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The Government's new initiative allowing police to issue fixed penalty tickets for careless driving could increase the number of court cases rather than decrease them.
Firstly who will be issuing the tickets? - Highly trained traffic police perhaps?
If yes then there won't be many tickets issued, because there aren't many traffic police around.
And if it isn't the trafficpPolice, then surely if you receive a ticket you will get a smart lawyer who will get you off. Now I am not a lawyer, but even I can see that if a police officer can't prove he/she is an expert in judging driving standards then the charge of careless driving can't be proved.
Imagine the following scenario:
Driver A is issued with a fixed penalty ticket for careless driving, because the police officer deems an overtaking manoeuvre is careless driving. The police officer has many years in the service but has never served as a traffic officer.
Driver A does not accept the ticket and opts to attend court. In his defence he says "I pulled out to overtake the HGV and as soon as I had moved across the centre line, I noticed a car emerging, from a hidden junction ahead. The junction had no warning signs to indicate its location. I was unable to abort the overtake as the HGV braked hard to allow the car to emerge from the junction, so I continued with the manoeuvre and used my horn to warn the emerging car driver of my presence."
The police officer deemed this manoeuvre as careless driving and understood the use of the horn in this instance as a form of intimidation or aggression.
Driver A lawyer would be able to argue that it wasn't careless driving and in fact his client 'Driver A' was a victim of circumstance; first the lack of warning signs, inappropriate actions of the HGV driver and his client did his best to warn the emerging car driver of his presence.
The question is, if when the first 20 or 30 tickets under this new law are issued drivers opt for a court appearance, and the majority have the charge dismissed, the Police will soon stop issuing fixed penalty tickets.
This is just another example of a Government not thinking things through and going for the big news story again at the cost of road safety.
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