[jambutty]

I appreciate the point about people complaining about being ruled from Brussels and then running to the European Courts when they don’t like the English laws but that pre-supposes that it is the same people doing the running as well as complaining about Europe. There will be some, of course, but in the main the anti-Europeans are just that, totally.

However unless I have misread some posts the readers are missing the point. That being that a witness to a criminal act is liable to a fine if they do not give evidence against the criminal or they can choose to admit to the crime and take the rap. In this case the crime being that a driver of your car exceeded the speed limit.

Maybe my opening post wasn’t clear enough?

Now entrenched in ‘Motoring Law’ it establishes a precedent and could be enshrined in criminal law in the future.

Let’s just recap on what happens. You lend your car to someone and they get flashed for exceeding the speed limit. Although I understand that there are some cameras that can see and photograph the face of the driver, in the main the only evidence is the vehicle number plate, the model and make of vehicle and the time and place. You, as the registered owner, get ‘that’ letter. You have a choice, take the rap yourself or snitch on the driver. If you don’t want to do either you can get fined up to £1,000 and also get 3 points on your license.

Now apply that same principle to other criminal activities. You witness a crime but the criminal threatens your life if you snitch before running off. The police suspect that you witnessed the crime and you are told to testify or face a fine. Now I know that is not exactly the same but the principle still holds good.

I accept that in theory it is every person’s duty to report a crime when they see it being perpetrated but it is not an enforced duty. It is purely voluntary. There is nothing in English Law that states you MUST report a crime and MUST give evidence against the criminal if you witness a crime and subsequently you cannot be fined or imprisoned for not doing so.

Then, as someone has already mentioned there could be a moral dilemma.

You already have 9 points on your license and you lend your car to your son or daughter because his/her car is in the garage for its regular service and MOT, so that s/he can go to work some 40 miles away. Let’s just stick with daughter – it’s less complicated.

Your daughter also has 9 points on her license and part of the journey to and from work is a nice long country road that has a 50 mph speed limit on it. If your daughter sticks to the speed limit it frustrates some of the other drivers behind and they start to take chances in overtaking. So she goes with the flow, which to me is the sensible thing to do if good driving conditions prevail.

The local police know that on any day they can get plenty of drivers for speeding on that stretch of road set up a mobile camera and sure enough she and the rest get clocked.

If she takes the rap she loses her license and unless she can get a lift the job has to go as well. So your dilemma is – do you take the rap and lose your license or do your shop your daughter and she suffers the ensuing consequences. That’s a rhetorical question and I do not expect anyone to answer it. I know one thing, I wouldn’t like to be faced with that dilemma.

The point I am making it is unfair to put people into that situation and to do so hammers yet another nail into the civil liberties coffin.

During the five years that I have lived in my present flat the police have knocked on my door on four occasions to ask if I saw or heard anything happening at the school across the road from me or during an incident outside our block. On each occasion I hadn’t because my living/sitting room is at the back and with the TV or radio on I am not aware of anything happening on the road out front. However on each occasion I could see from the copper’s face that my denial was met with mistrust. Indeed on one notable occasion the cop hinted very strongly that I should have heard or seen something.

If those two motorists at the European Court lose their case then it is a definite possibility that some time in the future we could be forced to give evidence or risk being fined for not doing so. And this raises another point. No one but me KNOWS what I saw or heard. The best that they can do is assume that I might have seen or heard something. So to fine me for not giving evidence they would have to prove that I had that information. But that ‘motoring law’ allows a person to be fined on an assumption not evidence and that drives a coach and horses through English Law.

Let me just put another scenario forward. You lend your car to your son and daughter in law, both of whom are qualified drivers but their car is not available to them. Your daughter in law is driving as you wave them off to collect her mother from the airport. During the journey they get flashed by a speed camera. You have no idea who was driving at the time of the incident because either of them could have been driving. You truthfully state that you do not know who was driving and your son and daughter in law say, “it wasn’t me, it was him/her.” Not having any evidence that a particular person was driving you get the fine because you didn’t say who was driving.

Fair???