Advice on speeding; which driver?
 

My wife and her sister, complete with their 3 kids, recently went on holiday to their Dad’s place in Yorkshire. The journey was several hundred miles long and took 6 hrs. They regularly stopped to tend to the children. Now my wife has received a letter from Cumbria police saying they have evidence that her car was been driven at 59 MPH in a 50 MPH limit set in place at roadwork’s somewhere and as such she has the opportunity to settle for 3 points and the standard 60 quid fine. The thing is the two sisters don’t have a clue who was driving and in fact don’t even know where Cumbria is! All they know is they were heading down to and onto the M6 to a particular junction and then heading towards Skipton, etc. This has been exacerbated as they were away for over a week and really don’t have a clue who would have been behind the wheel as during the journey they stopped 4 or 5 times and changed drivers at each stop. What does one do in this situation, take the 3 points, toss a coin, etc or what?

I'd explain that to them and ask for the Photographic proof, then you can decide who was driving ;)

if you go that route you may waver the quick settle :( I would just toss a coin for the pionts and split the cost.


IMHO

Tony

Plenty of examples of people getting off as they genuinely dont know who was driving.
Ask for photographic evidence. It probably wont identify who was the driver, so then you go back and forth with the correspondance stating you are not failing to identify- but cannot identify. If you dont just cave in and one has to take the points, then eventually they may drop the case as they know they wont win.
Run a search- dozens of threads on this, some successful, some not so.

or
Put both names down...... two people cant be convicted for the same offence....... ;) and you cant be convicted for failing to identify either ;)

*nb- im not a legal bod. pure speculation

do what i did....put on the form you dont know who was driving.....they will write and say tuff luck..tell us who it was.


write back and say "im happy to give you a name, but can you first confirm that if i use a "white lie" just make this easier that i cant get in trouble for "changing my story" from the truth which is that i dont know who it was?"

they didnt want to tell me to do that it seems so i got off!

What Tiggs said!

Les

I wonder if Tigg's experience would work 100% it seems pretty fullproof to me, even if u lied about the fact that someone else was driving. This is obviously pending on if u can actually see the driver or not from their photo evidence.

if you describe this it needs to be called doing a "tiggsy".....i want fame.

If your not sure who was driving after looking at the photo's, then you would be breaking the law if one of you decided to take the hit; it probably says that on the form you have asking you to name the driver.

If you've got the NIP, nominate your wife, and when she gets her NIP, she can nominate you.

Do that just before the 28 days is up, and then she does the same. You've already wasted 2 out of the 6 months they have to sort it out.

Then somebody on here will point you at PePiPoo for further advice :)

Or you could just go the PACE letter route.....details also on PePiPoo.

PepiPoo :confused: sounds like some deviant sexsport :D

Fact. It is up to the Police to prove who was driving

If you REALLY don't know say that you don't and they HAVE to prove it. Ask for the pic and say that you may then be able to identify the driver, if you can't, say you can't.

THEY have to prove guilt, you DON'T have to prove innocence.

If you know who was driving, own up, take the hit and learn the lesson.

Thanks for the feedback so far people to what is a very real situation. They really don’t have a clue, as all the way down the road they were entertaining young kids (the youngest being only 18 mths) singing songs, playing eye spy, games etc, rather than looking for cops and speed cameras, not that there was a need too. It wasn’t a lets get there asap journey, they were having an easy run down.

From what I've heard and read, if you don't inform them who is driving, the owner of the car will be 'hit' with the points and fine.

Don't hold me to that though. There is so much speculation about speeding tickets and how/if to get off. At the end of the day, 3 points very rarely changes insurances premiums.

Darren