres but, as I said before, I think that's rather different. If what you say actually happened, I think that's fairly ridiculous if it all happened in a relatively short span of time and distance. 'Speeding' obviously does not happen at a single point in time.

Let's face it, if they wanted to play that game, I would imagine that the technology could exist for them to measure a car's speed at, say 200, 150, 100 and 50 metres from the camera, so anyone 'caught' would be prosecuted for 4 offences, and hence probably disqualified.

Kind Regards, John

 

[stillp]

You might be correct there BAS. However, IIRC it was someone who didn't understand the concept of 'average speed'. who had slowed down for each camera, but had on average exceeded the 40mph limit between each pair of cameras. I don't think they were banned, but it was said that they could have been.

 

[JohnW2]

I obviously fail to see the difference between questioning Person A getting X-1 penalties vs Person B getting zero, because the lack of cameras meant Person B did not get caught (X-1) times, and starting down the path of saying that people should not be punished for a wrongdoing because others were lucky not to get caught doing the same thing.

Fair enough, you are taking what I wrote absolutely literally, whereas I feel sure that you are intelligent enough to have understood the poingt I was making!

I confess that I did write in the form 'if someone did something .... whereas if someone else did exactly the same thing (on a different road).....', but the point I was making was not actually about different people. I could have written "if someone did something .... whereas if the same person did exactly the same thing on a different road, then ....'

Kind Regards, John

 

[EFLImpudence]

Let's face it, if they wanted to play that game, I would imagine that the technology could exist for them to measure a car's speed at, say 200, 150, 100 and 50 metres from the camera, so anyone 'caught' would be prosecuted for 4 offences, and hence probably disqualified.

That would be like having four cameras at 50 metre intervals.

I believe they work under the premise that the main intention is to get people not to speed, that's why speed cameras are conspicuous with even a prior warning.

The raising of revenue is a merely a by product.