Safe Speed: Sleepwalking into serious offences
Thursday, 09, Nov 2006 12:00
A story in the news today concerns driving licence 'points sharing'. This is where someone gets a speeding ticket but falsely claims that someone else was driving, perhaps because they are nearing the automatic ban at 12 licence points.
Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign
(www.safespeed.org.uk) said: "Millions of needless speeding fines are putting reasonable people under unreasonable pressure."
"Although the likelihood of conviction remains very low, people are sleepwalking into serious criminal offences. There are legal methods to fight that speeding ticket - see for example the Pepipoo web site (www.pepipoo.com) where thousands of motorists have accumulated considerable legal expertise."
Paul Smith warns: "People are sleepwalking into serious criminal offences because they think 'it's only a speeding ticket'. But if you lie on those official forms, or give false evidence in court you commit an offence that, on conviction, may carry a custodial sentence."
"The chance of being caught remains very low, however. As far as I can tell, fewer than 100 people have been convicted of 'points sharing' offences, while the Times newspaper last year suggested that some 700,000 people had already shared points."
IMPORTANT: "If you do not know who the driver was at the time of an alleged offence the law says that you cannot be found guilty of the offence of failing to identify the driver. (RTOA 1988 S172(4)). Quite frequently the authorities put individuals under pressure to 'name the driver' without revealing the limited nature of the legal requirement."
"Turning good people into criminals is just one nasty side effect of the speed camera programme - a programme that has actually made road safety far worse than it would otherwise have been. The solution that we all urgently need is for the failed speed camera programme to be scrapped, and for Department for Transport to admit its fatal mistake."
Notes for editors
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We have no connection to Pepipoo, except that they have become friends of ours.
About Safe Speed
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The Safe Speed road safety campaign is primarily the work of engineer-turned road safety analyst Paul Smith.
Since setting up Safe Speed in 2001, Paul Smith, 51, an advanced motorist and road safety enthusiast, and a professional engineer of 25 years UK experience, has carried out over 10,000 hours working on the campaign with well over 5,000 of those hours researching the overall effects of speed camera policy on UK road safety. In addition to those 10,000 hours, Paul has funded to campaign to the tune of £10,000.
We believe that this is more work in more detail than anything carried out by any other organisation. Paul's surprising conclusion is that overall speed cameras make our roads more dangerous. Paul has identified and reported a number of major flaws and false assumptions in the claims made for speed cameras, and the whole "speed kills" system of road safety.
The inescapable conclusion is that we should urgently return to the excellent road safety policies that gave us in the UK the safest roads in the World in the first place. Far from saving lives, speed cameras are a dangerous distraction.
Safe Speed does not campaign against speed limits or appropriate enforcement of motoring laws, but argues vigorously that automated speed enforcement is neither safe nor appropriate.
Safe Speed is very slimly funded by voluntary contributions to the web site.
We are urgently seeking improved funding.
The Safe Speed web site contains more than 350,000 words of road safety analysis and information. We are seeking publishers for 'the book of the web site'.
It has turned out to be quite an amazing story and there are opportunities for journalists and broadcasters to explore how all this came about, what it means, and where road safety has gone so badly wrong.
Contact Safe Speed - We have moved
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description: Safe Speed road safety campaign
web: http://www.safespeed.org.uk
email: psmith@safespeed.org.uk
telephone: > 01862 893030
ISDN Audio: 01862 894772
mobile: 07799 045553 < Primary number
Location: North Scotland
We are always available for further comment on your road safety story.
To be added to our PR distribution list send an email to psmith@safespeed.org.uk or visit our press pages at:
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/prindex.html
Recent press releases (since November 2004) are automatically and immediately uploaded to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SafeSpeedPR
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PAUL SMITH AVAILABLE FOR INTERVIEW
(back in the North Scotland office at about noon today) =============================================================