Monday, August 19, 2013

Déjà Vu Yet Again

Governments of all parties and of none habitually announce new initiatives (often described as 'Crackdowns') that have little or nothing new about them but are intended to garner a few headlines; this technique is especially common in the Silly Season when grown-up journalists go on holiday and the kids are left in charge of the newsroom.

And so it is with the recent fuss about so-called Middle Lane Hoggers, tailgaters and suchlike motorway nuisances. Driving without due consideration is already illegal, as, of course, is careless driving. The change is to make Due Care a fixed penalty offence, which takes those picky old courts out of the process of fining drivers. Now the thing about Due Care is that the wide variation in the seriousness of bad driving has led to courts having the option of imposing between three and nine points or a disqualification, which is just the sort of thing that a bench of justices is very good at assessing. That judgement will now be made by a police officer, but here is the best bit :- the number of police patrols continues to decline, so that very few of the tickets are likely to be issued.

In the last few days I have travelled several hundred miles on motorways, and apart from 90 boring minutes sat on the M4 with the engine switched off while a fiercely burning lorry was extinguished I saw nary a patrol car, so I could have hogged the middle lane with impunity.  


11 comments:

  1. Look out for "A Short Sharp Shock" turning up from the juridical graveyard and you and your colleagues having administer it -again...until it is reburied - again.

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  2. The relevant clauses from the Road Traffic Act are:

    (1) If a person drives a mechanically propelled vehicle on a road or other public place without due care and attention, or without reasonable consideration for other persons using the road or place, he is guilty of an offence.

    (2) A person is to be regarded as driving without due care and attention if (and only if) the way he drives falls below what would be expected of a competent and careful driver.

    (3) A person is to be regarded as driving without reasonable consideration for other persons only if those persons are inconvenienced by his driving.

    The first thing to note is that clause (1) is somewhat irrelevant because the two subsequent clauses redefine its terms. Notably "attention" does not figure in the actual definition of the offence, only in its name.

    There are effectively two different offences here: not driving one would expect a careful and competent driver to drive, and unreasonably inconveniencing another road user. Both are extremely subjective.

    The "competent" part of the first offence will generally be irrelevant. Unless a driver actually crashes or is manifestly out of control of their vehicle competence or skill-level cannot be determined. The offence hinges on "careful".

    Tailgating clearly inconveniences no one, so it's a "careful" offence if anything. It could be regarded as not "careful" since it increases the likelihood of an accident. That said, it does not always increase the likelihood of an accident. The tailgater may have other lanes he could move to to avoid an accident. Tailgating is never going to be good driving but absent a specific offence of "being too close to the car in front" it is subjective as to whether an offence is committed.

    Middle lane hogging might inconvenience someone but if lane 3 is free then arguably not. Unfortunately even if there is an inconvenienced road user, he is not likely to hang around to write a witness statement. And the inconvenience has to be unreasonable. Every driver inconveniences every other driver merely by being there. Presumably this is reasonable inconvenience by virtue of being mutual. And inconvenience also depends on the circumstances of the allegedly inconvenienced road user - if he is in no hurry to be anywhere he is not inconvenienced.

    The police seem to take the view that if you could move from lane 2 to lane 1 without adjusting your speed then you are committing an offence if you remain in lane 2. However the letter of the law does not support this.

    It seems to me that anyone pulled by the cops and offered an FPN should pull out their copy of the Road Traffic Act (with recent amendments) and go through it word by word with the police to see what exactly they are accusing you of.

    If enough of you do this I should be able to sail past without having to worry about being a few seconds longer in the middle lane than I ought to have been.

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  3. Tail- gateing is dangerous and should be stamped on.But so called lane hogging is very different and subjective. Generally we should all be in the inside land unless over taking, but in reality that is not possible. I have always been impressed with how in Germany everyone tries to do just that- no wonder you can zip about at speed.

    I'd rather they concentrated on those using mobiles phones, which is much more dangerous.

    It's all hot air.

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  4. "Tailgating clearly inconveniences no one". It can worry the driver ahead, and pressurise him/her to speed up.

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  5. "In the last few days I have travelled several hundred miles on motorways, and apart from 90 boring minutes sat on the M4 with the engine switched off while a fiercely burning lorry was extinguished I saw nary a patrol car, so I could have hogged the middle lane with impunity."
    Unless you encountered an unmarked police car.

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  6. And perhaps those CCTV cameras now so prevalent on gantries...

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  7. Ah! but if you have a camera in you car, then you have the choice of either 'burning' it onto a dvd and handing it to your local plod (if you can find one that's open of course!) or you can put them up on youtube along with reg.no, location. time and date so the whole world can see what idiots they are. No doubt plod will see it there and decide to do something about it, they have in the past!!!!!
    And before anyone asks.......has it happened to me......NO.

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  8. “Tailgating clearly inconveniences no one, so it's a "careful" offence if anything. It could be regarded as not "careful" since it increases the likelihood of an accident. That said, it does not always increase the likelihood of an accident. The tailgater may have other lanes he could move to avoid an accident”

    This is a senseless comment. Most reasonably minded, competent and careful drivers, recognise tailgating as a highly dangerous and inconsiderate activity which inconveniences the driver in front as they are pressured into making manoeuvres which they probably would not otherwise do.

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  9. I can hardly say I noticed any change in the standard driving practice of people sitting in the middle and outside lanes as I came along a certain motorway yesterday. Everyone had obviously heard the Government announcement and taken it for the bland bit of unenforceable PR claptrap it was.

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  11. Think whenever some halfwit or other issues a new 'law' or 'guidelines' on a current law they should be asked a simple question "but who is responsible for the enforcement of this, and how will this be achieved?" followed by a further question "how will the success of this change be measured? and will it be withdrawn if it does not work?".

    For bonus points they could even be given the chance to answer "and how will you inform people of how this change is to be interpreted?", this bit being important since apparently ignorance is no excuse (unless you are a home office minister employing an illegal immigrant as a cleaner or some such), and so many of these laws/changes are made without anyone actually being informed or a way for the general public to know about them.

    Even know I know of this one, I'm not sure what is classed as "hogging" the middle lane?

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Posts are pre-moderated. Please bear with us if this takes a little time, but the number of bores and obsessives was getting out of hand, as were the fake comments advertising rubbish.