Nuxx:89115e3b-052f-4c02-874b-df85602f5248@y18g2000pre.googlegroups.com

Path: number1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!postnews.google.com!y18g2000pre.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Message-ID: <89115e3b-052f-4c02-874b-df85602f5248@y18g2000pre.googlegroups.com> From: Nuxx Bar  Newsgroups: uk.rec.cycling Subject: Re: Red Lights & Emergency Vehicles Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:11:08 -0700 (PDT) References: <3c5cbe50-7f63-43a7-ba4b-149cf13e442f@e39g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>   <143a8d0f-fd70-43c7-8cf2-3d6644b3e68f@k13g2000hse.googlegroups.com>  Lines: 47 Organization: http://groups.google.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 88.105.150.187 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: posting.google.com 1208376668 18674 127.0.0.1 (16 Apr 2008 20:11:08 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 20:11:08 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: y18g2000pre.googlegroups.com; posting-host=88.105.150.187; posting-account=7_6kYAkAAABD6HrjM0VxehwvZOKMxm4g User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9b5) Gecko/2008032620 Firefox/3.0b5,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Bytes: 3814 Xref: perfectly-safe.chapmancentral.co.uk uk.rec.cycling:647630

On Apr 16, 2:28=A0pm, Ben C  wrote: > On 2008-04-16, Nuxx Bar  wrote: > > > On Apr 16, 5:25=A0am, David Damerell  > > wrote: > >> Quoting =A0Ben C =A0: > > >> >On 2008-04-15, Nuxx Bar  wrote: > >> >>"Letting an emergency vehicle through" is not a valid defence to a > >> >>charge of jumping a red light when driving. > >> >>Is this fair? > [...] > > (Of course, this has been the case for a long time, but it's only a > > widespread problem now that we have red light cameras, since any > > police officer would use their discretion (something that the motorist- > > haters don't like) and not give a ticket in such a situation.) > > If you get a ticket you don't have to pay the fixed penalty, there is > always an option to go to court. There you will get the opportunity to > explain what happened to a magistrate who is one of your peers and > supposed to be a reasonable person.

They have no option but to convict. Making way for an emergency vehicle is not a defence, end of story. They can be as sympathetic as they like, it makes no difference.

> It isn't really the job of police officers to decide who gets penalized > and who doesn't and nor should it be. A conscientious police officer is > basically a human camera.

How many police officers have you come across who agree with that? Because I've come across plenty who don't, and none who do. In effect, an officer who pulled someone over for jumping a red light to make way for an emergency vehicle *would* decide if they got penalised, because if they charged the driver (not that they would), the driver would definitely get convicted (see above), assuming that the paperwork etc was in order.

We haven't quite reached the stage where discretion is dead, I'm pleased to say. Do you really think that cameras would be so hated if they did the same job as a conscientious police officer? I think you've been listening to a few too many motorist-hating trolls saying things like "Anti-camera people just want to be able to do whatever they like and they don't want any enforcement of any description". The trolls would love everyone who ever got caught speeding to be automatically punished, but luckily police officers (conscientious ones at least) think differently.