Safe Speed Forums

It has been a general tenet of English law that if you try to comply and take reasonable steps to do so then this is taken into account in deciding your culpability or in mitigation. The introduction by the Government of a lot of strict liability offences has eroded this quite proper defence. IMO absolute offences are to do with getting certainty of conviction rather than promoting justice.

Baroness Scotland is, no doubt, reflecting on this type of law after employing an illegal worker even though she took reasonable steps to ensure this was OK. Even the Prime Minister has supported her in this. Unfortunately for her, the law is drafted such that this is an absolute offence and has no defence of taking all reasonable steps to comply. She is guilty just like all the small businessmen who have been prosecuted after checking thoroughly on the qualification of a job applicant.

Absolute offences should not be part of the law. Things are not black and white.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

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Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

Absolute offences are usually for cases where the defence "I didn't know" is so easy to use as to negate the purpose of the law. For example driving a defective vehicle is an absolute offence. If it was not it would be impossible to prosecute any one for the offence because they could always use the defence "I am not a mechanic so I didn't know there was something wrong". The law , quite reasonably, expects you to employ a qualified mechanic to ensure that your vehicle is safe. If you don't then you are criminally responsible for any defects.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

But persumably if you do employee said qualified mechanic and he makes a mistake and misses something, whilst you might have some form of civil case against the mechanic you would still be guilty of the offence of driving a defective vehicle.

The law does not expect or require you to employ a qualified mechanic.
The law requires your vehicle to be "in a roadworthy condition".
There are a whole rake of cases where mechanic-maintained vehicle have been not only unroadworthy, but dangerous.

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing

Absolute offence is not the correct phrase, an "offence of strict liability" is the right wording.

No insurance and speeding are the usual ones we see. As far as driving a vehicle in a dangerous condition is concerned a court may NOT order endorsement or disqualification if the defendant can show, on balance of probabilities -

Note that a latent defect ie one not apparent at the start of a journey but which you become aware of during the journey does not allow you to continue driving. Once you have reason to believe the car may be dangerous you must stop.

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I am not a lawyer and can't give legal advice. I do have experience of the day to day working of courts and use that knowledge to help where possible. I do not represent any official body and post as an individual.

and your mitigation is that you have taken all reasonable steps to NOT commit the offence. In the presence of a reasonable mitigation the defendant may receive no judicial punishment for the crime...nothing is ever absolute.

The whole point of this thread is that courts do believe certain offences are absolute. If the speed limit was legal and you exceeded it you are guilty. No mitigation.

If you employed an illegal imigrant, you saw reasonable evidence of national insurance documents, tough. You are guilty, no mitigation. It is nice to see one of the cabinate up to thier eyeballs in thier own legislation.

I have to say , If you employ the cheapest labour, a lady from tonga, out side of the EU. It is obvious you need to make the relevent checks. not to mention if you are in the cabinate you might just want a few extra security checks to make sure you are not going to be murdered or have all the confidential documents stolen.

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Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

I note your careful wording. You do not say that the person would not be guilty, just that no judicial punishment would be meted out. I believe that your reasonable actions to ensure compliance with a law should mean that you are not guilty.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

it is parliament that decides if an offence is to be one of strict liability or not.
If you plead not guilty and are found guilty you can't put forward mitigation as such, but anything that goes in your favour which came out during the trial will be taken into account at sentencing. If you plead guilty is always possible to put forward mitigation. If your mitigation is sufficient the court can impose an absolute discharge.

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I am not a lawyer and can't give legal advice. I do have experience of the day to day working of courts and use that knowledge to help where possible. I do not represent any official body and post as an individual.

An offence of "Strict Liability" is basically the modern equivilant of a "Bill of Attainder".

It is where the State is saying that "You are guilty because we say you are" (And the Courts, being agents of the state, will, by and large, do as they are told and sentance you accordingly!)

It is a legislative fudge used by the state to obtain convictions in those cases where the normal rules of proof of intent and concepts of reasonable doubt would make a more conventional (Just) conviction almost impossible.

Laws that require the concept of "Strict liability" in their application and enforcement are likly to be bad laws that really should be reconsidererd!

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"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

The law does seem to come down harder on people that are normally law abiding people than criminals.

I hate to bring it back to speeding again, but for example my car:-

serviced on time every time

Taxed

Insured fully comp with loads of NCB

Clean

Tidy

Me... full license, no points.

So doing my best to keep on the right side of the law. Then the law decides that the offence of exceeding an arbitrary number is...

A) is the worst thing know to man kind

B) dead easy to enforce

C) quite lucrative

So they lower a speed limit, put a camera up on a straight section of road, bish bash bosh, got you sir, that will be 60 notes and 3 points please, oh and thanks for registering you car, it don't half make our job easier, we don't even have to get out of the van.

Along comes Richard Cranium in his unregistered/insured/taxed car and he gets nothing, and if the law does catch up with him, it doesn't make finiacial sense for him to have obeyed it.

Then we have rubbish. Rubbish is bad and you must not make any. Ok, I don't like waste. And and if you do make waste, we'll make it dead expensive to get rid of, that'll cure your wastefull ways. It then cost the law abiding people fortunes to get rid of the stuff and Richard Cranium just dumps it a field some where it costs him nowt and the poor bugger who's land it has been dumped on is now liable and has to pay to get rid of it.

Of course when I am voted in a President, things will change

The wording is quite deliberate; guilt is by virtue of the commital of the offence, you can't change if it was committed or not. You can however explain why it was done and whether you have done it willingly or deliberately and so will attract penalties. If you explain why it has been done and you have taken all reasonable precautions not to have committed the offence deliberately than it is highly likely you will not attract a penalty.

Perhaps you should ask Sir Alex Ferguson or Mr. David Beckham.

In the case of Sir Alex - if he knew he had an upset tum before setting out .. then he deserved points for driving whilst "knowingly unfit because of having the "runs""


As for "Beckham being in fear of being kidnapped" at the time of his alleged offence.... I'd say bunkum as no one saw him beign chased or threatened

As for the Baroness? She claims she checked her passport/NI number and so on. There's such a thing as checking references and cross checking with other sources ..


Since a quarter of all native born adults now have to register for a CRB check or get a huge fine and criminal record for not registering - and be blacklisted for "antisocial views" - which could be anything - contrary to "labour party dogma" - she has zero excuses.

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Nicht ganz im Lot!
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UND OUR SMILEYS? Smile ... und the the world smiles with you.
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Fine me for Safe Speed
(& other good causes..)

Greatest love & Greatest Achievements Require Greatest Risk
But if you lose the driving plan - don't lose the COAST lesson.
Me?
Je ne regrette rien!

Actually, historically, I believe that this is not the case.

For an offence to have taken place there must be two componants. Mens Rae (loosly "Guilty Mind" IE an intent to comit) and "Actis Rae" (Loosly "guilty Act" IE an offence has to have actually taken place)

Both must be present for a guilty verdict.

EG.

Wanting to asassinate Gordon Brown is not an offence, Neither is running him down BY ACCIDENT.

Its only an "Offence" if you planned to run him down and actually managed to do so.

(Interestingly, If you went out in your car with the intent to Shoot Gordon Brown (with a legally owned and transported firearm ) and ACCIDENTALLY ran him over then, despite your murdorous intent you have not committed an offence since you planned to shoot him, not run him over! (Im not even sure you could be got on "Attempted Murder" since you haddnt actually made the attemt yet, and since you are acting alone I am not sure you could be done for conspiricy either! ))

Strict liability short circuits this by effectivly eliminating the requirement for Mens Rae, It is a tool used by the state to impose its will in areas where either Mems Rae is likly to be impossible to prove, Or (even worse) where it clearly never existed in the first place!

Fudging Justice in order to gain easy convitions is a nasty political tool, and an increacingly used one too!

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"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

While I agree with the principle of what you say, in this case we must rejoice. If anyone else is caught, they go before a beak and plead their case.

So it is doubly important that this woman must face the music. First, because she has broken the law. And second, because she made the same law! It is a priceless experience to learn how the world works. She will be far better at her own job when she has paid her penalty, and she will be better placed to advise others.

Oh yes! Life in the REAL WORLD can be a great education!

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

If you drove over the person you planned to shoot - then we would be looking at the forensics to determine whether or not manslaughter or murder. If there was evidence to suggest "death by dangerous driving" -CPS would consider that charge. If there was also evidence to suggest - very strongly - that he planned to shoot his victim but by a chance in a million .. collided with him insteat - CPS could still consider charging with planning or threatening to commit murder. Compare the case of the blind man who was cautioned for threatening to do criminal damage. (OK - the matter was OTT and should have been handled better ) but it underpins that you can be done for making threats of such malice aforethought. It would be up to CPS to decide whatever

As for the baroness? I think she should be made to answer why adequate checks were not made - especially when holding a high profile position in government which demands high security in the uncertain times our collective politicians have managed to create for us all.

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Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

Easy one to get out of, performing additional checks just because the person was from Tonga would be discrimination

Back on the main topic, though you will have to bear with me, I was thinking about fuzzy logic the other day. You may have come across this term as buzz words in the advertising for washing machines some years ago to describe their clever control systems that would use a program with just enough time and water temperature etc. for the load. Without getting too technical the concept covers the idea that instead of using a binary choice at a set value, i.e above 40 degrees is too hot and below is too cold, the temperature reading is treated as a weighted value. Think about how you might describe the temperature to someone else

Very cold
cold
cool
just right
warm
hot
really hot

In the case of the washing machine it may have other inputs like the weight of the load to determine how long it will take the temperature to reach 'just right'. The clever thing is that by using fuzzy logic the machine instead of waiting 'too long' for the temperature to reach 'just right' may start the wash using the weighted inputs to decide to make the cycle 'a bit shorter' or 'a bit longer'. If something sounds a bit familiar about this then you may be unsurprised to learn that fuzzy logic has been used within artificial intelligence projects because it mimics the way neurons use weighted inputs to determine the threshold at which they fire. Hopefully pulling this back to the point, what I have tried to illustrate is that people are fuzzy and so logically (if you will forgive the pun) using absolutes does not play to our strengths or fairly judge our weaknesses.

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May