Lynda La Plante - Speeding Fines

[bad company]

it seems that Lynda has picked up 3 speeding fines in 5 months, all at under 30 mph in 20 limits. Apparently she also spent 25 minutes trying to speak with an advisor only to find that they didn’t speak English. Anyway she’s taking on the Met Police in Court.

Sorry about the paywall though there are ways around.

http://digitaleditions.telegraph.co.uk/data/2490/r...

[CanAm]

bad company said:

it seems that Lynda has picked up 3 speeding fines in 5 months, all at under 30 mph in 20 limits. Apparently she also spent 25 minutes trying to speak with an advisor only to find that they didn t speak English. Anyway she's taking on the Met Police in Court.

Sorry about the paywall though there are ways around.

http://digitaleditions.telegraph.co.uk/data/2490/r...

And a Met Police worker was quoted as saying that, if convicted, "LaPlante would have at least 12 penalty points on her licence, putting her in line for an automatic 6 month disqualification." Surely just 3 points each, unless she has 'previous', which is perhaps why she wasn't offered (or was she?) a SAC.

Time to call celebrity lawyer Nick Freeman ("Mr Loophole").

[PorkInsider]

I haven't read the Telegraph article but I saw a bit about this elsewhere and she was apparently saying the signs are confusing?

Time to give up her licence, I think.

[Yellow Lizud]

" La Plante pleaded guilty and wrote: “I wish to dispute this offence on the basis that the signage warning motorists of a 20mph speed limit is only 10-15 paces from a 30mph zone, "

But isn't that how ALL 20mph zones work!!!
I've never seen a 29mph zone or a 28...27...etc

One second you can do 30, the next second (the thickness of the signpost) you can only do 20. That's life!

I think she should stick to writing crime dramas rather than trying to dramatise her own crime.

[bad company]

I don’t know the roads concerned but I have some sympathy with her as I also find keeping to 20 limits difficult on some roads. None of those speeds would have been a problem before the 20 mph bandwagon got rolling.

Having said that I still can’t see how her defence can succeed.

[Durzel]

Her defence seems quite hopeless, but IANAL.

She doesn t dispute the limit or her awareness of it, only the fairness (which isn t a concept in prosecution) of situating what is presumably a static camera so close to the start of the limit, and also that it s downhill.

Whilst most people probably haven t decelerated to 20mph at the start of the limit, everyone knows you re supposed to and if it s a road you re travelling regularly enough to be acutely aware of a static camera, or even a regularly witnessed mobile one, then you do in fact have to get down to 20mph at the signs. Every single time.

[paul_c123]

3 times in the same general area? If anything, this reinforces that speeding fines are a "stupid tax".