TOM UTLEY: I've driven nearly every day for 53 years and never had a prang or speeding ticket. But I stand before you as a reckless boy racer clocked at... 26mph!

28/06/2024

One of my favourite books as I was growing up was A. P. Herbert's hilarious collection of Punch columns, Uncommon Law (first published 1935), which was later adapted as the hit BBC comedy series, Misleading Cases. Alas, they don't make 'em like that any more.

As some readers may recall, the book and the series chronicled the exploits of one Albert Haddock, who was forever going to court to uphold his rights under obscure or quirky points of law.

A typical example: in Port To Port, the Mall has flooded, and our litigious hero is rowing up it in a small boat on the right-hand side, forcing off the road a motorist who is driving towards him while keeping to the left.

In the subsequent court case, Haddock argues that since the road was under water at the time, the law of the sea applied, rather than the Highway Code (in maritime law, ships have to pass 'port-to-port', which means they have to keep to the right, whereas in Britain, of course, cars have to drive on the left). You get the gist.

Well, I spent much of this week practising my Albert Haddock act, striding up and down the kitchen, rehearsing eloquent speeches I planned to deliver to the Bench in defence of my civil liberties as a free-born Englishman, and railing against what I believed was an unlawfully issued speeding ticket.

Tom Utley says 'it will take some convincing that 20mph zones, policed by cameras, are anything other than a scheme to screw yet more money out of motorists'

That was until yesterday morning, when my plans were dashed by an email from the police, which put me straight on a minor point of fact.

Now I suppose I'll just have to plead guilty and accept whatever sentence the court may decide to impose for this, my first speeding offence in my 53 years on Britain's roads.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. My tale of woe begins at 13:12 hrs on May 20, when the hire car I was driving (my own car was out of action, since a burglar had stolen our car keys) was apparently clocked by a speed camera at 26mph in a 20mph zone near my home in South London.

I hang my head in shame, standing before you as an even more reckless boy-racer than the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was caught in 2022 driving at a hair-raising 25mph in a 20mph zone near Lambeth Palace.

Anyway, the first I knew of my offence was on Wednesday last week, almost a month after it was apparently committed, when the car hire firm sent me a copy of a Notice of Intended Prosecution (NIP), which it had received from the police.

The firm had named me as the driver responsible, and I was told to await an NIP made out in my name, which the police would send to my address in due course (I'm still waiting for it; I blame the useless Royal Mail).

With a heavy heart, I coughed up the £60 'admin fee' demanded by the car hire firm, and resigned myself to pleading guilty to the charge when the notice arrived, thereby possibly blotting my hitherto clean licence.

That was until a bloke in the pub told me of various legal loopholes open to defendants of a Haddock-like turn of mind. Among these was the requirement that an NIP had to be issued to the registered keeper of the offending vehicle within 14 days of an alleged offence.

I thought he was having me on until I checked on the internet. Sure enough, Section 1 of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 does, indeed, stipulate a time limit of 14 days in which a notice of offences recorded by enforcement cameras must be issued. Any later than that, and the ticket is invalid.

So I looked again at the NIP sent to the car hire firm, which I assumed to be the registered keeper of the vehicle — and I saw that it was dated June 13, a full 24 days after the alleged offence. Bingo! Clearly, the ticket had been issued unlawfully!

I wrote to the police pointing this out, and began rehearsing those speeches to the Bench, in case they failed to drop the charge.

Scroll forward to yesterday morning, when the police finally got back to me, informing me that the registered owner of the vehicle was not, in fact, the car hire firm, but a leasing company, which had been sent the original NIP on May 29, only nine days after the offence. This made the ticket perfectly lawful.

Damnation! My career as Albert Haddock had ended even before it had begun.

Now the best I can hope for is that the court, in its mercy, will sentence me to attend a Speed Awareness Course (cost: £80 to £100), which would apparently allow me to escape without points on my licence or a fine.

If that happens, I will, of course, approach the course with an open mind, and I'll hope to emerge from it better informed about the dangers of exceeding the speed limit.

But I have to say that after 53 accident-free years of experience behind the wheel, driving almost every day of my life, I will take some convincing that 20mph zones, policed by cameras, are anything other than a scheme to screw yet more money out of motorists.

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God knows, I can imagine some circumstances in which driving even at 21mph could be dangerous. But on a clear road, in broad daylight, without a pedestrian or animal in sight? As I say, I will need convincing.

In my experience, creeping along at 20mph can itself be dangerous. Try it, if you doubt me — and see if you can concentrate as impatient drivers behind blare on their horns and try to overtake at perilous moments.

To illustrate the point, a friend tells me that on the very day after his daughter passed her test, she was tootling along obediently at 20mph, in one of these wretched zones, when she was pulled over by the police — for driving too slowly!

The same friend reports that a cabbie told him he was stung with a ticket for driving at 24mph on Tower Bridge... at 3am, when there was nobody around.

That's the trouble with speed cameras. They take no account of road conditions and, of course, they have absolutely zero common sense.

Meanwhile, what is certainly true is that 20mph limits are as deeply unpopular as Ultra Low (and Low) Emissions Zones and Low Traffic Neighbourhoods. Just ask the Labour-run Welsh government, which was forced into a humiliating U‑turn by a furious public backlash after it imposed 20mph zones throughout the principality.

It is also undeniable that many thousands of motorists break such limits every day. Indeed, show me a driver who swears that he never has, and I'll show you either a saint or a liar — or someone who lives in a freer country than ours.

Believe me, what's more, this persecution of motorists will become even more oppressive if the election goes as expected, and Labour's class warriors sweep to power next week.

Don't say you haven't been warned, because the signs are there every time a Shadow Cabinet member or a Labour councillor draws a breath.

And isn't there one final objection to this confetti of speeding tickets, showered on motorists driving at more than a crawl in these accursed zones? Don't they criminalise countless natural friends of the police, among whom I number myself, while tying up endless hours spent by the Force in processing forms and dealing with would-be Haddocks like me?

Do they really have no more pressing things to do — such as, dare I say it, solving my burglary?