WHAT!

Commuting, Day rides, Audax, Incidents, etc.
basingstoke123
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Joined: 13 Feb 2008, 10:05pm

Re: WHAT!

Post by basingstoke123 »

Ben@Forest wrote:
Mick F wrote:Talking of ANPR, we've parked at Bristol Airport on occasion, and as you enter, you press a button and the machine spits a card for you to keep. On leaving, you go to a booth, insert your card, pay, then it spits it back at you and you push the card in the exit barrier machine and leave.

I wonder if you fitted a bogus numberplate on the front as you enter, and take the card, then remove the bogus plate.
When you are about to leave after coming back from a two week holiday, you "lose" the card and go to the office. Tell them your real reg number - which they have no record of - and that you only arrived an hour ago. It is "obvious" that their system is broken, so they take your word for it and charge you £3 instead of £100.

Could that be done?


It's likely that there will be CCTV inside the park too. It could show your real registration on your car sitting there for the last two weeks. It will almost definitely show that your car did not arrive in the last hour.


Nearly. But if you loose your ticket, you have to pay a hefty charge, even if you could prove you had only entered 30 minutes earlier. As Ben@Forest pointed out, they would also have CCTV, which would fail to show you entering at the approximate time you claimed. If it was that easy, anyone whose parking fee exceeded the fine for a lost ticket would just claim that they had driven in earlier that same day, and had lost their ticket.

Years ago I heard the story of someone who had a summer job retrieving hire cars that had been left for days in the airport's short stay car park. It required two people and a second car. Drive in with the second car. Pay the parking charge and then use the ticket to drive the first over staying car out. The other person then claims to have lost their ticket. CCTV will verify that they had indeed entered at the claimed time. Pay the lost ticket fee and exit. But this is no longer possible, because tickets are now matched against you car's number plate (so, I am not aiding and abetting). It is now much more convenient with the barrier raising automatically as you approach. No more leaning out the window. Not close enough. Reverse and go forward closer to the ticket machine. But I suspect that this convenience is more to do with ensuring tickets match the vehicle.
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horizon
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Re: WHAT!

Post by horizon »

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... manchester

I'm wondering whether had the ban been lengthy and properly enforced (i.e. straight to jail for contravention), that boy wouldn't now be alive.
When the pestilence strikes from the East, go far and breathe the cold air deeply. Ignore the sage, stay not indoors. Ho Ri Zon 12th Century Chinese philosopher
reohn2
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Re: WHAT!

Post by reohn2 »

horizon wrote:https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/feb/20/driver-who-killed-11-year-old-had-been-banned-three-times-manchester

I'm wondering whether had the ban been lengthy and properly enforced (i.e. straight to jail for contravention), that boy wouldn't now be alive.

Quite!
It's all been said before,a total lack of policing and a criminal who knew it,as a result a life is lost,a situation all to familiar to me and my family.
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"All we are not stares back at what we are"
W H Auden
thirdcrank
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Re: WHAT!

Post by thirdcrank »

I can't remember if I've made this point higher up and I'm not gong back to check. Whatever might have happened in the past, there's a proposal to remove the power of courts to sentence people to six months or less. The current maximum for disqualified driving is six months and I see little possibility of any government increasing the maximum sentences for offences in order to circumvent a ban on short sentences.
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horizon
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Re: WHAT!

Post by horizon »

My question therefore as always is why ban people at all?
When the pestilence strikes from the East, go far and breathe the cold air deeply. Ignore the sage, stay not indoors. Ho Ri Zon 12th Century Chinese philosopher
reohn2
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Re: WHAT!

Post by reohn2 »

horizon wrote:My question therefore as always is why ban people at all?

Well if you can't enforce the law why indeed,in fact why bother with any laws at at all if a slick teflon lawyer can circumvent them.... ......wait a minute how many people was it who are still driving with umpteen points on their licences coz it would cause them hardship?
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"All we are not stares back at what we are"
W H Auden
brooksby
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Re: WHAT!

Post by brooksby »

Our household's two cars are both vintage VWs with black-and-silver numberplates. The ANPR on entry in our local NCP car parks - which collects and prints your registration onto the ticket - doesn't recognise/can't read our plates at all. We end up with tickets where the reg is either blank or gibberish ("????N?" on one occasion). I've often wondered whether ANPR on roads can read them.
thirdcrank
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Re: WHAT!

Post by thirdcrank »

I cannot help much with the details of ANPR which had a terrible reputation in the early days, much like the DVLC (as was.)

There's a tv series running called Traffic Cops.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006zygp

I don't actively watch much telly, but my wife does so I'm a passive viewer (a bit like passive smoking.) I avoid most "police" programmes be they fiction or attempts at documentary but the bits of this series I've seen feature North Yorkshire Police, which seems to be one of the few forces that gives some priority to traffic enforcement. I watched one clip where the driver of a patrol car driving in one direction on a dark rural road was able to tell from the in-car ANPR that the target car had just passed in the opposite direction, leading to a prompt and successful conclusion.

In one episode which might have cheered up horizon, a "traffic cop" (yuk) in a liveried car kept an eye on a house where he knew a recidivist disqualified driver lived. Bingo! The driver was too idle to comply with the ban, was dealt with in a matter-of-fact sort of way and was sent down.

It's worth noting how the traffic patrols end up dealing with all sorts of non-traffic matters.

To most people the police are the police (or some other term) and the differences between, say, North and West Yorkshire are academic, but in operational terms they are important. Once upon a time, traffic policing in the North Riding was a joke, at a time when the West Riding Constabulary and its successors prided itself on being the élite. Times change. Don't be naughty in a car in North Yorkshire is my advice.
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horizon
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Re: WHAT!

Post by horizon »

Speaking before the sentencing, Boardman described the death as “horrifically life-changing” and called for longer bans to deter motorists from breaking the law. He also paid tribute to his mother, herself a talented cyclist, as the person who had inspired his passion for cycling and competition.

He said he did not want to see lengthy jail sentences for people convicted of driving offences. However, he added: “I would like to see more driving bans. Driving is a privilege, so I don’t want those people who commit crime – and that’s what this is – become a burden on society. I’d just like them not to be able to do that to anybody else ever again.”


This is Boardman speaking (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... r-30-weeks) and he seems to support the idea of bans versus prison. I'm wondering if we really took the idea of bans seriously then policing and society would make the necessary adjustments. At the moment a ban is a slap on the wrist. Or indeed, society considers it a worse punishment than prison!
When the pestilence strikes from the East, go far and breathe the cold air deeply. Ignore the sage, stay not indoors. Ho Ri Zon 12th Century Chinese philosopher
reohn2
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Re: WHAT!

Post by reohn2 »

horizon wrote:
Speaking before the sentencing, Boardman described the death as “horrifically life-changing” and called for longer bans to deter motorists from breaking the law. He also paid tribute to his mother, herself a talented cyclist, as the person who had inspired his passion for cycling and competition.

He said he did not want to see lengthy jail sentences for people convicted of driving offences. However, he added: “I would like to see more driving bans. Driving is a privilege, so I don’t want those people who commit crime – and that’s what this is – become a burden on society. I’d just like them not to be able to do that to anybody else ever again.”


This is Boardman speaking (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... r-30-weeks) and he seems to support the idea of bans versus prison. I'm wondering if we really took the idea of bans seriously then policing and society would make the necessary adjustments. At the moment a ban is a slap on the wrist. Or indeed, society considers it a worse punishment than prison!

I'd suggest only by those who haven't been to prison.
-----------------------------------------------------------
"All we are not stares back at what we are"
W H Auden
nigelnightmare
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Re: WHAT!

Post by nigelnightmare »

horizon wrote:My question therefore as always is why ban people at all?


+1
Just put a bullet in their head, Dead people don't drive.
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Cugel
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Re: WHAT!

Post by Cugel »

nigelnightmare wrote:
horizon wrote:My question therefore as always is why ban people at all?


+1
Just put a bullet in their head, Dead people don't drive.


Well, I have seen several of the brain-dead driving. Yes, I have! Driving zombies are everywhere.

Cugel
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”.
John Maynard Keynes
althebike
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Re: WHAT!

Post by althebike »

The bit about the community order and" let this be a lesson to you", is amazing
ThePinkOne
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Re: WHAT!

Post by ThePinkOne »

reohn2 wrote:
horizon wrote:
Speaking before the sentencing, Boardman described the death as “horrifically life-changing” and called for longer bans to deter motorists from breaking the law. He also paid tribute to his mother, herself a talented cyclist, as the person who had inspired his passion for cycling and competition.

He said he did not want to see lengthy jail sentences for people convicted of driving offences. However, he added: “I would like to see more driving bans. Driving is a privilege, so I don’t want those people who commit crime – and that’s what this is – become a burden on society. I’d just like them not to be able to do that to anybody else ever again.”


This is Boardman speaking (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... r-30-weeks) and he seems to support the idea of bans versus prison. I'm wondering if we really took the idea of bans seriously then policing and society would make the necessary adjustments. At the moment a ban is a slap on the wrist. Or indeed, society considers it a worse punishment than prison!

I'd suggest only by those who haven't been to prison.


On other topics though (e.g. knife crime) I have heard credible commentators/genuine specialists point out that with a 6-month or less prison sentence it achieves little as there is no time for rehabilitation (assuming that prisons did proper rehabilitation which unfortunately many don't). However, if someone had a possibility of reform before, having a prison record may remove that chance. After all, if a person cannot read and write (the proportion of functionially illiterate inmates is rather high) and loses their job when in prison on a stretch where there is no rehab, what chance have they on coming out? By excluding them from participating in "straight" society afterwards, they may as well re-offend and slide into the crime world even further. There's a logic there. Similarly, if they had a decent job, should they lose everything for a mistake? I appreciate in the case cited things are a bit different, but I'm still not sure prison does anything useful unless there's a person for whom locking them up is the only way to prevent them harming anyone again.

On bans, it's pointless unless backed up by strong traffic enforcement. Otherwise the chances are the offender will still drive illegally.

I'm more in favour of a system that one way or another forces the offender to (a) face what they have done and (b) make suitable reparation. What that looks like would be different for different cases- and should also deal with underlying cause. For someone like this chap, I suggest a couple of years working night shifts in A&E (making sure they had to work every weekend plus Christmas/New Year) with all earning above minimum wage going to the family of the victim would be appropriate. If they still thought it "cool" to drink excessively, speed or drink/drive after that then, yes, there would be a strong argument to lock them up to prevent harm to others. At the end of that, they could still go back to their previous role- and if not, well they have valuable experience which would enable them to get work.

In the real world I know this is would be difficult to do without a lot of resource, but I reckon a practical and in-your-face way of teaching folks the consequences of their actions would be far more effective at getting behaviour change in the long run.

TPO
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