Ignorance of the law excuses no man; not that all men know the law, but because 'tis an excuse every man will plead, and no man can tell how to confute him.
Edit: I am not a lawyer
Ran a Red Light > I'll be hearing from the courts!
It's a basic premise of English law that ignorance is no defence. There's a famous quote from John Selden, a 17th century jurist:
Edit: I am not a lawyer
Edit: I am not a lawyer
You've never seen anyone pulled for RLJ on a bike? They have regular crackdowns in some parts of town - guess you've been lucky
I know people who've been stopped by police for red light jumping on rollerskates - that's actually slightly more complicated, because as far as anyone knows a rollerskate (or even a pair of them) is not a vehicle in law, and there's not much traffic law that applies to non-vehicles at all ...
I know people who've been stopped by police for red light jumping on rollerskates - that's actually slightly more complicated, because as far as anyone knows a rollerskate (or even a pair of them) is not a vehicle in law, and there's not much traffic law that applies to non-vehicles at all ...
dan_b wrote:You've never seen anyone pulled for RLJ on a bike? They have regular crackdowns in some parts of town - guess you've been lucky
I know people who've been stopped by police for red light jumping on rollerskates - that's actually slightly more complicated, because as far as anyone knows a rollerskate (or even a pair of them) is not a vehicle in law, and there's not much traffic law that applies to non-vehicles at all ...
Hmmm, at what point does a bike become a roller skate (or skateboard)...
Perhaps there's a loophole waiting to be exploited...
-
thirdcrank
- Posts: 36781
- Joined: 9 Jan 2007, 2:44pm
ferrit worrier wrote: The defendant "Failed to comply with the ATS"
If I may go off at a tangent, my late mother-in-law was in the ATS. ATS makes me think of Vera Lynn singing "We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when...." all nylons and permed hair.
I'll presume ATS here means 'automatic traffic signal'. Is that an Ayatollah Anderton expression?
-
ferrit worrier
- Posts: 5503
- Joined: 27 Jun 2008, 7:58pm
- Location: south Manchester
thirdcrank wrote:ferrit worrier wrote: The defendant "Failed to comply with the ATS"
If I may go off at a tangent, my late mother-in-law was in the ATS. ATS makes me think of Vera Lynn singing "We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when...." all nylons and permed hair.
I'll presume ATS here means 'automatic traffic signal'. Is that an Ayatollah Anderton expression?
Aye thats the lad
Percussive maintainance, if it don't fit, hit it with the hammer.
-
thirdcrank
- Posts: 36781
- Joined: 9 Jan 2007, 2:44pm
sesme
Just a bit of guidance:
You will eventually receive correspondence. I am now out of touch but a summons within 14 days sounds very quick to me so don't get your hopes up if this takes longer.
It's always possible you will receive a caution letter from the police. In my day, literally millions were sent for traffic offences. I don't know the present score because fixed penalty notices have spread so much.
Otherwise it would normally be a summons. This tells you what you are being prosecuted for and the time, date place of the hearing. Read everything very carefully.
Anybody prosecuted is entitled to disclosure of the evidence against them. In a straightforward case like this, that is unlikely to consist of anything more than the statement of the police officer. This may give some clue as to why this was not dealt with by a fixed penalty.
Incidentally, the two main 'loophole' defences for traffic light offences are either 1/ that no 'Notice of Intended Prosecution' was given. (The NIP can be given verbally at the time or within 14 days in writing. 'You will be reported for consideration of the question... etc' You had the 'Not obliged to say anything...' mantra so I assume you got the NIP. A summons within 14 days obviates the NIP.)
2/ That the traffic lights were not 'lawfully erected.' If they were working properly, i.e. not stuck at red against you (and case law means that the court can assume they were working properly unless there is evidence that they were not) that does not leave much leeway.
The disclosure will give you some idea what you are mitigating assuming you are still admitting the offence. What you really have to be careful of is anything which might provoke 'the make an example' sentence. By this I mean that if you say you have seen plenty of others getting away with it, and if the beak has seen the same and doesn't approve, you don't want to be the one who gets the big fine pour encourager les autres.
In fact, except where there has been an accident with good witnesses, I think it is unusual for anybody to be prosecuted for traffic light offences. (Camera enforcement is by fixed penalty notice I believe.) Enforcement by the evidence of a witness - usually a police officer - is a bit like football offside or the old cricket 'no ball' rule. Somebody has to see two things at once, in this case the position of the vehicle and the colour of the lights, which is perfectly possible but easy to discredit in court. That is because most traffic light offences involve drivers who eat into the start of the red. It's not the same if somebody just passes through red in mid-phase.
For that reason, I've no idea of the level of fine, but apparent flagrant disobedience is not treated as a joke.
Although this sort of thing is important to the individual, magistrates' courts churn their way through loads of traffic summonses, many, perhaps most in the absence of the defendant. (They can only compel you to attend to answer a summons if they are thinking of disqualifying a driver or imposing imprisonment, - neither applicable here). If you send written mitigation, take a few minutes to decide what to write. Remember, you are the one being prosecuted. If you go in person, 'Sunday best' and it costs nothing to be respectful to the court.
Don't listen to lounge bar lawyers. If you decide you do need legal advice a solicitor is the best bet but not necessary unless you have a complicated case (and/ or lots of £££).
Just a bit of guidance:
You will eventually receive correspondence. I am now out of touch but a summons within 14 days sounds very quick to me so don't get your hopes up if this takes longer.
It's always possible you will receive a caution letter from the police. In my day, literally millions were sent for traffic offences. I don't know the present score because fixed penalty notices have spread so much.
Otherwise it would normally be a summons. This tells you what you are being prosecuted for and the time, date place of the hearing. Read everything very carefully.
Anybody prosecuted is entitled to disclosure of the evidence against them. In a straightforward case like this, that is unlikely to consist of anything more than the statement of the police officer. This may give some clue as to why this was not dealt with by a fixed penalty.
Incidentally, the two main 'loophole' defences for traffic light offences are either 1/ that no 'Notice of Intended Prosecution' was given. (The NIP can be given verbally at the time or within 14 days in writing. 'You will be reported for consideration of the question... etc' You had the 'Not obliged to say anything...' mantra so I assume you got the NIP. A summons within 14 days obviates the NIP.)
2/ That the traffic lights were not 'lawfully erected.' If they were working properly, i.e. not stuck at red against you (and case law means that the court can assume they were working properly unless there is evidence that they were not) that does not leave much leeway.
The disclosure will give you some idea what you are mitigating assuming you are still admitting the offence. What you really have to be careful of is anything which might provoke 'the make an example' sentence. By this I mean that if you say you have seen plenty of others getting away with it, and if the beak has seen the same and doesn't approve, you don't want to be the one who gets the big fine pour encourager les autres.
In fact, except where there has been an accident with good witnesses, I think it is unusual for anybody to be prosecuted for traffic light offences. (Camera enforcement is by fixed penalty notice I believe.) Enforcement by the evidence of a witness - usually a police officer - is a bit like football offside or the old cricket 'no ball' rule. Somebody has to see two things at once, in this case the position of the vehicle and the colour of the lights, which is perfectly possible but easy to discredit in court. That is because most traffic light offences involve drivers who eat into the start of the red. It's not the same if somebody just passes through red in mid-phase.
For that reason, I've no idea of the level of fine, but apparent flagrant disobedience is not treated as a joke.
Although this sort of thing is important to the individual, magistrates' courts churn their way through loads of traffic summonses, many, perhaps most in the absence of the defendant. (They can only compel you to attend to answer a summons if they are thinking of disqualifying a driver or imposing imprisonment, - neither applicable here). If you send written mitigation, take a few minutes to decide what to write. Remember, you are the one being prosecuted. If you go in person, 'Sunday best' and it costs nothing to be respectful to the court.
Don't listen to lounge bar lawyers. If you decide you do need legal advice a solicitor is the best bet but not necessary unless you have a complicated case (and/ or lots of £££).
/anDiggerW.gif){kind=small}
cranky wrote:thirdcrank wrote:I'm also frankly amazed at some of the level of ignorance about the legal system.
You should not be amazed. You should, in fact, be quite encouraged. It means you're not in the company of retired (or active) felons. It just goes to show how few people have any actual contact with the criminal justice system and that can only be a good thing.
Either that or we're all keeping our mouths shut. As advised by my brief...
kwackers wrote:Hmmm, at what point does a bike become a roller skate (or skateboard)...
Well, a roller skate has no status in law: we just assume we must therefore be pedestrians on account of how we're not in a vehicle of any kind, and rely on the common law "right to pass and repass"
So I guess the relevant question is really "at what point does a bike cease to be a vehicle". I believe that one answer is "when it has fewer than two wheels", but I don't know what else you could change about the design to make it not-a-vehicle in law.
[ edit: that said, I believe that the body responsible for cycling events at the olympics has managed to define skateboarding as a form of cycling and thus fast-track its inclusion as an olympic sport. Whether this has any legal impact or not, I don't know, but it's a pretty wizard wheeze and us inline skaters are uniformly bitter that we didn't think of it first]
I once pleaded guilty to fare dodging, even though I was innocent the circumstances would have meant explaining in court and paying a fine (smaller back then) seemed simpler.
I also paid a parking fine after someone shuffled my motorbike onto double yellows so they could park their car. The traffic warden who issued the ticket just shrugged when I explained (he'd almost certainly seen what happened anyway), as did the railway bobby so my attitude is if you're not interested in the explanation I'm not going to put myself through the stress of a court appearance, time off work, for something I haven't done.
Perhaps I have a low sense of justice being served?
I also paid a parking fine after someone shuffled my motorbike onto double yellows so they could park their car. The traffic warden who issued the ticket just shrugged when I explained (he'd almost certainly seen what happened anyway), as did the railway bobby so my attitude is if you're not interested in the explanation I'm not going to put myself through the stress of a court appearance, time off work, for something I haven't done.
Perhaps I have a low sense of justice being served?
-
thirdcrank
- Posts: 36781
- Joined: 9 Jan 2007, 2:44pm
We do have a legal system which is in many ways absurd. It has its roots in protecting powerful people from the monarch's revenge if they got a bit too uppity. As that revenge generally involved some variation of public humiliation and dismemberment the growth of the system was probably understandable. IMO most of the talk about Magna Carta and all the rest of it is guff, even if I'm capable of quoting bits to make a point. For most of the period when these great traditions were supposed to be developing, ordinary people got pretty rough justice.
We've reached the stage where the whole procedure is cumbersome and unreliable. The need to prove 'guilt' rather than establishing the truth is IMO at the heart of it. We've pulled back from the brink of getting into the same mess as the Americans but we came pretty close when Taylor was the Lord Chief Justice.
So many lawyers - who are the ones to profit from all this - are also politicians that nothing much is likely to change. Thatcher and some of her successors have tried to starve the lawyers out by restricting legal aid and so on, but in the end it's the ordinary person in the street who suffers.
We've reached the stage where the whole procedure is cumbersome and unreliable. The need to prove 'guilt' rather than establishing the truth is IMO at the heart of it. We've pulled back from the brink of getting into the same mess as the Americans but we came pretty close when Taylor was the Lord Chief Justice.
So many lawyers - who are the ones to profit from all this - are also politicians that nothing much is likely to change. Thatcher and some of her successors have tried to starve the lawyers out by restricting legal aid and so on, but in the end it's the ordinary person in the street who suffers.
Thirdcrank, thanks for taking the time to respond in such detail. Now that I've had a few days to calm down a bit I agree that the sensible option is to admit to running the red light (by post if possible), say I won't do it again, and leave it at that, thus hopefully avoiding the 'make an example' sentence.
-
thirdcrank
- Posts: 36781
- Joined: 9 Jan 2007, 2:44pm
esme
In that case, the main point I made and I will reiterate is read everything carefully
There will be all sorts about your financial means and so on. Don't ignore it. If anything seems confusing get advice, on here if necessary or somewhere like the Citizens Advice Bureau. One reason I say this, apart from the obvious one that something important may be missed, is that I have spent long hours in court and I know that if somebody is not there, their reply (or lack of it) speaks for them. I'm sure that most people who get the paperweork wrong do so through ignorance, literacy issues etc., but it can come across as indifference / disrespect.
In that case, the main point I made and I will reiterate is read everything carefully
There will be all sorts about your financial means and so on. Don't ignore it. If anything seems confusing get advice, on here if necessary or somewhere like the Citizens Advice Bureau. One reason I say this, apart from the obvious one that something important may be missed, is that I have spent long hours in court and I know that if somebody is not there, their reply (or lack of it) speaks for them. I'm sure that most people who get the paperweork wrong do so through ignorance, literacy issues etc., but it can come across as indifference / disrespect.