UK Speed Traps

Many people are flashed these days. If you're speeding it's your own fault and you should accept the penalty. However there are often (very often) occasions where the correct regulations are not being followed and in numerous cases drivers can avoid prosecution if they know the law. In actual fact, being prepared to stand up and challenge the prosecution often simply results in the case being dropped, or in severe cases (high speeds, points already etc) this can certainly help avoid a ban. Read through the following which explains the law and the reality - it is rather long but interesting to all road users!

ACPO Guidelines on speeding, and the UK law regarding prosecution

Vehicle construction and use regulations require a vehicle speedometer accuracy to be in the range of -0->+10%. The implications are that it must never under-read - for obvious reasons - but may over-read. As the cost of manufacturing a speedometer with -0% error would be very costly they all over-read by a few percent without exception. Even if speed is measured correctly the display may not be accurate, so a speedometer error is allowed. Because of this, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) have an official formula for calculating a speeding offence. It allows a leeway of 10% plus 2mph. In reality, most speed traps are triggered at higher speeds than this because if they were set bang-on those guidelines, the sheer amount of paperwork generated would overrun the police speeding departments.

ACPO Manual bulletpoints

If you see this little icon next to something it means that the information there is extremely relevant to you if you're about to go to court. It's information from the 1999 ACPO Enforcement Technology National Guidance Manual. When you go to court, this is one of the manuscripts that could be used for reference. I believe that if the authorities wish to give you a fair crack of the whip, then it is only fair that you are well informed about the procedures and guidelines they will be referring to.

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NIP - Notice Of Intended Prosecution

This is that all important bit that we all need to know about. It pertains to the 14 day rule that surrounds service of an NIP. As with all traffic offences in the UK, an NIP is required for prosecution to proceed. If you're stopped at the scene however (for example, by a radar-gun-toting traffic policeman), then a verbal NIP is sufficient. Otherwise it must be in writing. So theoretically, if you've not heard anything after 3 weeks, you got away with it. Not, of course, that the police don't get the calculations wrong from time to time - there's no better way to knock the smile off a prosecutors face than to ask if they can prove service of an NIP. In order to remove some of the mystery from this area - or cast it into a murky grey area depending on your view of things, here are the relevant excerpts from Butterworth's Police Law (Butterworth's Law; ISBN 0406981469). Stuff not of interest to the subject of speeding has been omitted, stuff with particular relevance to NIPs and speeding has been underlined. You'll need a stiff cup of coffee and a shedload of concentration to proceed, so go ahead and make a 6-scoop cuppa and then come on back and read on:

In the case of a number of moving traffic offences, the driver, if not stopped and interviewed by the police at the time, may experience considerable difficulty in recalling the circumstances some weeks after the event. For this reason, the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988, section 1 states that, in relation to certain named offences, a person shall not be convicted unless:
he was warned at the time of the possibility of prosecution for the offence;or
he was served with a summons for the offence within 14 days of its commission;or
a notice of intended prosecution specifying the nature of the alleged offence and the time and place where it is alleged to have been committed was served within 14 days on him or the person, if any, registered as the keeper of the vehicle at the time of the commission of the offence. (In the case of dangerous or careless cycling the notice must be served on the rider.)
The requirements of section 1 are deemed to have been complied with unless and until the contrary is proved.The following offences require notice of intended prosecution in one of these forms:
Road Traffic Act 1988Section 2: Dangerous DrivingSection 3: Careless, and inconsiderate drivingSection 22: Leaving a vehicle in a dangerous positionSection 28: Dangerous cyclingSection 29: Careless, and incosiderate cyclingSection 35: Failing to conform with the indication given by a constable engaged in the regulation of trafficSection 36: Failing to comply with the indication given by a traffic sign
Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984Section 16: Exceeding temporary speed restrictions imposed under section 14Section 17(4): Exceeding speed restrictions on special roadSection 88(7): Exceeding temporary speed limit imposed by orderSection 89(1): Speeding offences generally
Aiding and abetting any of the above offences
However, such notice need not be given in relation to an offence in respect of which a full or provisional fixed penalty notice has been given or fixed under the provisions of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988.

Service of summons or notice of intended prosecution

In circumstances in which an oral notice is not given at the time, then either a summons or a written notice of intended prosecution must be served within 14 days. In reckoning a period of 14 days, the day on which the offence was committed is ignored. A notice sent by post must be despatched so that in the normal time of postal delivery it will arrive within 14 days. If it is so posted but is held up in the post and is delivered outside the 14 day period, it will be deemed to have been served in the 14 day period; consequently the driver can still be convicted.

Circumstances where non-compliance is no bar to conviction

The Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988, section 2(3) states that a failure to comply with the above requirements is no bar to conviction if the court is satisfied that the name and address of the accused or of the vehicle's registered keeper could not with reasonable diligence have been ascertained in time for service of a summons or notice, or that the accused by his own conduct contributed to the failure. This last section should be of particular interest. It means that if the police spent a month just trying to find a record of the car's owner, that month doesn't count as part of the 14 days. Similarly, if your dog tore up your mail with the NIP in it, that too is no cause to bar the conviction.Butterworth's Police Law goes on intricate detail to explain how 'at the time of the offence' means any reasonable time during or after the offence - eg. if the police had to chase you for three hours to serve notice, it's still considered to be 'at the time of the offence'.It's also a bit of a grey area when it comes to issuing an NIP after a fixed penalty notice has been given. Technically, the police should still do it. So for example, if you've been caught speeding and been served with a fixed penalty notice there and then, it tends to nullify the requirement for an NIP within 14 days. This is based on the simple fact that the police warned you there and then, and that you already have proof that you're going to get fined.
Incidentally, you should also be aware of the 'Conditional Offer of a Fixed Penalty Notice' which gets round the earlier requirement that a fixed penalty notice could only be issued at the time of the incident. The legislation for this is Section 75 of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988. This natty piece of legislation allows the police to send out fixed penalty notices for camera-detected offences (ie. GATSOs and the like).

So has that cleared it all up for all you inquisitive types? If not, print it out and read over it again. If your NIP arrived 3 months after the event, by the letter of the law, you're away scott-free.
In case one of those envelopes does flop through your letterbox, to help identification for you, here we have a genuine, bona fide, 100% original NIP with it's associated fixed penalty notice. Thanks to Richard Thomas for being such a terribly nice chap by attracting police attention and then sending me scans of the results Notice the dates on the NIP are only 7 days apart - well within the 14 day guideline. Richard was caught doing 40mph in a 30mph zone, and the very bottom line of the description shows us that he's also on film. The fixed penalty notice shows a £40 fine and 3 point endorsement on his driving license.

Low - zero tolerance. The Labour government here in the UK introduced draconian measures to try to curb speeding. It's still possible that the ACPO guidelines will be scrapped completely and be replaced by a flat 5mph limit above posted speed limits. So whether you get caught doing 36 in a 30 zone or 76 on a motorway, you're nicked (as Richard's evidence above now shows.) The police have reeled somewhat at this announcement because, by their own admission, they simply don't have enough time or resources to process all the speeders at the moment. Should the limit be dropped, they'd be inundated.
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Loophole in Section 172 Loophole, not signing the NIP form?

A loophole does appear to exist, but it is not 100% foolproof as much of the law around the loophole is somewhat cloudy and untried. Section 172 Loophole. This loophole is based upon returning your NIP paperwork unsigned. It is not as straightforward as just returning it unsigned and whilst recent court cases have clarified some parts, they have also clouded others. In summary the situation is (January 2004):
If you return your form unsigned then as you have not signed the documents its contents are not considered a "statement in writing" for the purposes of Section 12 of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988. Accordingly it is inadmissible as evidence under the Road Traffic Offenders Act.
BUT
If the form was completed by the defendant then it could amount to a confession under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE). This has been tested in a number of cases and been thrown out. In Bristol Crown court (Case # A20020257) on 13th December 2002 the case against John Pickford was dropped as the court concluded that as the form was unsigned it could not be taken as a confession as there was no evidence that the defendant had made it. Judge Ticehurst then went on to famously describe the situation as a lacuna in the law and that parliament will need to update the law.SO to you will need to get someone else to complete the form for you on your behalf. This will need to be someone who can't be called to give evidence against you - so your solicitor or your spouse. You should not give them specific advice on how the form should be completed, other than asking them to ensure the legal requirements are complied with. And don't sign the form. This approach has worked in the past in a number of high profile "celebrity" cases. The person who completes the form should write a brief note explaining that they have filled out the form on your behalf acting as your agent. They should retain this note as it will be needed by you if the case goes to court.
It is highly likely that you will then receive an aggressive letter in response to your unsigned form. It is almost certain that they will refer to a ruling in a case DPP vs Broomfield 2002 and claim that this case confirmed that you must return the form completed and signed. You could read full details of this case but the web page has strangely been removed.
I would suggest that you write back to them and point out a few key facts and ask them for clarification.
In DPP v Broomfield, Judge Wilkie concluded that a Police "Authority could include reasonable instructions as to the manner in which information was to be provided" in relation to Section 172 and that this could include written information. Judge Wilkie did not state that written information should be signed.
On the 13th December 2002 at Bristol Crown Court in the case of DPP v Pickford, Judge Ticehurst stated that a lacuna in the law does exist.
As neither Judge Wilkie or Judge Ticehurst have highlighted the law that makes it obligatory to sign the form, please can you tell me specifically where in law it states that it is obligatory to sign the form and I would of course be happy to obey.
The above text will often make the case go away as they realise that you are aware of the law. In some cases the police will continue and next threaten you with going to court. They could try a number of approaches and most of these enter into grey/untried areas of the law, so you'll need a solicitor to progress further. For example they could use Section 172 against you as it says that the registered keeper of the vehicle must provide the information. Or they could use PACE to try and make a case that your form is a confession. However if they take this route then they fall into another grey area as if they try and use PACE then they must comply with it themselves and would have needed to either cautioned you or offered a full explanation of your rights prior to being required to complete a voluntary confession. As they have not done this then you have been deprived of your rights (under PACE) and under Article 6 of the ECHR to a fair trial and that what they are trying to do would fall under the category of a malicious prosecution. We do not believe that PACE applies in Scottish law.
So in summary, if you receive a NiP
Get your legal representative or spouse to complete the form
Get them to write a dated statement confirming that they have completed the form and don't send this back with the form
Return the form unsigned
Await a response and if they refer to DPP vs Broomfield 2002 then send them a response clarifiying this situation
If they still continue with the case you will need a solicitor to support you as part of the next step will be proceeding to court and being represented. This representation will cost you a few hundred pounds and it may not work the first time around and may need to go to appeal before you get the result you are aiming for.
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UK Law, fines and points

Known officially in the UK as "EXCEEDING SPEED LIMIT", this table shows baseline penalties you can expect. It's correct as of 10th March 1999. Each case will be looked at individually, to assess factors such as time of day, road type and conditon, weather conditions etc. The fine is now also based upon the financial circumstances of the offender, leading to payment within 12 months.
Offence
Fine
Costs
Penalty Points
up to 15mph over the posted limit
£44
£30
3
16mph to 25mph over the posted limit
£45-£100
£30
4
26mph to 35mph over the posted limit
£45-£200
£30
5-6
36mph or more over the posted limit
£67-£300
£30
Ban 1 month to 12 months

Police do have the power to issue a fixed penalty of £ 40 plus 3 penalty points on the spot, but not when it comes to GATSO cameras. For those cases, they must go to court. Each offence on the same day, but at different places is counted separately. This can result in disqualification under the 'totting' procedure:Totting Procedure:If the total of penalty points reaches 12 or more within 3 years, you are known as a "Totter". You get a TT99 endorsement on your license, and get disqualified.
Endorsements remain on your licence for:
11 years from date of conviction for offences relating to drink/drugs and driving, causing death by careless driving whilst under the influence of drink/drugs and causing death by careless driving then failing to provide a specimen for analysis.
4 years from date of conviction for reckless/dangerous driving and offences resulting in disqualification.
4 years from the date of offence in all other cases
At the appropriate time, you can apply to remove your endorsement(s) from your licence by completing a D1 application form available from Post Offices.

This is a quick explanation of the 'SP' codes that will appear on your license.
SP
Code Offence
SP10
Exceeding goods vehicle speed limits
SP20
Exceeding speed limit for type of vehicle (excluding goods or passenger vehicles)
SP30
Exceeding statutory speed limit on a public road
SP40
Exceeding passenger vehicle speed limit
SP50
Exceeding speed limit on a motorway
SP60
Undefined speed limit offence
See the information on the DVLA official website for more info on points and bans.
If you think that speeding in your company car means you get away with it, then you're wrong. The NIP served will ask for an admission of being the driver at the time, of for an identification of the driver at the time. For a company to fail to identify a speeder caught on camera, they can be fined £200 plus costs and 3 penalty points on the company owner/secretary. Given that most companies care less for their employees than a dog does for it's fleas, expect them to 'fess up and name you as the driver.
If you are a visitor from outside the UK, and you think that getting caught has no effect because of that, then again, you're wrong. You will be brought before a court as soon as possible. Any amount of points will be applied to your UK driving record, not to your driving licence. However you may be banned from driving any motor vehicle in the UK as well. Any fine on a foreign visitor must be paid straight away, and the Justices will, in most circumstances keep you in jail until the fine is paid.

Temporary speed limits

You should note that exceeding a temporary speed limit is a non-endorsable offence. This means that you can only get a fine, but not have any endorsements (points) applied to your license. Of course, like most things in law, there is an exception, and in this case it's national speed limits (ie. motorways and dual carriageways). If you exceed a temporary limit on a motorway, such as in roadworks, or the controlled-speed section of the M25, then it becomes an endorsable offence, ie. points. This information is in some dispute at the moment, but came from a traffic officer undergoing basic traffic training so I have no reason to believe that it's false.

A textbook case, and how it was overturned

I had a lot of correspondance recently with a person who was absolutely convinced that the case against him was wrong. For the sake of illustration, and to save me keep having to type "the guy who was caught speeding", we'll call him Michael. All the other details are correct as per the case itself.Michael has had a clean license for over 20 years, but all that was threatened when he was allegedly caught doing 73mph in a temporary 40mph restriction on the A12 in Essex. The temporary limit was around some roadworks. Firstly, to illustrate what you'll get in the post, take a look at this - it's the original NIP to Michael, all 3 pages of it. Note: I'm sorry the files are kinda large, but if you must know this information, I've compressed them as much as possible.
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Hopping onto the Internet (and hopping mad), Michael contacted me and asked what could be done about his 'problem'. I pointed him in the direction of various parts of the Road Traffic Act, plus pointed out a couple of problems. The first of which was that the image attached to the NIP appeared to have been cropped from the original. Michael made a booking to go to the camera enforcement unit, and got to see the images taken from the camera, warts and all. Take a look: (note: I've mosaic'd the numberplate out, not the police - duh!)


Photo 1 The original photo, straight from the negative, as the camera saw it. Notice that the numberplate is unreadable (I've not mosaic'd this one). Believe me, even when you look at the original, it is not possible to make out the numberplate.




Photo 2 A cropped, zoomed section of Photo 1, enhanced with Photoshop (or similar) to adjust the light levels. Suddenly, the numberplate is plenty visible, and extremely readable.







Photo 3 Apparently a montage of photos 1 and 2, plus the second GATSO photo, and a zoom of the photo details. Here you can see the camera location (A12 roadworks), the point-measured speed (73mph), the time (22:08 and 18 seconds) and the date (27th March 1999).




Whilst at the camera unit, Michael counted the number of stripes on the road using a fixed point of reference on the vehicle, between the first and second photos. He counted 9, whilst the original examining officer had counted 11. Blowing the photo up larger confirmed a 9 count was more likely than an 11 count, although he pointed out that because of the lighting conditions and the acute angle of the photo, the secondary image was, at best, difficult to examine. Already, this started to throw doubt on the case. If the camera had truly taken the photos exactly 0.5s apart, then the difference between 11 marks and 9 marks lowered Michael's measured speed from 73mph to around 60mph (the marks are 5ft apart on the road surface). Continuing this line of investigation, Michael queried the calibration of the clock in the camera, noting that if it was even so much as one-tenth of a second out, that could lower the speed again to an altogether more reasonable 50mph - the speed Michael claims he was doing all along.

Michael then read up on GATSO location criteria from my site and latched on to the facts that they had to be placed on a straight section of road, around 400m in length, and that the "site conditions had to be suitable." In this case, the camera on the A12 was placed just on the inside of a bend in the road, and aimed straight at a bridge which contained fast moving traffic on a feeder road to the A12. He discovered that the traffic on the bridge was actually within the radar cone of the GATSO unit, and hence theorised that it was possible the camera's radar had received stray radar echos distorting the speed reading. This could be considered "not suitable" for a site location. Michael went so far as to go back

to the site and take his own photographs of it, to make the point. Take a look here. This photo was taken from the bridge with the feeder road, looking back at the site of the stationary camera. I've indicated the positions of his car, and the camera location accordingly.
This doesn't look like a 400m stretch of straight road, and remember, Michael was standing on a bridge containing fast-moving traffic to take this photo. The whole picture becomes clear in the following diagram illustrating the complete picture.



Armed with all this knowledge and information, Michael wrote back asking for evidence of calibration certificates, repair and maintenance reports, and assurances about the cameras position with respect to the feeder road. He also touched on the intricacies of stationary cosine error, and radar bounce, and asked to be sent the original negatives from the film so that he could have them independantly examined. He hammered the nail into the case by stating that it was his belief that because the photograph had to be retouched to extract his license plate from it, that was in contravention of the road traffic act pertaining to photographic evidence. It all went quiet for a long while, until finally, he received a letter in return stating that the whole case was being dropped. Michael reckons he was saved a something in the order of a £300 fine and 5 points, plus the financial penalties imposed on his insurance as a result. And all because of the effort he made. So thanks very much, Michael, for allowing me to use all the info you sent.

Anyway, this was along read! Put a post on the site if you wanna contact me for support.

PS Stop speeding - it's much easier than fighting the law.