Safe Speed Forums

I got a fixed penalty notice on the 19th of may, for doing 91mph in a 70mph limit. I thought i was'nt doing that speed, and told the PC at the time, so i decided to challenge the fixed penalty. I was caught with a hand held lazer gun. I didnt recieve my summons for court untill the 3rd of september. Should there be a time limit to this and what should be my best defence to pleading not guilty. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

Hi there and welcome to the forum.

Best place to go if you're being persecuted is www.pepipoo.com and have a look on their forums. There'll be plenty of help and advice there.

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We have a complaisant but venal judiciary and police force - all too eager to pervert the Law to satisfy their own aims

Pepipoo is good on the strictly legal stuff and the question you ask. However, I have a few questions:

1) What distance were you alleged to have been doing 91 mph at from the dodgyscope?

2) What was the lay of the land where you were - hilly up and down or dead flat?

3) were you going toward or away from the enforcement gun?

4) When you say "thought" you weren't doing 91 - did you look down to your speedo at all before or shortly after you were pinged? did you brake much/at all?

5) I'm guessing you were actually stopped. Did he step out and put his hand up or follow you a while before flagging you down with his headlights?

6) What was actually said at the roadside?

7) did you show your driving licence?

8) do you have any points at all - and if so, for what?

It's either 6 months to lay an information (application for a summons) or for the first hearing, depending on where teh alleged offfence was committted.

Could you please respond to Roger's questions, as there are increasingly a lot of problems with the handheld LTI 20.20 and we are trying to get something done about it.

If you could get some pictures from the location of the speed gun and show where you were at the time that would be helpful, possibly take it when there is a car at about the same location.

We particularly need information about the distance and the road topography. It would also be helpful to know details about the time and location and which police force and the police officer, since we could then obtain further information with the Freedom of Information Act. It might be best to send any specific details as a private message, PM, to Roger or me, so that the police can’t check up on who you are.

Can I ask what is dodgy about the Lti 20/ 20 I use it everyday and I carry out the checks to make sure it is accurate, I dont use a camera with it and there is no slip error with it no number plate lock on no reading, and I use it at night. You are probably getting the American version of this machine which is supposed to be dodgy. If I had any doubt about its reiability and or integrity then I would not be using it.
Stephen

If that’s the case why is it the government would not release a British Lti 20-20 to allow specialists to carry out there own testing and investigations.

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

if you put a pair of pink wellies on, hold the camera upside down something dodgy might happen

seiously though

how come the individuals (who i have spoke) who use the lti on a daily basis, using the correct operating procedures can never achieve the slip effect,



are there any qualified speacilists around, to be honest i wish they would at least that knocks another arguement out of the equation

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now retired

At the distance some of them use it, the beam is wider than a car, and a 1mm wobble by the operator is amplified into many metres at the target distance.

And how can you know all your readings are accurate when there is no secondary check?

I always do two checks on every vehicle I isolate and the CPS guidelines on distance for us is no more than 300metres so, the chance of slip error is very limited.
Stephen

Why do you do two checks, Stephen, exactly?

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

I feel that In my opinion that it is balanced and fair the first check when I form the opinion of speed and to see the exact speed, second one if they realise that I am there and they can loose enough speed to get them below the prosecution limit set then I have done my job, If not then I am still doing my job by ticketing them. No doubt I will be wrong with this as well.
Stephen

That's fine by me, although I'd rather you based your prosecution decisions on manner of driving rather than numerical speed alone.

The speed limit law is really a proxy for the excellent idea that: no one should drive too fast. But because conditions are so widely variable we should be careful not to value the proxy above the wise intention of the law.

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

How do you know that you never get slip effect?

and a couple of supplementaries if I may:

Do you always enforce vehicles coming toward you?

Have you ever had a "valid" (ie non E-03) reading that made you raise your eyebrows, ie, when a car was coming toward you at a speed you estimated at 120, showing only 75 (or vice versa) or has your second reading shown a paradoxical increase despite the driver obviously having clocked you?

So what about motorcycles?

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

My concern is that what I have seen about slip effect leads me to question how you can accurately check for it unless you have the speed confirmed by an entirely independent means.

And I’d say the only independent means of confirming slip is to ask the driver of the car being targeted what speed he was showing on his Speedo.

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

Sadly not accurate, because the answer would invariably be 25, 35, 45, 55 or 65 depending on the limit in force.

I was looking at this hypothetically. If a Lti 20-20 was being used to measure the speed of a car, say doing 30mph, the only way you would know if the instrument being used to measure that speed was accurate would be if someone was sitting in the car and driving it at an indicated 30mph (ok allow 10% over for Speedo error) the instrument would have to read between 30-33 mph, if it didn’t then the instrument is either inaccurate, or you are getting slip. Unless you know the true speed of the car you target you would not know if you are getting slip.

You couldn’t use another instrument as collaboration because you wouldn’t know if you where getting slip from that instrument. That’s what I meant when I said you would have to ask the driver of the car (This could be a police officer or whoever) and that’s why some people have complained that they where not speeding, it’s your word against the operators, and the operator would not know if he was getting slip because he does not know the speed of the car.

That’s how they proved they where getting slip when they done the tests with the American version of the Lti 20-20. They had someone in the vehicle keeping it at a constant speed (which I think was 30mph) but the instrument was reading a much higher speed than 33mph.

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.