Motorist launches 'hidden' speed sign test case
Test case: Businessman John Coombes
was enraged when he was found guilty
and fined for speeding in a 30mph zone
A motorist has launched a High Court test case challenge which could force local highway authorities to clean up their act over maintaining roadside speed limit signs.
Businessman John Coombes was enraged when he was found guilty and fined for speeding in a 30mph zone - even though an overgrown hedge meant he could not see a signpost warning of the restriction.
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He described the fine - "my first speeding fine in 32 years of driving" - as "highway robbery". He said outside the High Court in London: "What's the point in paying council tax if they don't cut the bloody hedge? I have not got x-ray vision going down the road."
Mr Coombes, from Wells, Somerset, was caught in a police speed trap when he exceeded 30 mph on the B3139 Bath Road at Horrington near Wells while driving home from work about 5pm on July 4 2005.
He was convicted of speeding by Mendip magistrates in January this year and fined £250 and ordered to pay £150 legal costs.
At Bristol Crown Court, both conviction and fine were upheld in a 2-1 majority decision in April, and he was ordered to pay a further £229 legal costs.
Today his counsel, James Cranfield, argued at the High Court that the crown court had gone wrong in law.
Mr Coombes said he had been driving home in bright sunshine and the overgrown hedges at the side of the road meant he had not seen any roadside signs. Haze from the sunlight also meant he did not see two 30 mph roundels painted on the road's surface.
He was aware of going over rumble strips but thought they were a warning of a bend in the road ahead.
Mr Cranfield showed Lord Justice Keene and Mr Justice Walker photographs taken by Mr Coombes revealing how it was impossible to see the nearside sign when driving from a 40mph stretch of road into the 30 mph zone.
He argued that, under the 1984 Road Traffic Regulations Act, a local highway authority with responsibility for roads in its area was under a duty to erect and maintain traffic signs on those roads.
If a sign was obscured, it could not be said the road was adequately signed, said Mr Cranfield. Therefore Mr Coombes should not have been found guilty of a speeding offence under the 1984 Road Traffic Act.
But Kerry Barker, appearing for the Director of Public Prosecutions, disagreed. He argued the conviction was unassailable because the signs themselves - even though one was admittedly obscured - were perfectly valid under the 1984 Act.
Technically they were "appropriate, of the correct height and shape, and in the correct place". Mr Coombes should have seen the one, on the offside of the road, that was not obscured.
"Only one sign has to be seen for there to be a lawful speeding conviction", he told the judges. Lord Justice Keene said the court would put its judgment in writing as "this case may be of importance to a wider audience than those in court today."
Outside court, Mr Coombes said that the overgrown hedgerow had obscured not only the speed limit signpost but also other signs, including one warning drivers of a school ahead.
He said: "Lots of other drivers were caught at that spot the same day. It has cost me quite a few thousand quid fighting this.
"It should have been taken up by motoring organisations, but I am having to do it as a point of principle."
Adding to Mr Coombes's exasperation is the knowledge that another motorist succeeded in overturning a speeding fine at Bristol Crown Court in a case apparently similar to his.
Anthony Hemmings, 52, from Bromley Heath, Bristol, successfully argued that a £60 fine was unlawful because a 50mph sign had been hidden behind a tree branch.
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