26 Speeding UK Cops Beat the Rap: "Sorry Guv, I Don't Remember."
Last week the credibility of the UK's anti-speeding jihad took a knock, when "Top Traffic Cop" Meredydd (Med) Hughes received a 42-day driving ban for excessive speed (90 in 60). After it was revealed that the camera-crazed cop had two previous speeding convictions, road safety groups criticized the sentence as overly-lenient. But that's nothing as compared to the brouhaha surrounding revelations by the BBC that twenty-six speeding cases against Med's fellow South Yorkshire officers were dropped on a "technicality." The Sun reports that the cops in question refused to admit they were behind the wheel. Oh, sorry, I mean they couldn't be sure IF they were in the car caught speeding. "Bob Pitt, South Yorkshire branch secretary of the Police Federation, said: 'This is not necessarily a matter of our members refusing to come forward. There will be a lot who have used a police vehicle fleetingly who didn’t realise they had gone through a speed camera and genuinely are unable to say they were the driver at the time.'" Not necessarily a matter of one rule for some, one rule for others. Got it. Of course, if a civilian is caught by a speed camera, the law forces the registered keeper to name the driver at the time of the infraction, or face a fine and imprisonment.
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Well, if the registered owner of a civilian car is charged, regardless of who's driving, then the police force itself should be given the ticket, regardless of who's driving. What the difference (aside from them being cops)?
The military has a saying for this type of behavior. "Do as I say, not as I do."
They had a better system in Alberta. They didn't care who was driving. There was a fine on the vehicles owner, and no points assigned. In Houston, they recently put up intersection cameras and the Mayor came right out and said it was a tax.
Australia is the same as UK. The registered owner of the car has to cough up a driver or take the hit for the speeding ticket themselves. The presumption is that you know who is operating your vehicle. Germany has the same. The brother of a German friend of mine has taken to wearing a blond wig to get out of a ticket that will, if applied against him, means loss of license. Not sure how that is going for him now.