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Monday 19 October 2015

IAM support subjective fixed penalty prosecution.

In this Derby Telegraph story There have been nearly 1000 careless driving ticket 'convictions' in Derbys since the subjective careless driving became a fixed penalty offence. No less than 17000 in England & Wales.

Can anyone explain how, if the driving wasn't careless before the FP, how does FP suddenly make it so? It doesn't. All it does is hand a blank cheque to police at the expense of justice.

We objected to fixed penalty, for the first time in its history, for being used for offences of subjective opinion. Prior to that, it was only used for absolute actions: Parked on a yellow line, stationary in a yellow box, speeding, driving through a red light, dropping rubbish, not clearing up doggy do doos and so forth. It was never intended for subjective opinion as that is all that careless driving is. Now, just on the untested opinion of police, people are accepting guilt for careless driving without a trial. Of course they are being coerced to accept the tickets by threat of a larger penalty and a ban for insisting on their right to trial, and of course the offer of the profitable and costly courses to avoid prosecution too. See the case we made out at the time & A profiteer's charter

In this story, they are talking of 'tailgating' and lane discipline. but not only are they totally subjective too, they are not offences in their own right. It's either careless driving or not because that is the offence on the ticket. Pet driver hates, like these, were only used with the media to get careless driving turned into a fixed penalty offence.

What is astounding is that the IAM, are supporting this totally anti driver move that allows for mere subjective opinion to become absolute with no trial and also do not seem to know that there are no such offences as 'tailgating' and 'lane hogging' simply because they are so subjective they cannot be defined. 

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