Safe Speed Forums

(Apologies to MINI2 subscribers who have also seen this.)

Got a rather disturbing letter last Saturday morning from the Essex Safety Camera Partnership, alleging that M15COO (my reggie) had been photo'ed doing 45 in a 30 zone in Loughton High Street early on September 16th.

I know I was tucked up in bed at the time of the allegation (01:36) and that the car was outside my house in South London. So it looks like my number has been cloned and put on another MINI.

Does anyone here have any experience of how I go about proving my innocence? The accompanying form with the poor quality picture seems to imply that I have to supply the name and address of the driver at the time, rather than contesting whether my car was actually in the vicinity or not, which it wasn't.

The car in their picture is a MINI. The picture is of the rear number plate and about 2-3cm surrounding it. But it's not my MINI.

My MINI is distinctive at the rear as it has no badges, but the area covered by the picture they have sent is not large enough to tell if the car involved was de-badged or not. Additionally, it's difficult to tell from the poor quality b/w picture they sent, but it looks a darker shade of blue than mine.

However, and more crucially, my number plate is stuck on with double-sided tape and has no holes in it, whereas the one in the picture has two screws holding the plate on. The spacing of the letters and numbers in their picture is also different to mine. Therefore I suspect I will be able to prove that the car in question is not mine. I also have three witnesses to say I was at home, about 30 miles away, at the time this took place, albeit we were all asleep.

Also spoke to local plod. They have now reported my car as 'cloned', which means I am likely to get stopped at any time since my car was involved in an alleged offence! Wonderful. Doubtless the miscreant only had the plates on temporarily to avoid the CC or to commit some other offence but I'm the one that's now marked as a crim!

Have also sent the DVLA a fax to say my number has been cloned. Don't know what this signifies, but was advised to do it.

I have sent the issuing force in Essex a photo of my rear end highlighting the differences to their offending vehicle, along with their original paperwork, unsigned by me.

Will see what transpires now, although I'm sure it won't all be good. Might have to go so far as getting the car re-registered.

When you say you received a letter, was this a NIP (notice of intended prosecution)?

_________________
Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

I can’t help you with the problem you have now but you should add an obvious permanent distinguishing feature to your car, front and rear, until the matter is resolved (take this chance to pimp your ride :D ). It may help to log every journey in your vehicle from now on. These will aid your defence should your doppelganger rack up any more offences.

Dixie, yes it was a NIP.

Smeggy, I used to have illegally spaced plates (M1 5 COO) with a Scottish Saltire flag in place of the EU flag. Had to swap them over for the MOT and didn't get around to putting them back on. Once it's MOT'd again this Friday, they are going back on, although it will give plod even more of an excuse to stop me - cloned plate AND illegally spaced to boot.

Nobby,

Have you sent the NIP back yet? If you haven’t then I would suggest going over to PePiPoo and asking for advice on their site. I’m sure I’ve seen people asking questions about cloned plates.

_________________
Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

Nobby,

Have the Police given you a secret code yet? There's a system whereby you can give a secret code if stopped to prove that you are not the clone.

If they haven't, ring Scotland Yard and talk to the car cloning unit there. They should know what's going on.

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Have posted to Pepipoo too.

Sent the NIP back, unsigned, along with an explanation of why it wasn't my car and also a hi-res, colour photo of my MINI's rear end, which should be enough evidence to get them off my back.

I suspect that it might mean you're about to lose that personal plate because (AIUI) DVLA can withdraw registration marks they believe are in use unlawfully. However, I understand that they would not normally do so unless the "owner" of the mark requested it and provided sufficient evidence of cloning.

That said, here is government advice on the subject. From that it seems that you've done the right thing WRT the NIP:

HTH,

_________________
Will

You say you're going to replace the plate with the illegally spaced one...

I'd leave things well alone right now. It's muddying the water swapping the plates around until this is fully settled.

The most useful thing the local police said was to look at the DVLA site, which is where it told me to return the correspondence and proof to the issuing force. It also said to inform the DVLA of the cloning.

I suspect I will only lose the plate or have to replace it if this persists - so far there has not been a repeat, but I don't understand why anyone would go to the bother of cloning a plate just to trigger one speed camera. If they want the plate that badly, they could just put a note under my wiper and make me an offer!

They might have wanted to use the plate to carry out a crime and triggered the speed camera by mistake, in which case they would only want to use it once.

_________________
Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

It is possible that the speed camera incident saved you even more grief. Your car could have been cloned to disguise the true identity of the cloned vehicle for use in more serious crime. If the crims used your car (say) as a getaway for an armed robbery, you could have woken up one day to find someone pointing a gun at you - as did John Cahill in this BBC article. However, once pinged by PC Gatso, there is a very high probability that you'd notify DVLA and that might be enough to make continuing to use your reg an unacceptable risk for the crims.

_________________
Will