These get sent by snailmail to the 'owner'[simplification] of the vehicle using a government database. The owner must then, within a deadline, say who was driving the vehicle at that date and time.
If the owner fails to say who was driving, they have committed a criminal offence, and will be fined.
It looks like Tesla has in a bunch of cases not declared the driver on time. I'm willing to bet that's due to them just being slack with records in some cases - for example loaner cars, offences which occurred on the same day as a sale from person A to person B, etc.
18 offences across the whole fleet of >100k cars isn't much really, when you consider ~30% of motorists receive a fine in any given year.
If for some reason the letter isn't delivered (or indeed sent), the original offence is scrapped and a new offence issued for Failure to provide information.
Frustratingly, there is no obligation on the Police to provide proof of posting, and per the law, it is deemed received once sent.
Try proving you didn't receive something...
The US has their Service of process which is commonly seen in movies, which is often made into a joke in comedies.
A much older system is the one where by law people had to put a notice in the news paper, sometimes multiple notices, and then that was considered enough proof of delivering the notice.
It would be an interesting conversation to philosophy how a future system should be designed that can't be refused, where delivery to the recipient is guarantied, and where the sender and the delivery service must produce proof of their parts.
For a long while if you were changing lanes while speeding through the camera it couldn't capture the plate. Again the government didn't care. Of course now resolved with the archaic future technology we have now.
The reason for this "ludicrous" procedure is that the police can identify the owner of the car (based on the license plate), but not the driver, so the owner has to say who was driving. And all of this has to be done in a way that will hold up in court, therefore snail mail. The same procedure exists in Germany (of course, the bureaucracy here has its ludicrous sides too) and I bet in other countries as well.
Reminds me of the fines for using public transport without a ticket in Germany: they're not called fines either, but "erhöhtes Beförderungsentgelt" ("increased transportation fee"). I'm sure there's a very good reason for this name too...
The downside is that unlike fines which scale by income here – the term is "päiväsakko" or "day fine", a fine unit that scales with net income – the fees are fixed sums, so unless a person with high income really does something heinous with their car, they're not as likely to get 200k€ (really) speeding tickets.
So now if you're rich you can speed all you want and pay a relatively small fee for it, as long as you're not doing 200km/h in a school zone or something like that
This needs to change. Snail mail is no longer reliable. Letters often get delayed by weeks or go missing altogether, but the law still assumes that justice is being done by it being sufficient to assume that a letter that was posted has been received within a few days. It's no longer true.
And now you would never bother laying fiber to a speed camera when you can just put a SIM card in the thing.
For those that don't use the UK postal service, Royal Mail has a recorded delivery option that can show that, at least something, mostly likely what was sent, was delivered to the address.
The issue here is that the UK government has given itself a pass that, 'trust us, we sent it' is fair and legal, while at the same time refusing to allow not the government to use the same argument.
People tend to get upset when laws and legal defenses are asymmetric, doubly so when its skewed to protect the bureaucracy at the expense of the citizen.
Just for reference the Royal Mail uses complaints to track losses, in the year 2017-2018, Royal Mail received 250,000 complaints for lost items, out of around 6 billion items processed [0]. Of course that requires that the sender somehow knows that the item was lost, so losses are likely significantly higher.
Without a recorded delivery, 'I never received what you sent' should absolutely be a valid defense. Although, 'Trust me I sent it', should not be a valid argument for either side, unless they can show that the item was send and received.
[0] https://descrier.co.uk/business/how-frequently-is-post-lost-...
Really? Or have you (or someone else) just divided the number of fines by the number of motorists?
https://www.racfoundation.org/media-centre/drivers-receiving...
I suspect the division method.
I think automated enforcement of minor driving infractions is a good thing. More efficient use of government resources. Incentivizes drivers to follow the rules of the road.
There's no reason motorists shouldn't be able to go almost any speed on motorways, conditions permitting. Germany's system is fairly sensible in this regard and many American states have one or two good laws that correlate well with norms and should be adopted elsewhere.
If the rules and laws actually reflected norms of behavior there would be more appetite for enforcement.
> automated enforcement of minor driving infractions
Would not have prevented this:
> someone speeding through a red light
It's the think-of-the-children fallacy
Anyone that doesn't care about the fine (perhaps in a stolen car) may still do it, but they'd do it regardless.
Economist brain.
The problem is very simple: driving tests aren't hard enough, too many people have driving licences, and we don't retest people. In addition, enforcement of people driving without a licence is completely pathetic (as anyone who has driven in the UK can attest to, the stuff I have seen over the past few years is insane...obviously there is an underlying cause but if you see a clapped out hatchback, Just Eats bag in the front seat, P plates on the car, you know to steer well clear...as if the multiple dents on the car already didn't give it away).
I agree the driving test is too easy (though several orders of magnitude more difficult than in the US states I've had to do one in), and there is too little enforcement of otherwise dangerous behaviour.
It makes no sense at all. The problem in policy is generally that you have people talking past each other: speed limits are effective for people who are generally going to comply with them anyway, they are not intended to stop serious accidents. The majority of accidents are not caused by "accidents" (as most people on here would think them), they are caused by people who drive recklessly a huge proportion of the time and eventually have an accident.
Again, the solution to this is simple: do not give these people driving licences. In the UK, you can kill someone with your car driving recklessly and be out of jail in 18 months. And I don't think people realise this is true, or that this won't have been the first "near miss" for these people...it will have been months and years of doing stuff that will kill someone, and eventually killing them. How are they supposed to kill people with cars if they can't own a car?
The UK is not alone in using traffic cameras to enforce speed restrictions. There was a funny example in Germany where their automated cameras blur the face of any passenger... leaving them to be unable to see who was driving a UK left-hand-drive car with Animal from the Muppets in their passenger seat: https://boingboing.net/2008/10/27/german-traffic-cops.html
Scotland has seen a drastic reduction in police numbers (unfortunately for you, not a Tory government :( oh well) despite record government funding levels. Labour's plan appears to be attempting the same trick with consolidation of forces, which should allow massive reductions in numbers. In Scotland, there are some days when there is one traffic car covering an area the size of England, and the expected time to respond to car accidents is usually 6-12 hours (this includes situations with serious injuries).
There is a lot more going on here than funding because government has never had more resources. The Tories, to their credit, actually put money in but (even then) the results were no better.
Also, in response to original comment, I am not sure why you think the Police are competent. Much of the policing function of a few decades ago not lies with private companies. Police numbers are generally high but the level of output has never been lower. You are seeing this in multiple areas of the public sector, public-sector output hasn't increased since 1997 whilst govt spending to GDP has basically doubled. The police have massive structural issues with their remit in the UK because of demographic change, and it is generally seen as a career for people of low ability resulting in fairly weak performance. It doesn't feel complex but than you realise that people don't understand that a politician looking to get elected might say it is even simpler. Does anyone actually work at a company where more spending increases results? I have never seen this to be the case. If anything, more spending seems to lead worse results.
Scotland is smaller than England, so this makes no sense.
Furthermore, anyone who drives regularly in Scotland knows this to be completely false - there are plenty of traffic cops around (sometimes incognito too), and they are sometimes even seen waiting in rural and semi-rural areas.
I live in a rural area, I have done so for two/three decades. When I moved here, you very often saw police doing speed checks because I live in an affluent area and the police would come out if you asked the right people. I don't think I have seen that for fifteen years. Again though, the data is that the number is way down since consolidation...which was the point and stated aim of the policy.
Hilarious to see pearl-clutching when people point out the SNP has been doing this after complaining about the Tories. This is why the UK is so shit, reality doesn't matter, just politics.
ONS numbers say >20,000 fewer frontline officers from 2010-2018, which is pretty much in line with what the union said. See the graph here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-workforce-en...
> In Scotland, there are some days when there is one traffic car covering an area the size of England
Are you high, or did an AI write this?
Area of Scotland: 80,231 km^2
Area of England: 132,932 km^2
So on some days, in Scotland, there is one traffic car covering an area that is larger than Scotland. OK, where's it patrolling? Or are you saying Police Scotland only sends out 60% of one car to cover the whole country?
Lol, quite the pedant. To be clear though, yes when they are short-staffed they only have one car actually on patrol for the whole country (iirc, the actual full staffing policy overnights is two cars...which you can see has been covered by the media).
Traffic was consolidated into Police Scotland so there is only one police force, and so there aren't local forces patrolling a local area. I believe the total number of traffic police is something like 400 now (which is mostly not people on patrol) and so, overnight around holidays, the policy is to have two cars which turns into less than that on some occasions.
Now, whether they’re that effective at reducing speeding is a bigger question. Because people just slam the brakes for the 100 feet around the camera and then resume speeding.
People just want to drive irresponsibly and they will invent any reason to justify why they're the victim, actually.
It's quite a different story in other countries at least in terms of visibility!
Besides, money is a big factor here. If you want to make it cost-effective for someone to physically flag down speeders and ticket them, you'll have to raise the ticket fines significantly. And (sensibly) the revenue goes to HMT and not the individual police forces, avoiding America's perverse incentives, so you'd have to raise the police budget as a separate line item.
(pursuing speeders is right out - police chases are extremely discouraged for obvious safety reasons)
And besides, as other commenters pointed out, even if things get lost in the mail or the government otherwise drops the ball, they'll still consider that your fault.
There is no reason to insist this must be face to face thing.
"Tesla has been convicted at least 18 times"
So, Tesla are 1 of 4000. I feel the article is missing a bigger story here to make it about Tesla.
> Tesla offers its vehicles on long-term leases, and in such a scenario the leasing company is typically the registered keeper of the car.
> Drivers of rented or company cars caught speeding have to be named before they can face prosecution and companies which fail to return paperwork to police can be prosecuted instead.
> Tesla offers its vehicles on long-term leases, and in such a scenario the leasing company is typically the registered keeper of the car.
> Drivers of rented or company cars caught speeding have to be named before they can face prosecution and companies which fail to return paperwork to police can be prosecuted instead.
And before people say "think of the children" and "I learned something I should have already known on the course" - Speed limits are increasingly being changed for political reasons: Safety has nothing to do with it, therefore, these arguments no longer stand (my local authority is determined to make cars as slow as buses, and is more than happy to "set aside" any suggestions that they do not do this).
Local councils are willing to admit they are directly harming the interests of people peacefully going about their legitimate business, in order to try to manipulate their behaviour.
It's all such zero sum thinking. Rather than reducing congestion (and thus pollution) by making the roads more efficient, they prefer to make them LESS efficient (with LTNs, modal filters, speed bumps, chicanes, one-way etc) in the hope that this will discourage traffic. All it does is move the congestion from one place to another, and make the situation worse overall.
The reality of this story is nothing as nefarious or significant as the headline suggests. It's simply that Tesla has absorbed liability from a handful of people caught speeding in loaned vehicles from Tesla centres in the UK.
Furthermore, it seems that the UK bureacracy may be at fault, as Tesla staff tried to enter the plea online but "encountered a technical issue on the Online Plea Service portal".
Original quote:
"We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women"
Manipulated BBC version of quote:
"We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, and I'll be there with you, and we fight. We fight like hell"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjPlfUt4S9U
If you dislike Trump, you should be angry at the BBC for lending legitimacy to Trump's "fake news" narrative.
And yes, he was responsibke for the violent attempt to overthrow the election. And yes he is both criminal amd failed businessman.
Interesting talking point, but I guess the far right talking points are gaining traction on HN as well.
And I didn't realise my original comment was flagged (!). Thanks to whoever vouched for it.
Quite sinister how people misuse the flagging tool on this site, to try to hide any opinions they find personally inconvenient
> Tesla offers its vehicles on long-term leases, and in such a scenario the leasing company is typically the registered keeper of the car.
> Drivers of rented or company cars caught speeding have to be named before they can face prosecution and companies which fail to return paperwork to police can be prosecuted instead.
A company leases the car, and that car may then be available to multiple employees. The police need the company to confirm which employee was driving the vehicle at the time of the office.
Exactly the same is true if you own the car outright. You as the owner of the vehicle will be contacted and asked to provide the details of the person who was driving at the time.
In the UK, if a driver is caught speeding, they'll (generally) also get points on their license and after accumulating 12 points, they'll (generally) lose their license for a while. Points decay on some frequency which I forget.
Anyway, what's to stop someone from driving a company car and then just paying the fines via the company and refusing the name the driver?
In Germany when that happens and the company cannot (or does not want to) name the driver... they may get ordered by the authority to keep a logbook. And such an order shows up at any police checkpoint - and if the cops run the plate, they will ask for the logbook. And check the logbook. And if the logbook isn't up to speed... that means some hefty fines.
This is also why I tolerate the widespread use of CCTV cameras, but strongly oppose CCTV networks. Closed-circuit television needs to be closed-circuit, with friction of access requests proportionate to the amount of footage requested, or it goes from an accountability tool to a mass surveillance tool.
The registration is _literally something issued by the DVLA_, so of course government agencies have access to it. The problem in this specific case is where the registration information is not enough to indicate the likely driver.