UK Man Convicted Of A Crime For Letting Drivers Know They Should Slow Down To Avoid Speed Camera
from the don't-the-police-want-people-to-slow-down? dept
Last year, we discussed the growing backlash against speed cameras in the UK. However, many are still in place, and one man has now been convicted of a crime and fined for simply flashing his brights to warn oncoming motorists of a speed camera (found via Glyn Moody). The details suggest police clearly abusing their authority.After flashing his brights at oncoming cars, to warn them of a mobile speed camera he had spotted, Michael Thompson was pulled over. This, alone, seems pretty questionable. After all, shouldn't the purpose of speed cameras be to get people to slow down? Thompson's actions probably did succeed in getting more people to slow down. But, of course, in many cases the real reason for speed cameras is money, so interfering with that is seen as a problem. Now, it does appear that, after being pulled over, Thompson got a bit belligerent and questioned the fairness of being pulled over. The officer responded by saying he was going to let Thompson off with a warning, but had changed his mind -- and was going to charge him with "perverting the course of justice." It seems ridiculous to think that warning people they should obey the law is "perverting the course of justice."
In the end he was not actually charged with "perverting the course of justice," but instead with "willfully obstructing a police officer in the course of their duties," which is a criminal offense. Lawyer David Allen Green, who wrote the article I link to above, points out that warning other motorists to obey the speed limit is hardly obstructing a police officer:
Preventing police officers from seeking to impose as much criminal liability as they possibly can is not the same as "wilfully obstructing a police officer in the course of their duties". Police officers' ability to arrest and charge is not an end in itself, but just one means of serving the wider interests of justice and the public. The criminal justice system does not exist solely for the satisfaction of a police officer wanting to coerce another human being.And yet, the court found Thompson guilty, and fined him £175, along with having to pay £250 in "costs" and an extra £15 "victim surcharge." He sure does seem like a victim, alright. UK government prosecutors have defended their pushing forward with the case, still claiming that the police officer's job was obstructed, but failing to explain how. They also told Green that the UK highway code forbids flashing of headlights for any purpose other than letting people know where you are. However, Green points out that this still doesn't support the lawsuit and the fine, since a violation of the highway code is not a criminal offense.
It seems like the police and the UK prosecutors simply decided that getting people to actually follow the speed limit gets in the way of police making money -- and thus, it's an obstruction.
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Filed Under: crime, speed cameras, uk
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In reality, you're right. The idea is exclusively to catch people, not to get them to slow down. That way they get money out of it.
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The "stated" theory as I understand it is that by trapping unsuspecting people who are speeding, you can intimidate people into following the speed limit all the time (or at least more often) for fear of being caught. Whether or not it is a good theory is debatable and changing the whole plan is certainly an option but since that is the theory they are currently going with, it is easy to see how publishing the location of all the traps would be counterproductive.
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Ah, but that is a different thing. That would support the overall goal.
It is the difference between telling people to drive slowly *before* they ever start driving too fast, and telling them to slow down *after* they started. As you say, the second seems rather at odds with real aim -- since it depends on the law *already* having been broken.
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Now with huge cut backs across the country, you can bet your arse they'll be enforcing speeding fines even more rigidly.
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B/ Money: You can have the appearance of "Doing Something" for a very cheap amount as the things actually generate revenue as opposed to the alternative of police enforcement which costs money and lots of it.
C/ When have you known any government back down from a policy if it'll make them look stupid doing so (oh.. it turns out we were wrong .. sorry! Yeah right) D/ Money 2: Like the US the UK has a great tradition of bri... er.. lobbying politicians and the opponents don't have that kind of money to spend.
E/ It fits nicely with the government's overall cars BAD, car drivers SATAN incarnate policy meaning they can justify massive taxes on cars and fuel (you don't think it's the oil companies that get the £5+ a gallon for petrol do you?) and milk drivers as a cash cow - "green" was a godsend for that too.
In actual fact there have been a number of campaigns to change speed limits but for the above reasons they rarely get anywhere.
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Can't get much more open than that...
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I think things would make sense to realize that the constitution is actually written for the wealthy few (the capitalists) not the working/share holding majority which we're just designed to be their slaves all along.
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You are a sad, sad person if you believe that. You need to actually read and understand the U.S. Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights.
Failing that, you can go back to your miserable existence, continuing to believe it's everyone elses fault but your own that you're not happy.
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> as if it's some holy document.
Nothing holy about it. It is, however, the supreme law of the United States and embodies principles of freedom and limited government that are important to a lot of people.
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The UK is a shithole
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Re: The UK is a shithole
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Obey the Speed Limit Signs
Obey the Speed Limit and you don't have to worry about these Speed Cameras. While the police overstepped, they were right in arresting him because he was helping other motorists violate the law.
Simple Fact? Obey the Speed Limits, people. They are there for a reason. When you obey the speed limits, you don't get tickets.
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Re: Obey the Speed Limit Signs
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Re: Obey the Speed Limit Signs
70mph speed limit has been around for ages and stopping distances of cars has improved vastly on new cars since the introduction of this speed limit. Why should it not be increased?
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Arrest him, he's obstructing justice.
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Re: Obey the Speed Limit Signs
> these Speed Cameras.
You might have a point if municipalities didn't routinely set limits artificially low in order to maximize revenue.
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Re: Obey the Speed Limit Signs
If you want a well reasoned opinion why backed by research and statistics try here and here
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Fact is, the driver got caught violating the law. If a driver doesn't want to get a speeding ticket, then obey the speed limit.
If he's warning other drivers, he's helping them by telling them where the camera is so they can "speed" drive their cars around these "speed cameras."
Obey the traffic laws and you won't get ticketed.
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Nobody in this country can say "I follow the law" because nobody know all the laws that exist and it is doubtful that anybody can follow all the laws.
So with that said I can say with great confidence that you are a breaking law citizen and you should be arrested too.
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Their use of the cameras are disingenous.
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Re: Their use of the cameras are disingenous.
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Re: Re: Their use of the cameras are disingenous.
What you just said was completely unrealistic. You just made up a worst case scenario that would never happen, to counter my completely valid point. Stopping cops from being sneaking about catching speeders to raise revenue instead of upholding the public safety is not going to result in carnage. That's completely illogical. You did read the part about preventing speeding and accidents did you not? If you can get people to not speed and drive more carefully, then we wouldn't have a problem would we? I'd very much like to get people to stop being reckless on the road than to punish them after they already did something wrong, such as hitting a pedestrian. What good is that ticket now? Prevention is always the best safety measure.
If you can't raise enough money to pay the officers you have, then you need to raise property taxes. "OMG! You can't raise taxes! That's socialism!" Yeah, whatever. If you want the police to keep the citizens safe, then you need to pay taxes to support them. Fines should not be a means to gain revenue, it's to serve as a punishment for violators of the law and pay for the costs of dealing with your violation. When you put fines up as your source of income, what do you think will happen? You'll start to look for ways to make it easier to charge fines. That means you'll start making unjust laws just to charge fines or set up traps to catch people violating the law when you could have use an ounce of prevention instead.
Do you honestly think it's better to ticket people than to use social engineering to get them to not commit the crime to begin with? Let's face it, speeding is illegal almost anywhere civilized. There are so many people who speed. Obviously, ticketing the handful that do get caught is not sufficient to deter deviant behavior. Plainly marked speed cameras (fake or real) on all roads might make people think twice about speeding.
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Re: Re: Re: Their use of the cameras are disingenous.
I DO believe prevention is better than revenue generation. That was my (badly stated) point: prevention of blood and property damage doesn't seem the priority with these cameras when they're also revenue generators.
Sorry it took so long to come back for response.
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Should he have been pulled over? I don't think so.
Just goes to show that you shouldn't be a jerk. Here in NJ depending on where he was pulled over, he would have been tuned up.
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If he had not been belligerent, maybe he wouldn't have been arrested or charged with this new offense and fined on top of that.
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"Justice" for a new era.
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Well, the Brits are "subjects" of the Crown, rather than citizens, after all. A subject is the property of his/her government, therefore he should indeed have known his place.
No?
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Speed cameras are not proactive - they are retroactive
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Whoa, whoa, whoa....
Wait...the "little mikee" guy got pulled over?
I request that Techdirt retract this article and immediately give the arresting office our "Hero Of The Year" award....
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Re: Whoa, whoa, whoa....
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Re: Whoa, whoa, whoa....
I was somewhat impressed that Michael Thompson would flash people in order to warn them of impending doom. All this time I considered him to be kind of a prude and therefore would never expose himself in public. I wonder, was it the full monty of just a moon.
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/sarcasm, of course
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The flasher was obstructing this travesty of justice.
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; )
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Clarifying attitudes
Some feel that any speed limits are bogus because "I know I can drive safely at 90 as long as it is away from pedestrians". Unfortunately people's self image as a driver is not always correlated with their actual ability.
Some feel there are plenty of incidences of needlessly low speed limits. (There's a patch of 50mph freeway near Cardiff, UK, where I live. Why not 70 ? Are they just persecuting motorists ? Turns out they accidentally built central crash barriers with too low a crash speed rating and now have to upgrade the whole stretch. Stupid, but not sinister).
If you've just left a freeway at 70, 30 feels like you could get out and walk. Without some external persuasion, motorist simply go too fast in these situations. And they are not the best judges of what too fast is.
Often residents have a big say in what the speed limits are. They campaign for camera in and upstream of their distructs. I live on a bend everyone goes round too fast. People frequently lose control and mount the kerb, (luckily not while there was a pedestrian standing there, so far). Once a car misjudged it so badly they smashed through a 5 ft tall brick wall into our garden, throwing bricks onto the kids trampoline 20 yards away.
If they put a speed camera 100 yards from my house I'd applaud it. But 99% of local drivers would rail against it and call it a revenue raising device.
If you are one who rails against cameras, ask youself this. If you had a switch you could flick in your car that would automatically ensure your car never exceeded the current speed limit, would you flick it on ?
What if you had a transparent process for questioning suspect speed limits (and all the "bogus" ones were revised). Would you flick the switch then ?
What if your insurance would be half price if you had the switch locked in place ?
(Personally I think such a switch would be dangerous - Some people would drive everywhere with their foot to the floor and blame the state when they rolled the car at a tight corner. But it's interesting to explore how people think.)
I never cease to be amazed how people claim cameras trapped or tricked them. Speed limits are explicit and extremely easy to obey. Noone should need telling cameras are there.
There is an argument for keeping their location secret (so people don't exhibit dangerous braking behaviour in their immediate vicinity) but publishing data about how many people were caught in this general area.
I've been caught myself. No doubt I thought "bastards !" at the time but I was banged to rights and if I can't take responsibility for my own actions then cameras are are the least of my worries in life.
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What if...
Now what if he flashed his brights to warn on-coming drivers that an animal was spotted? Wouldn't you want to know that there may be a large animal ahead of you that could lead to a potentially hazardous situation? It jumps out in front of you, you slam brakes and swerve to avoid it, but plow into the person next to you sending them into on-coming traffic...
I don't know about other places, but in Northern Maine, flashing on-coming traffic to warn/alert them to something up ahead of them is considered a courtesy. This is just another example of abuse of "laws" by someone with "power"...
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Money makers
I'm in the UK and am absolutely convinced that these reviled camera beasties are nothing more than revenue generators. The official term for them is "safety cameras". All local people know where they are and those that are so inclined speed right up to them, brake hard through the measuring zone and then hurtle off again. What good is that, I ask you? The mobile units have their favourite spots that are also well-known locally. There is a fixed camera near me that was installed on a main road, along with a 50 mph limit and a huge, absolutely hideous footbridge - built for horses as well, you know, with enormous, incredibly long pedestrian ramps either side. A waste of money, completely out of character for the rural area and I've rarely seen anybody actually use it. Not sure how planning permission was granted for such a nasty structure. The crossing should have been made an underground route in my opinion. It was built as a knee-jerk reaction after an elderly lady and her little grand-daughter were killed in a road accident nearby. No blame attached to the driver at all. Understand they just walked out in front of the vehicle, which was shown to have been doing less than the national speed limit. However, mobile speed traps are also frequently used there, usually stationed a couple of hundred yards after the beginning of the limit sign in a convenient lay-by, which is on an up-hill stretch of this major dual-carriageway. Note this is effectively obstructing the lay-by, which is supposed to be used as short-term parking for ordinary motorists and truck drivers to take a break and stretch their legs, etc. I have also seen a mobile unit placed just over the brow of the hill (so it's not immediately obvious), literally yards before the sign that shows the end of the limit. There happens to be a show-ground located further on. Sheer coincidence, of course, that a mobile unit often appears when a small event (that doesn't clog up the road, traffic-wise) is being staged and stays there all day. Obviously out to catch all the strangers in the area. All to do with money and little to do with safety, I feel.
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Plus Hate Speech is illegal in the EU and the UK. They passed those laws to stop the crazy preachers from spreading their vile. I possibly could be arrested for calling them pigs.
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It seems absurd, but there is a subtlety that can justify it.
Imagine you saw someone smash a window and start stealing something, and you warned them that a police officer was approaching so that they could avoid being caught. It seems reasonable that you have obstructed the police officer in carrying out their justice-enforcing activities: the crime was already happening, and you ensured it would not be prevented.
The article states that the person here "saw that many oncoming cars seemed to be speeding": just as the above example, the crime was already in progress.
It used to be possible to get devices to warn of speed-traps, and these were at the time questioned as to their legality. But they would fall on the other side of this distinction: they are telling you to not speed *before* you have started to. It is the difference between inducing people to obey the law, and helping a crime go undetected.
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Re: It seems absurd, but there is a subtlety that can justify it.
Not sure what device you are referring to, but that is not how radar detectors in N.A. work. They work whether you are speeding or not.
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Speeders are arseholes
You hardly need a study to show that speeding costs lives, it's completely obvious. It may not be the cause but it'll multiply the damage to the car's occupants, fatally.
Speed camera's are hidden for a reason. Foolish speeders have to know that nowhere is safe to speed, if they're so selfish to only think about the money and not the danger they are putting themselves and others in.
I could not disagree more with Mr Masnick here, he should stick to electronic intellectual property discussion..
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Re: Speeders are arseholes
Or, if you think the limits posted on US freeways and UK motorways are hard limits based on lots of research as to what is safe, then why is it that German autobahns, which have large stretches with NO limit are safer than US freeways?
And if the limits are hard and completely safe for that road, does that suddenly mean that it's safe to drive at 70mph on a motorway in fog? Or 30mph down a town road with a street market? Or 60Mph down a country road with sheep standing on the verge/
Safety depends on judgement you puritanical idiot. A good driver will slow down to ANTICIPATE the conditions ahead on the road and no matter what the speed limit is. Yes you wouldn't want to look at a study because you might find that speed is is the cause in less than 10% of fatal accidents and less than 1% of accidents overall. Speed is a fctor of any kind in somewhere between 11 and 15% of accidents. One study listed the top 7 contributory factors in accidents as:
Inattention: 25.8%
Failure to judge other person's path or speed: 22.6%
Looked but did not see: 19.7%
Behaviour: careless/thoughtless/reckless: 18.4%
Failed to look: 16.3%
Lack of judgement of own path: 13.7%
Excessive speed: 12.5%
And bear in mind "excessive speed" is NOT "speeding". The definition of excessive speed is "driving too fast for the conditions" and includes the completely legal scenarios I described above. Statistics suggest less than 1/10th of THOSE were actually over the speed limit.
Don't you think it's about time goverments stopped being so rabid about speed and people stopped swallowing it? It's important but there are many things far more important when it comes to road safety. A focus on speed alone and especialy speed limits is getting close to re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic for effectiveness. I want REAL road safety not the government assuring me that "everything possible is being done" while raking in a fortune.
Note, ALL of the factors above are susceptible to TRAINING, so why don't goverments focus more on improved driver training rather than enforcing ONE of the symptoms of poor training? The only answer I can think of is because that COSTS money as opposed to MAKING it. That would suggest it's not about "safety" at all.
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Some authorities claim the meters make sure parking spaces are vacated and the good samaritans are interfering.
In many municipalities however, there is no penalty for feeding your own meter - just other's.
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