New speeding fines from tomorrow

For rich cnuts, will weekly income include income on property, gains on assets, bank interest, shares etc? - it chuffin' better.

 

Absolutely correct JP, overall taxation levels in the UK economy are now at their highest for 30 years!

 

It's excessive whether you're rich or poor.
The self-employed will get away with it because unofficially they earn bugger all. It's the poor sods on PAYE who will cop for it once again.
Also, is it based on take home pay or pre-tax salary?
Average wage in the UK is £500 per week. Does that mean a £250 fine for doing 31 mph in a 30 limit? Scandalous if that is so .

 

I wish I could 'Like' 10 times on this post. Absolutely bang on. Variable speed limits on motorways, whilst in theory are a good idea when traffic is built up at rush hour, are applied with ridiculous officiousness. I have seen the exact same scenario hundreds of times. The M42 is notorious for it. It always leaves me feeling very unsafe when I am trying to stick to the stupidly imposed limit and traffic is thundering past me.

On the M42 I have even seen different speed limits applied to different lanes. So the guy oveetaking to my right is within the limit at 45mph while i am over the limit at 42 mph. You couldn't make it up.

 

I'm self employed. I have no pension. No paid holidays. No sick pay. Will be working till I drop probably.
Not sure where you get your facts from on this. Maybe you think all self employed people are Richard Branson or something.
And yes, I'm voting Jeremy Corbyn.

 

My work colleague has 7 kids and openly admits that the last 2 were to boost his state handouts. This means that whilst I regularly work between 10 and 12 hour days/nights plus Saturday nights, he won't work any overtime as it affects his handouts. When we are on the same job for the day and drive different vans(as I need to stay longer for the money) theoretically he could get caught doing 55mph in a 30 whilst I get caught doing 31 and the fine would be similar. How can anyone pass that off as a fair system?

 

I know lots of self-employed people including some of my own family. It is a fact that their disclosed income is far lower than their actual income. If you're self-employed and declaring everything to the tax man then you're in a small minority. There are loop-holes available to self-employed that aren't available to PAYE.

 

There is a big difference between excessive speed and speeding.

The speed limit on the m1 has been reduced to 60mph 5 hours a day, not sure to safety but to cut emissions.
If i do 61mph at 3:01pm am i more dangerous and more likely to kill someone than if drive at 70mph at 2:59pm? Of course not but in the 'speeding kills' simplified version of the truth you are saying that i am.

What is more dangerous than driving slightly over our archaic speed limits (which were implemented when cars had much worse brakes) is people who drive too fast for the conditions.

I would like to see figures for how many accidents their are where speed is logged as factor but the driver was not breaking g the limit.
In fact better than that, I'd like to see how many accidents have happened where the driver has mentioned that he or she was distracted by staring constantly at their speedo to make sure they don't creep over the limit by 1mph. I know I've nearly ran into the back of somebody on the m1 before because i was concentrating on not speeding

 

Just going back to the first couple of posts, I found this which seems to confirm that the new fines are for the cases that go to court-

New speeding fines for April 2017

An FPN for speeding will result in three points on your driving licence and a £100 fine. However, if your speed was sufficiently high to land you in court – or if you reject the FPN – the penalties could be much worse; the maximum fine for speeding is £1,000 (or £2,500 on the motorway), and your licence could be revoked.

It's worth noting that fines for speeding change on April 24, 2017 – it's a complicated system, but here's a broad outline, starting with the three main 'bands' of speeding.

Band A – This refers to the lowest level of speeding. For example, you could be driving at between 21mph and 30mph in a 20mph zone, 31mph to 40mph in a 30mph zone, or 71mph to 90mph on a 70mph road. You can expect 3 points on your licence, and a fine of around 50% of your weekly income.

Band B – This is for more serious cases of speeding. If you're in a 20mph zone and you drive at 31mph to 40mph, or in a 40mph zone at 56mph to 65mph, or up to 100mph in a 70mph, that'll be a Band B fine. That means 4 to 6 points on your licence, or disqualification for between 7 and 28 days, plus a fine of 100% of your weekly income.

Band C – This is for the most egregious speeding. If you're doing 41mph or above in a 20mph zone, 51mph or above in a 30mph zone, or above 100mph in a 70mph zone, that's a Band C fine. That means 6 points on your licence or disqualification for between 7 and 56 days, as well as a fine of 150% of your weekly income.

 

I'm a sheep. Don't speed and it won't matter...


Sent from my iPad using Barnsley FC BBS Fans Forum

 

That's unbelievable, I saw it on Facebook but didn't think it was real!

I was caught doing 100kmh in an 80 limit... It cost me 30€ and no points.

 

Is that right? - you can be fined 2.5x as much for speeding on a motorway (where the risk of accident is significantly lower, albeit often worse consequences) than on other roads?

 

In Germany they take it in to consideration what kind of road you're on, 20kmh over the limit in a town and you'll probably lose your licence and/or get a hefty fine, 20kmh over the limit on the autobahn and you pay 30€. Common sense really, isn't it?

 

In a nutshell. ALL speeding is potentially dangerous within or exceeding a speed limit. INAPPROPRIATE speed is the real problem. As stated, static cameras (and centrally controlled matrix imposed speed limits) are suspect when it comes to road safety enforcement.

Someone adhering to a fixed speed limit -say 50mph - in dense fog or icy roads is driving excessively and dangerously fast i.e. inappropriately but a standard GATSO will not trigger.

Doing 82 on a rural and deserted stretch of dual carriageway A1M on a clear dry summer night on the way back from the airport at 2:30am does get flashed by a forward facing GATSO (It was me and , yes,,it was a fair cop as regards breaking the law), but how is that more dangerous than the previous example?

The static cameras are no-where near as effective as traffic police on patrol either in marked or unmarked cars. RT police use human judgement and more often than not simple speeding used to get a warning or a telling off unless it was speeding PLUS something else-e.g. erratic driving speeding in pedestrian areas , school entrances etc. which makes it inappropraite and therefore dangerous.

They also do something that GATSOs don't They can spot something I consider to be far more dangerous than the odd few miles an hour over the fixed speed limit and that is texting and using a hand held phone. THAT, in my book is far far more of a hazard than speeding. Also more police means more drivers caught over the limit and / or under the influence of illegal substances. Again cameras don't spot that.

GATSOs may or may not be 'cash cows' but they are almost certainly self-funding at the very least, something that increased police presence on the road is not. Therefore if SAFETY really s the prime issue then we would have more police cars and unmarked police cars on the roads rather than the ever increasing cameras. Motorway variable speeds are fine in principal but even when we had the old small matrix boards they were a joke as they never switched them off when the hazard cleared. Patchy fog also drifts in and out. As someone has said, a genereal warning is fine but 20mph in clear sunshine risks a lorry up your ar*e or a hefty fine or even a ban if those matrix boards and speed limits are mandatory and subject to fines..

 

I got done many years ago at 101 on an Mway. I deserved it. Even though I was the only car on the M6 in Cumbria for miles around in both directions, it was a fair cop.
A few weeks ago I got done at 37 in a 30 in Milton Keynes. In this example, I was pretty disgusted. Common sense policing would have sufficed. The copper (who seemed to be about 17) half agreed, but said that once on his gun it was out of his hands. Him and his colleague were pulling people at 2 minute intervals. They high fived each other as they pulled the next victim after me. it was a quiet evening, on well lit roads. I was doing 37 in what I thought was a forty. I was actually slowing down trying to find Tescos for some snap. He condescendingly told me that I should know all roundabouts in MK are 30 on approach and exit. I condescendingly answered back that it is not my home. That's why I thought good old fashioned policing might come into it. Rather than a £100 fine I could ill afford (plus the insurance hike). To this day I cannot see how it is clear it is a 30. What gutted me more was when I retraced the drive later, a boy racer overtook me on two wheels and nearly had a head-on.

I do 20k miles a year, mostly motorway. Always been told to keep my eyes on the road, but it is harder to concentrate now when your eyes are mostly fixed on either your speedo or the overhead gantries.

It's a cash cow.

Excessive speeding should be punished, but I'd be happy to see them put the same focus and excitement into catching burglars and vandals.

 

I've worked for large companies in the past, but been self employed in music for over 20 years. The idea that you can lump all self employed people together is ridiculous. People ride around on a push bike, working for Deliveroo are "self employed". Drivers delivering for UK mail are too. Unions like Unite are fighting for them to get employment status, something that 90% of them would no doubt jump at. I think you need to make a distinction between people who are earning significant income & can use lots of means of tax avoidance & people who have little choice in the matter.

 

Obviously not, it aught to be a "smart motorway" where the volume of traffic defines the speed. Arbitrary and senseless limits like this simply result in more people ignoring them.

The faster the traffic moves the more likely it is (on motorways) to cause bunching (well documented fact) which in turn massively increases the chances of collisions due to the occasional driver not being quite as attentive as he/she should be. In this case the speed would only be described as "excessive" in relation to the volume of traffic. Any speed which is likely to cause an accident should rightly be called excessive.

How far is your usual motorway journey? Lets say 10 miles, I believe that is an average figure for most people's commute, in which case what will you do with the minute you save by driving at 80 instead of 70? Conversely, how could you spend the money you would save by driving at 60 instead of 80 over the course of a year?

 

I doubt that, I've seen a bloke shaving at a speed in excess of 70 on the motorway (I was doing 70 and he passed me). Once a person has got used to a particular speed their concentration will begin to wander.

The faster you go, the less thinking time you have and the more significant reaction time becomes. Reaction time is more or less constant so that the only thing you can actually control is thinking time. Reduce that close to zero and you're asking for trouble.