COVID Lockdown - Guidance versus the Law

[DaveReading]

If you were stopped and questioned 25 miles from home and your explanation that a 50 mile round was normal for you was not accepted and you were issued with a ticket, what then? Would you stump up or ask for the case to go to court?

A suitable compromise would be to invite the police to follow slowly behind you for the balance of your ride to verify your story.

[thirdcrank]

I'm not suggesting they wouldn't believe it, rather that they might deem that 25 miles from home was not local and so enforce the guidance rather than the law.

[Traction_man]

Advice from the Scottish Government, for those of us north of the border states

‘local outdoor recreation, sport or exercise, walking, cycling, golf, or running that starts and finishes at the same place (which can be up to 5 miles from the boundary of your local authority area) as long as you abide by the rules on meeting other households’

Interesting, for us in norn iron it looks like this:

Exercising outdoors
You should minimise time spent outside your home.

You can only leave your home to exercise, and not for the purpose of recreation or leisure (for example, a picnic or a social meeting).

You can exercise in a public outdoor place:

by yourself
with the people you live with
with your bubble
or, when on your own, with one person from another household

https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/co ... you#toc-16

With an advisory ten mile limit in place for the purpose of exercise, so some attempt to keep folks local to homes.

This was the view on my local ride today

Cheers,

Keith

[AndyK]

I'm not suggesting they wouldn't believe it, rather that they might deem that 25 miles from home was not local and so enforce the guidance rather than the law.

The police enforce the law, not the guidance. The law does not set limits on the time or extent of the exercise. A link to the College of Policing/National Police Chiefs' Council guidance to police officers seems to be apposite here:

https://beta.college.police.uk/guidance/covid-19

The guidance on the latest regulations simply notes that taking exercise is a reasonable excuse. Full stop.

While there's a discussion to be had on the meaning of the guidance, it should be based on what's reasonable and sensible, not on the expectation that a constable is going to arrest or fine you because you're more than X miles from home.

[DaveReading]

I'm not suggesting they wouldn't believe it, rather that they might deem that 25 miles from home was not local and so enforce the guidance rather than the law.

Leaving aside the fact that, by definition, you can only enforce law and not guidance, I'd suspect that in this hypothetical situation the most likely action would be to tell you to go home.

Joking aside, no officer wants to waste half a day having to go to court to justify a dodgy FPN.

[thirdcrank]

I'm not joking at all. I am saying - and have consistently done so I think over some years - is that given the choice between stumping up and going to court, a lot of people will pay up to avoid the hassle. Otherwise there are few automatic safeguards for the individual built into the system. For most normal people, being cleared in the end is poor recompense for getting a wrong ticket in the first place. That's especially so in present circumstances where the courts have a huge backlog so it might take a long time to get it dropped.

The problem with something like the Covid regs is they have - for understandable reasons - changed several times and at very short notice. This means that training people to do the enforcement cannot possibly be thorough. Superimposing guidance of doubtful legal authority improves nothing.

Nobody is ever going to know the true story. During an earlier stage of the pandemic, a superintendent in a tier two area was on the media daily threatening enforcement for anybody coming from tier three. It might have all been huff-and-puff or he might have been passing the same message out to people on the street.

Above all, I understand what's behind the OPs thinking.

[Oldjohnw]

I must say, if someone from London is in Snowdonia I think that the police would have a pretty straightforward case.

[thirdcrank]

I must say, if someone from London is in Snowdonia I think that the police would have a pretty straightforward case.

Does that include Downing Street insiders?

[grufty]

Just a thought, and I apologise if someone else has made this point. Another angle might be to ascertain how far a person could drive in order to run, walk or cycle? Driving distance + exercise = maximum?

[rmurphy195]

Not forgetting that the new strain is highly infectious, to what extent is not clear yet, so maybe the "As long as we don't get too close to people for more than 15 minutes" no longer works,or maybe it lives longer on door handles and gate posts. Who knows.

What risks are you prepared to take that you will bring back the thing into your area from elsewhere, or take it somehere else, unknowingly? And what penalty are you prepared to take if you are wrong - death perhaps, or lifelong disability from long covid?

Also don't forget that current estimates are that 1 in 3 people are carrying the disease without ever knowing they have it, so the real number is likley to be higher than the published figures on 2 levels, the asymptomatic and those who think they have just a cold, and those who simply don't tell anyone. So you may be infected unknowingly, ride or drive 20 or 30miles from your local area, and leave it behind you. Or pick it up from someone who has done what you've just done. It crept out from the high infection areas somehow now, didn't it.

If we use or thinking processes to figure out what we can do on a personal level in addition to the guidance and the law, and less effort in thinking how we can bypass it, then maybe there will be fewer cases about.

[backnotes]

Here's an example of how guidance, law and urban myth can all get mixed up together:
http://www.reading.ac.uk/news-and-event ... 41058.aspx

This relates to the throwaway comment by Mr. Gove that led to the popular belief that exercise was strictly limited to an hour a day by law at the start of the first lockdown.

[mattheus]

Also don't forget that current estimates are that 1 in 3 people are carrying the disease without ever knowing they have it, so the real number is likley to be higher than the published figures on 2 levels, the asymptomatic and those who think they have just a cold, and those who simply don't tell anyone. So you may be infected unknowingly, ride or drive 20 or 30miles from your local area, and leave it behind you. Or pick it up from someone who has done what you've just done. It crept out from the high infection areas somehow now, didn't it.

So you think it was cyclists wot done it? OK, well we'll look into this and get back to you Sir.


<FX: paper being screwed up and thrown in bin>

[mattheus]

If you were stopped and questioned 25 miles from home and your explanation that a 50 mile round was normal for you was not accepted and you were issued with a ticket, what then? Would you stump up or ask for the case to go to court?

I'd go home and re-read the law [plus a load of blogs by lawyers and armchair experts probably!], then decide. Is that OK with you? Why do you ask?

From what I heard from a lawyer in the House of Lords this morning, the courts would likely go with the law. so it would probably be worth contesting the ticket*. Our legal system gives me that choice. Some would choose differently to me, and no-one knows the outcome.

How about you?


*OF course if it was just a fiver, I'd pay up - not worth the hassle. My choice, YMMV.

[DaveReading]

Also don't forget that current estimates are that 1 in 3 people are carrying the disease without ever knowing they have it

You might want to study your source more carefully, or phrase your comment more precisely.

It's not that 1 in 3 of the population are carrying the disease, it's that 1 in 3 of infected people are asymptomatic.

[AndyK]

Also don't forget that current estimates are that 1 in 3 people are carrying the disease without ever knowing they have it, so the real number is likley to be higher than the published figures on 2 levels, the asymptomatic and those who think they have just a cold, and those who simply don't tell anyone. So you may be infected unknowingly, ride or drive 20 or 30miles from your local area, and leave it behind you. Or pick it up from someone who has done what you've just done. It crept out from the high infection areas somehow now, didn't it.

So you think it was cyclists wot done it? OK, well we'll look into this and get back to you Sir.


<FX: paper being screwed up and thrown in bin>

But officer, it's the gateposts! All the cyclists are going out and deliberately coughing on the gateposts! You have to stop them!

Seriously, we do not want to get back into the situation of last spring where people were making ludicrous evidence-free claims about how you could catch Covid-19 from the tarmac because someone infected had walked along that road the previous day. We do have a much clearer idea of how it spreads now and it happens primarily where people are in close proximity to each other, especially indoors. Going out for a solo bike ride - especially in the countryside where the number of people you'll come into contact with is minimal - does not make you a superspreader.