Safe Speed Forums

The Daily Mail today reports on motorist John Hopwood who was twiced zapped for speeding in 24 hrs, first at 48 in a 40, and then a 41 in a 30.
When he received the tickets they both said the offences occured in a 30 limit so, in an attempt to demonstrate the inaccuracy of the first offence he went and took a photo of the 40 limit sign. All OK so far, he was quite right about the offence taking place in 40 limit not a 30..
At this point he hatched his cunning plan. He detached the 40 limit sign he'd just photographed and took it to where he'd been done in the 30 limit and replaced the 30 sign with the 40. He then photographed the 40 sign again, in its new location, and sent all the evidence back along wih an enraged letter about being branded a law-breaker
Hopwood didn't reckon with the persistence of the feds who drafted in media artists who were able to prove that the two photos were in fact of the same sign. He is now being done for perverting the course of justice and faces a jail sentence rather than one 60 quid fine, presumably the other would have been quashed due to the inaccuracy he spotted in the first place.

Where was this?
I have a friend named John Hopwood in the Manchester area.

Manchester.

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

I'd get on the phone if I were you cooperman

_________________
Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

I'd better check this out!

Whilst i don't condone his actions, I think what this man did is just a symptom of the damage speed cameras have done to road safety. They have sucessfully eroded any respect people may have had for speeding offences and traffic law to the point where normally law abiding citizens now see a speeding ticket in the same regard and severity as a parking ticket.

Many professionals and people who wouldn't dream of breaking the law normally now seem to think its is fair play to try to manipulate the system in order to get off.

You have e-mail...

_________________
CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/ ... t_con.html



Him?

Fortunately not.

phew!

_________________
Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

All he had to do was relocate a different sign. I am not convinced that the photographic analysis was conclusive - surely it had to be done from a 6x4 print, and I doubt that the fine detail of the "honeycomb" would be retained especially if the sign only occupied a 1cm area, which is what any photo that I took would do; the rest of the frame would be of the location. If he had used a cheap digital camera or camera phone there would have been nothing to work with at all, as there is no way meaningful analysis can be done on a 50px square area:


However by nicking one of the signs in question, and then having a similar sign suddenly appear at the other location it was obviously going to raise questions.


I think that they tried analysis and couldn't prove it either way, so they called his bluff in court and he admitted it - had he stuck to his story I cannot see how it could have been proved beyond reasonable doubt.

What they really don't want is other people trying the same thing, as that would result in chaos, so they are pushing the proof by photographic analysis so that people will believe it and be afraid of trying.

The 40 sign was originally on Princess Road (the A5103) in South Manchester. The 30 area was in Rochdale.

A minor correction to the previous posting. As it was a 30 area, there would have been no speed limit repeater sign, so he didn't replace a 30 sign, just stuck up a new 40 sign.

Pretty dumb really. The NIP would have said which road it was, and it would have been obvious that something fishy was going on. Cheaper than flying to Bulgaria though I guess.

_________________
Brian

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manc ... 145368.stm

Driver who moved road sign jailed

A driver who moved a 40mph road sign to a 30mph zone to try to dodge a speeding ticket has been ordered to spend his weekends behind bars.

John Hopwood, 44, of Bean Leach Road in Hazel Grove, Stockport, admitted perverting the course of justice at Manchester Crown Court.

Hopwood moved the sign 10 miles to a road in Rochdale after he was caught by a speed camera twice in two days.

He was given an intermittent custodial sentence of 56 days.

This means he will report to a custody centre on Fridays and stay there until 1700 BST on Sundays.

Hopwood was caught travelling at 48mph in a 40mph zone on Princess Road, Manchester, and the next day at 41mph in a 30mph zone on Albert Royd Street, Rochdale.

He had moved the sign from Manchester and fixed it to a lamppost near where he was caught in Rochdale.

He had then taken a photograph of it, in an attempt to show prosecutors he was barely over the speed limit.

But he was caught out when lawyers drafted in a facial mapping expert to study marks on the signs.

Judge Anthony Ensor told him he had committed a "serious offence".

He said: "This was a stupid act bound to fail."

========================

Safe Speed issued the following PR at 13:44 today:

PR330: John Hopwood - making criminals for nothing

news: for immediate release

John Hopwood, who moved a road sign in a misguided attempt to escape from a
speeding fine, has been given a 56 day jail sentence.

Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign
(www.safespeed.org.uk) said: "Although this is at the extreme end of the scale
motorists are being pushed into extreme positions by a hopelessly ineffective
and misguided road safety policy."

"This case is one more reason why we need road safety policies that work and
that the public can believe in. In the last decade road deaths haven't fallen
as expected and figures revealed by the British Medical Journal 10 days ago
indicate no fall in hospital admissions for road crash victims.

"With no improvement in safety, millions being fined and serious damage to the
police / public relationship, speed camera policy has failed spectacularly. It
only remains for Department for Transport (DfT) to own up to their deadly
mistake and scrap the damn cameras."

"Presently Department for Transport are in denial about the abject failure of
their policies."

<ends>

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

This is utterly staggering.

Words fail me.

What - effectively - that is saying is that 48 in a 40 is a custodial offence. In this case by proxy i.e. it encourages other drivers to exceed the speed limit by 8 units under false pretences. Therefore the drivers who are mistakenly encouraged to do so are no different than those who would do 48 as a matter of course.

Therefore it assumes that all drivers who do 48 in a 40 are worthy of a jail sentence.

Sick.

Totally sick, and it reeks to high heaven.

_________________
Simon

No, the law is clear that perjury/perverting the course of justice to escape an offence is serious, no matter how minor the original offence. In a similar way, lying to tax or customs officials is serious, even if the evaded amount is tiny.

Gareth