Safe Speed Forums

The car I was driving is registered in m wifes name. She received the NIP, as my wife, my father-in-law and I all drive the car regularly, she responded to the NIP saying that she could not recall who was driving the car on this occasion, but would review the photograph and see if she could identify the driver from this.

We've received this rather threatening response:

"I acknowledge receipt of your recent letter concerning the above, which is now receiving attention. I can confirm that a copy of the photographic evidence will be dispatched to you shortly.

However, I must advise you that you are still legally required to respond to the Notice of Intended Prosecution within the statutory 28 days. Failure to complete and return the notice within this statutory time period may result in proceedings against you under section 172 of the Road Traffic Act 1988, for failing to furnish the Police with driver information.

Please note that the Police are not legally obliged to provide photographic evidence unless a Court hearing has been arranged. The photograph captured by the automatic equipment is solely as evidence that an offence has been committed and not as a means to identify the driver and therefore may not assist you in that identification.

I trust that the above information has been of assistance"

The 'letter' they refer to was in fact the NIP form, so hasn't she responded within the 28 day period? Just because she couldn't provide the answer they wanted isn't a failure to respond is it?

What about the photo? If we can't identify the driver before the hearing who do they intend to prosecute?

Any ideas? Is this a stock response to try and bull one of us into saying it was me?

By completing & returning the NIP form, have we responded within the statutory 28 days?

Any advice?

Plenty of advice is available, but the question is, are you willing to spend time and effort proving your innocence, rather than taking the hit for a sake of a quiet life. It sounds like they have already made some fundamental errors in their reply to you, but this is nothing compared to what you can expect from a system that essentially only works by bullying the registered keeper!

I'm not saying that you shouldn't fight it, just that you need to be prepared for the committment it involves!

_________________
Regulation without education merely creates more criminals.

I've got three in 10 days, so I'm fighting it all the way. Sorry, but IMHO it's just lazy policing, I thought the Role of the police was to deter crime, not just detect it.

If I had been pulled over rather than getting a letter some time after the event, my driving would have improved at the time not a few weeks later. I'm booking an appointment with my Local MP to bring just how ridiculous this situation is to his attention.

So, back to my original points and any advice please?

Cheers!

From what I remember, your wife has to use "reasonable diligence" to ascertain who was driving. She should check diaries, receipts, etc. Asking for photos is part of this process. She might want to ask again to show that she's trying.
She must then give all information she can give as to who was driving. If that is a list of three people, so be it. She can't lie and guess at one person if she thinks it might have been someone else.

_________________
Andrew.

Have you tried looking for advice on http://www.pepipoo.com?

_________________
Nick

I think that if they refuse to show you the photo, they are failing in the due diligence required, and therefore providing you with an airthight defence (aka the Hamilton defence). They will use bluff and bluster to intimidate you into rolling over.

As stated before, are you sure you are ready for the fight? They will use any underhand and in the majority of cases illegal tactics to make you cough up - be prepared if you do choose to fight it.

I have succesfully defended 2 prosecutions that I wasn't guilty of, but I had to go to court several times, at huge expense to myself. The bullying letters you are recieving now pale into insignificance to how bad they will get.

[edit to add]
Study thay letter carefully, Nick Freeman would have a field day with it. You have been provided with a huge loophole. That's all I'll say (provided you have copied verbatim).

Odin,
That was copied verbatim.

Would the loophole be the statement about "not legally obliged to provide photographic evidence unless a court hearing has been arranged"?

After all how can they arrange a hearing until the know who they are prosecuting?

I think we've just passed the first month since the offence was committed, only 5 more to drag it out for.

In a word, no.

The biggest problem, without making it blindingly obvious, for a prosecution to be lawful, there must be no coercion for you to plead either way. Any pressure toward making a guilty plea makes the prosecution null and void and subject to reversal at appeal.

Now read the letter again.

(Sorry, if I make it any clearer I'd have to spell it out, and then this forum would be accused of offering legal loopholes to alleged lawbreakers)

I think I've understood what you're trying to say.

Obviously, none of us want to bring the forum into disrepute.

Thanks,
Pete

A-Pete

Earlier this year, I attended a magistrates' court, sitting in the public area. One of the cases that came up was similar to yours. An NIP had been issued to the driver of a vehicle which was in fact driven by a husband and wife couple in the course of running their cleaning business. They honestly could not recall who had been driving, but the police insisted on being given a name. The lady of the couple, who was in court for the hearing, explained to the magistrates that because she and her husband were unable to identify the driver from the police photograph, and because the police insisted on being given a name, that she sent both her own driving licence and that of her husband to the police in response to police instructions. The police then said this was no good - insisted on being told who was driving, and charged the woman with failing to disclose driver details in respect of the alleged offence.

The magistrates accepted the defendant's account of the event of the events and circumstances, and that it was not possible to identify the driver. The case was dropped and the woman walked away from court with her purse intact.


Your case sounds similar - so stand your ground!

They've sent the picture and you really couldn't identify a driver from it.

Unfortunately, my wife is not a fighter and is terrified of going to court, she'd probably start blubbing. So short of sending both mine and my father-in-laws licenses to get my wife off the hook, then I'm not sure where to go?

Would she then still be liable for the prosecution for failing to identify the driver?

They've sent yet another NIP with the photo, giving her 7 days to reply, but she's already sent back the original NIP, saying she didn't know who was driving.

Hang in there, AP. Based on that earlier case I saw tried, I'd say you're already off the hook, provided what you've said in this thread is true, with nothing left out.

Why are the police writing to your wife? Is it because she is the registered owner of the vehicle?

Write to the police and say you can't tell who the driver is from the photographic evidence, explaining that one of three people could have been driving the vehicle that day. DO NOT simply let your wife carry the can for this, even though she might be prepared to do just that! Having "failed" to give the police the info they want (not your fault that their photo is crappy) they will probably issue a summons for failing to provide the information - all that S172 nonsense.

Get a solicitor's advice, which should be to plead NOT GUILTY, and GO ALONG TO COURT when your case comes up. (Any fee that your solicitor charges should be refunded to you if you are found not guilty) Explain your case just as you have here. Contrary to what some people on this board say about magistrates, they're actually quite reasonable people, many of them ordinary Volvo driving middle Englanders! They won't intimidate your wife, you, or your father in law. (Ideally all three of you should go) The magistrates will hear your case, and given that you say you don't know who was driving, they're likely to want an account of what you were all doing on the day of the alleged offence, and will want to reconstruct the scenario to see if it's possible to identify the driver on the basis of what the three of you were doing that day at the time of the alleged offence. If you are unable to identify who was driving based on the TIME of the alleged offence, you will need to explain the reason to the magistrates, who will listen carefully. They will then retire to discuss the matter between themselves, and will deliver their verdict when they return to the courtroom.


I can understand how your wife feels, and it has to be said that the police approach is to intimidate a driver with statements like "photographic evidence WILL be submitted to court" etc. - it's all a ploy to get you to quiver in your boots, and grasp the fixed penalty alternative. They might even use high level name dropping to make you believe the case is more serious than it really is. In my case, I remember quivering when I was led to believe that the informant was a Superintendant, and that I might be facing him in court. In the event, the only plod who turned up was the camera operator. Remember, the police don't want to have to go to court any more than you do. A day in court is a day when he could be snapping people for exceeding the speed limit by 5mp and earning £60 a pop. (I'm nothing if not cynical!)

You might also consider doing what I did - just go along to magistrates' court on any old day and sit in the public area to watch a few cases tried so that you know what it will be like. You are quite entitled to do this, except when certain juvenile cases are being tried. That's what I did, and it paid off because I was much more at ease when my own court date came around.

PM me with any other questions you don't want to ask here.

Good luck!

If this is all true then surely noone will ever get convicted of speeding offences from fixed cameras if they are savvy (in other words a liar who is perverting the course of justice).

Everyone could use the "don't know who was driving defence" as every one can claim a partner/friend/sibling was a potential driver!

If they honestly don't know who was driving that is what they must say, but they must also try to figure out who was driving, looking at diaries, receipts, etc.
But if you have three people regularly using a car with no logs of any kind, then you get a NIP up to 14 days after the event it's quite easy that you won't remember who was driving on that occasion.

Of course that's 14 days for the registered keeper. It could take longer for them to then ask everyone who regularly uses the car what they were doing.

_________________
Andrew.

Only if you're a fool.

Saying you don't know who the driver is when you do is highly dangerous and likely to get you sent to prison for peverting the course of justice/contempt of court, along with anybody who colludes with you.

Same applies for saying you do know who the driver is and name them, if it wasn't them.

Not recommended, and rightly so.

Quite correct, weepej. ^

I have to say, it rankles with me that the public could find themselves dealt with so harshly for perverting the course of justice. Conversely, in my own case, the police seemed to think it was good enough to come up with any old charge supported by any old evidence, and even submitted false evidence to the court in support of their case against me. If that was not bad enough, I was then advised by the prosecutor that these "errors" were not enough on their own to sink the prosecution's case, and that they could have asked for an adjournment to give themselves time to build a fresh case against me! In the event, the case against me was dropped.

(Note - the prosecution can ASK for an adjournment, but that does not mean the will grant one. I believe I would have been given the opportunity to object, and would have been successful in blocking the prosecution's request for an adjournment)

Back on topic, and of the batch of about six S172 cases I heard tried for failure to identify the driver, the defendants in about half of those cases were acquitted. At least two were husband/wife combos who were able to demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that either one could have been driving the vehicle at the time.

Of the three who defended themselves without success:

• An Irishman who came into court chewing gum, wrong date of birth, Irish driving licence, seemed to think the law did not apply to him - their worships were not impressed!
• A man of Asian extraction who seemed to struggle with English, provided a long rambling story to no avail.
• A woman, again of Asian extraction, who went on oath by "swearing by Allah". She claimed that she had never received the request to identify the driver, and that she had not been resident at the address (her parents' house) at the time. By reconstruction of her movemnets according to her own testimony, the magistrates were able to demonstrate that she WOULD have been in residence at the time the S172 would have arrived. She was found guilty, and fined £300.

Unless you're a policeman, or police force, that is.

Indeed. As weepej is very much pro-camera, I wouldn't necessarily expect him to give good advice to someone who he decided was trying to "get out" of a speeding conviction (and that would probably apply to pretty much anyone who ever tried to fight a speeding ticket). But his advice here is spot on; he's not scaremongering or exaggerating in any way.

That doesn't necessarily make it right though; DieselMoment and JTB are right that the PCoJ harshness only seems to apply against the public and not the authorities. I think it's much more damaging to society, and much more outrageous, when police, SCPs or councils (with DPE) fabricate evidence or lie in court than it is when a father says that he was driving to get his daughter out of a speeding ticket. Yet only the latter tends to result in a prison sentence. Something's wrong there. PCoJ is a serious offence and rightly so, but the authorities shouldn't routinely get away with committing it, and I think the severity of the consequences to the public should be taken into account when sentencing someone for PCoJ. No-one really suffers if someone lies about driving when a car was flashed at 3am, in a pointless 30 limit, by a stupid camera that shouldn't even be there, so prison is surely excessive; plenty of people suffer if officials abuse their positions of trust in order to maliciously obtain convictions against people who they know to be innocent. People need to be able to trust the authorities, and every such incident jeopardises that.

Other than the lives that are being lost, people who go to prison for naming the wrong driver are arguably the most unfortunate victims of the camera obsession (and S172); it's a foolish thing to do, but nothing more, and such people are often respectable types who have never been in trouble with the police before, and were only trying to help out friends or family whose careers were being unnecessarily threatened by the wretched cameras. So many lives are being either terminated or ruined by the camera scourge, and still the madness continues. It will until the very last camera is scrapped. Car-haters who advocate cameras in the full knowledge of the damage they do have a lot to be ashamed about.

_________________
Paul Smith: a legend.

"The freedom provided by the motor vehicle is not universally applauded, however: there are those who resent the loss of state control over individual choice that the car represents. Such people rarely admit their prejudices openly; instead, they make false or exaggerated claims about the adverse effects of road transport in order to justify calls for higher taxation or restrictions on mobility." (Conservative Way Forward: Stop The War Against Drivers)