Speeding Drivers let off by Loophole
The Manchester Evening News last week highlighted the problem Greater Manchester Police are having prosecuting people for failing to provide driver details.
When a car passes through a speed camera over the speed limit it triggers a Notice of Intended Prosecution being sent to the registered keeper of a vehicle. That asks the registered keeper to provide details of who was driving at the material time. If the registered keeper does not provide details of who was driving the registered keeper will be prosecuted for an entirely separate offence irrespective of the speeding of failing to provide driver details. This must be done within six months of the original speeding offence as the offence is time barred in a Magistrates’ Court.
Greater Manchester Police recently found themselves beyond the six month time limit for prosecuting people and have had to withdraw over 300 cases.
This was widely reported in the press last week.
The only thing that bothers me about this is when these issues are highlighted all it serves to do is get the police to get their act in order and tighten up the possible defences for subsequent clients. In my opinion it is much better to just keep winning the cases on the basis that the Court is time barred from prosecuting rather than highlighting it in the paper because from now on police will start to serve the summons within the timescale and more people will lose out as a result of this.
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