Ticket from Police only on word of (an)other motorist(s)....

[Mario149]

....in New Zealand. Annoying as it's my first ever one (bar thinly disguised roadside extortion in ex USSR Republics) in 15 years of driving.

SHORT STORY giving as best I can an objective description:

Motorist dialled a Police hotline (555) to report me as an allegedly driving badly/dangerously in a general manner. Police pull me over 15 mins later to ask me about my driving. Another motorist stops 2 mins later as well having seen me stopped and alleges a specific instance of overtaking when not legal to do so. I also give my side of the story contravening that needless to say. 10 mins later I get ticket for unsafe overtaking based on the alleged instance described by the second driver. No Police officers witnessed any of the driving involved.

Question 1: In NZ, is it legal for a traffic officer to issue a ticket based on second hand "civvy" information?
Question 2 (for the BiB here, mainly out of curiosity of UK law): based on the above scenario would a UK police officer be able to issue a ticket based on second hand "civvy" info? i.e. not seeing it themselves and it wasn't seen by another officer?

FULL STORY:

So, it turns out NZ drivers reeeeally don't like being overtaken, especially in a Hyundai stebox. We've actually noticed that the general standard of road awareness appears to be somewhat different to the UK, but that's another thread.

Driving along and nutter driver objects to being passed at the end of the passing lane - admittedly, in hindsight I would not have passed him as it was quite tight at the end, in the UK I would have expected to be beeped at and had a policeman seen it I would have expected to be pulled over and scolded for bad judgement - nutter proceeds to illuminate full beams to blind me and drive 2 foot off our rear bumper for about 10km....in line of traffic....at 50mph....on a wet mountain road....with only one hand on the wheel as he's busy shaking his fist and gesturing to pull over with the other. I have to slow down and put a bigger gap between me and the car in front in order to prevent nutter from running into me should front car brake hard. Apparently nutter calls the police when he stops in his town saying I've been driving dangerously or similar.

Next driver (which we actually encountered initially 15km before the above and watched tailgate another SUV down a hill and overtake at 30km/h+ over the speed limit into a corner) seems to have objected to us keeping up with his shiny new V8 SUV on the windy roads after his previously mentioned overtake, although to be fair that is speculation. He lets us past then proceeds to follow us dropping back a little. 20 mins later to put distance between us and nutter mentioned initially (this is the only instance I can think of that he may possibly be referring to when he speaks to police officer after as it was our only other overtake), we overtake a car and campervan in front (no cutting of yellow lines etc, def legal).

Policeman 1 stops us about 10 mins later and about 3 mins later policeman 2 arrives. We give our story to policeman 1 including SUV man's "interesting" overtake and nutter's tailgating etc. Irate SUV man gives his to policeman 1 and 2 a couple of mins later when he stops after seeing us stopped. Police officer 2 almost giggling at him for whatever reason. After which, Policeman 1 drives off saying policeman 2 will deal with us. I'm thinking we're about to get a scolding at worst imagining police probably think its a minor barney between drivers. Instead, we get issued a ticket for $150 from policeman 2 for "unsafe passing" based purely on SUV driver's word for his at best exaggerated, at worst lie, of a story concerning our overtake of the campervan. Other drivers get zilch. All this despite quotes from the police officers saying, maybe not word for word, but almost literally: "good you didn't stop as there would have been trouble" (referring to angry nutter driver tailgating us waving at us to pull over) and "we're issuing a ticket to keep the peace so it doesn't create road rage in the town"....

It all seems a bit bizarre to me to say the least. Luckily it's only £75 or so based on the exchange rate, but I'm more annoyed at the principle of it than anything else, bit of a downer to our holiday And it kinda worries me that if I wanted to get someone stopped and fined with demerit points taken from their licence here (a bit like our points system), it would only take my word against them apparently.

[Mario149]

WinstonWolf said:

Two witnesses to questionable overtakes, you're FUBAR.

If this was some sort of trial and they we're telling the truth, then I'd be inclined to agree. however my issue is that a ticket was issued to me at the road on just hearsay. In the first instance I'd like to determine whether that is actually legal or not in NZ.

[Mario149]

calibrax said:

Surely you have a choice to accept the ticket or go to court? With two separate witnesses, logic says to take the ticket. I'd say the coppers have done you a favour.

My understanding having spoken to the policeman issuing the ticket was that I had to take the ticket but could contest t in court.

But that is by the by as I'm leaving in a week and am not going to hang around for a court date for the sake of £75.

My question on the legality of issuing a ticket for a specific infraction based on what a random individual Joe Bloggs said when he pulled up to chat, still stands....and if not legal, whether I can get it rescinded without going to court on the basis that tickets cannot be issued in those circumstances to start with.

[Mario149]

V8forweekends said:

When I was on hols in NZ I noticed a few things are different so I adjusted my driving style a bit so as to fit in.

I tend to take the view that however odd it may seem, it's best not to stand out in foreign countries.

You've admitted to one questionable overtake, but you're miffed to have been ticketed on the one that was OK....

Totally agree about standing out in foreign countries. Tbf, we've done 4.5k miles trouble free here so maybe I've just been unlucky.

Yup, will hold my hands up to the overtake, like I said if I could do it again I wouldn't. But that said, while not my finest hour on the road representing Britain, in the UK it would have resulted in a toot of the horn given when someone merges badly rather than 10km of frankly terrifying tailgating.

As for which overtake I was ticketed for, that's exactly my point, in theory it could have been completely legal and safe (and actually was) yet 1 individual can effectively spin a yarn to a Policeman resulting in someone being several $ lighter for having done nothing.

[Mario149]

mph1977 said:

it's not hearsay , the police have reports from two independent witnesses.

plese return when you understand what hearsay is .

Thanks. Here:

noun
1.
information received from other people which cannot be substantiated; rumour

Only one witness (SUV man) alleged the specific illegal overtake, tailgate man made a general complaint (having completed the most dangerous piece of extended driving I think I might have ever seen which would be funny if it wasn't horrific). 2 separate issues therefore unsubstantiated. If I rang the local police and complained you were driving badly, then 15 mins later you ran a light that had just turned red (but actually hadn't), a different member of the public saw it and rang the police (but Joe Public either lies or makes a genuine mistake) again but there was no other corroboration, police then stopped you 5 mins later 5 miles away and fined you and gave you 3 points for something they didn't even see, would you accept that as fair? I'm guessing probably not. Whether it's legal or not do do so (in NZ and in the UK) is also another interesting question

[Mario149]

swisstoni said:

Shame you had the £75 on you really.

Haven't paid yet, have 28 days etc

[Mario149]

carinaman said:

That may be easier in Italy.

But then I noticed that the OP is called Mario.

I think I'll stop wondering if the OP was this chap, as it's probably not:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/richard-bruns...

[Mario149]

Dan M said:

Many NZ drivers will dawdle along single carriageway roads at 70kph then when a nice wide section with a passing lane arrives they speed up to 100, only to drop down to 70 again.

I have seen this soooo much in 4.5k miles here. It seems to happen most when the passing lane is going uphill which means you can almost never overtake if you're in some knackered japbox 1.1 auto or something. Our car genuinely struggles to break the speed limit on the flat.

[Mario149]

TVRnutcase said:

IF 2 are prepared to do formal written statements - then - yes they can (and will) issue the ticket - BUT - you have the option of going to court, and the case is heard. SO you could plead Not Guilty - and hope the two complainents will not make statements.

1) How formal does the written statement have to be? I can't say what nutter man did but it is conceivable provided a written statement, but SUV man just stood at the side of the road for 5 mins talking to the cops before driving off.
2) Is issuing the ticket absolutely conditional on having the written statements first?

[Mario149]

Little bit of an update:

My gf and I went to a community law centre (bit like CAB here I think) to get a bit of free legal advice from an actual lawyer person. She confirmed that it is legal for the police in NZ to issue a ticket based on 2nd hand info on an alleged offence they didn't witness. Not that it's much use to us as we're leaving tomorrow, but she also said that if we were to challenge it, it's almost certain that the police would "cave" at the last minute as it's not in their interest to try and push through the dodgy ones as they have to disclose all notes, get a written statement from the complainant etc etc.

All I can really say is that I'm glad at least that our traffic policing system doesn't (appear) to work like that and I guess we'll have to chalk this one up to bad luck.

[Mario149]

Having completed over 5k miles in 7 weeks here in NZ, a few thoughts on driving here:

1) apologies to any resident Kiwis on PH, but the standard here really is quite low. A lot of it is due to foreign tourists ogling things and not paying attention I'm willing to bet, but ref the locals I've never seen so many people
a) completely oblivious to what other vehicles are doing around them (as opposed to say Italy where people seem to be acutely aware of every car on the road but just not actually give a sh*t). Part of me wonders if it's because the speed limits are so strict i.e. people just switch off if they're under the limit as they assume they can do no wrong.
b) being *very* aggressive towards other drivers for little or no reason (forget our incident, we actually saw cars repeatedly sideswiping each other in Whangerei in a built up area when one didn't want the other to merge in front of him and wouldn't let him in despite the other vehicle not having anywhere to go).

2) Policing of roads: there is a complete obsession here with speed limits, and I mean complete, as if it would single handedly cure all the road problems. Apparently it's a real political thing and tickets for speeding are handed out like confetti, with towns like Invercargill actually having quotas of issued tickets that need to be met as the fines are used to help fund the police. If the cops here spent half as much time driving around in unmarked cars stopping people doing daft things as they actually do sitting by the side of a completely straight bit of road in a marked car waiting to catch someone 2.5mph over the posted limit (yup, you'll get a ticket for that), I'm pretty sure things would be a lot safer. I would estimate that based in miles travelled, police cars by the side of the road with cameras are about 5x more prevalent in NZ compared to the UK.

Overall, I've actually found driving in NZ pretty stressful and really quite dangerous (due to other drivers, roads are generally all right) in places. Believe it or not, I'm actually looking forward to driving in the traffic crammed UK again. We may not be perfect, but at least our driving muppetry (and almost more importantly one's reaction to it) doesn't seem quite so extreme and we appear to have traffic police that do their job more intelligently and dare I say fairly.

Edited by Mario149 on Sunday 27th April 04:31

Edited by Mario149 on Sunday 27th April 05:09