First speeding ticket

Cuchulain

Cuchulain

Cuchulain

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Joined
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Derry
Through my own ignorance I think after 20 years of driving I'm going to get my first speeding ticket :(

There's 3 sections of dual carriageway each seperated by a roundabout, the bottom 2 sections are all 50mph and I've assumed all along that the top section was also 50mph as I've never seen a speed limit sign.

So I was trundling home after dropping my boy off with the baby sitters sitting at 50mph, coming up to the first roundabout and there's a peeler pointing a speed gun at me, I didn't even take any notice of him as I assumed I was doing the speed limit. Spoke to a friend of mine and he guarantee's me that that section of the road is definately 40mph.

Gutted! There's no point me trying to get out of it, I'm sure I completely ignored the street light spacing or something. What's the average fine nowadays for 10mph over?
 
Was it a camera van or just a policeman with a speed gun? Didn't think the speed guns automatically gave you a ticket.
 
3 points and £60 probably.

Although, depending on which type of gun they were using, they probably would have stopped you there and then. Did they have a checkpoint further on up the road or was there another peeler car waiting?

Go take a spin up the same bit of road and look out for 40 signs. It'll put your mind at rest.
 
Scuzi said:
3 points and £60 probably.

Although, depending on which type of gun they were using, they probably would have stopped you there and then. Did they have a checkpoint further on up the road or was there another peeler car waiting?

Go take a spin up the same bit of road and look out for 40 signs. It'll put your mind at rest.
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Not sure on the gun,

I didn't see any cop cars further up the road but the gun he had didn't look like it had any camera attached, though I've no idea about that sort of thing.
 
I'm in a similar situation. 30MPH dually last night. Me in the left lane some old guy in the right, both level doing just under 30MPH. He started to drift into my lane so I accelerated to get infront. Just a quick blip to 35ish then backed off to 30. Problem was I was concentrating on the old guy and didnt spot a camera van. So basically I accelerated directly infront of it :(
 
Sadly it happens. The rule of thumb used is 10% and 1mph normally but that was before the target driven policing we have in some areas. If you were doing 48-50 indicated and your spedo is say 6% under reading then you're pretty much border line. Allowing for the fact you were braking and the hand held guns can vary in accuracy i'd put it down to experience and try not to worry about it. If you get a ticket it's £60 and 3 points, it's not likely to bump up your premium and you may be offered a driver education course instead of the points.

It could be worse, I remember waking up one morning to find that without warning the road outside of a friends house had gone from 40 to 30. The problem was they had put up no warning signs to indicate the change, just replaced the existing signage and had oddly enough the whole week afterwards he had a camera van parked on the verge doing drivers for 40 in a 30 zone. Best part was they had to withdraw all the NIP's after complaints.
 
Orange Peel said:
I'm in a similar situation. 30MPH dually last night. Me in the left lane some old guy in the right, both level doing just under 30MPH. He started to drift into my lane so I accelerated to get infront. Just a quick blip to 35ish then backed off to 30. Problem was I was concentrating on the old guy and didnt spot a camera van. So basically I accelerated directly infront of it :(
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The picture will show the other driver doing this, so I would think about contesting it. Although you could have just braked
 
Defcon5 said:
The picture will show the other driver doing this, so I would think about contesting it. Although you could have just braked
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I could have, your right but I was taking into account the other cars behind me. I'd of had to brake hard to scrub speed so thought edging infront was the safer option all round.
 
Unfortunately in the eyes of the Law the default action should be to slow down, if you're only doing 30-ish and the old guy "drifted" (as opposed to "veered") into your lane then one would presume that you had enough time from the due care and attention one would expect of a road user to shave off some speed without having to do an emergency stop (or so it sounds).

People have tried similar defences when joining motorways at high speed and merging straight into the outside lane - "I was trying to limit the inconvenience to other traffic so broke the speed limit to achieve this" seldom if ever gets any sympathy.
 
I'm not trying to riggle out of it I know I was in the wrong (speed wise).

At the point of me accelerating his wheels were in my lane and my head was level with his front wing. It was one of those moments where I could see him starting to move towards me and took what I thought was the safest option. Just sods law there was a van there.
 
Cuchulain said:
Just checked, there's a small 40mph sign I missed, my own fault for missing it.
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IIRC it has to be a large sign indicating a change in speed limit. There has been loads of incidents in Nottingham recently where a stretch of road has been signed up with wrong signs as they were the usual smaller lampost signs indicating the speed change, rather than a bigger one stating the start of the speed change, then smaller ones along the road.

Worth checking this out as your speeding ticket (if it does come through) might be invalid.
 
Lead_Head said:
IIRC it has to be a large sign indicating a change in speed limit. There has been loads of incidents in Nottingham recently where a stretch of road has been signed up with wrong signs as they were the usual smaller lampost signs indicating the speed change, rather than a bigger one stating the start of the speed change, then smaller ones along the road.

Worth checking this out as your speeding ticket (if it does come through) might be invalid.
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How to best describe this, don't know if it makes any difference.

I join the dual carriageway from a side road which is 30mph, on the corner of the turning out onto the carriageway there's a small 40mph sign but there is a large 40mph sign further down the road but I've never seen that one as I don't go past it, preferring to cut up the side road (which is way past the large 40mph sign) to avoid traffic.
 
Open to interpretation then I guess.

Speek to a lawyer / solicitor for free advice and see what they say, it's hard for us to say without pictures and/or a video showing the route.

Have you been on www.peppipoo.com? (I think that's right).
 
Lead_Head said:
Open to interpretation then I guess.

Speek to a lawyer / solicitor for free advice and see what they say, it's hard for us to say without pictures and/or a video showing the route.

Have you been on www.peppipoo.com? (I think that's right).
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I haven't been on pepipoo, if I get a NIP then I'll just cough up as it was my own fault but I'm almost sure (after a bit of research) that the PSNI normally deal with people caught on mobile cameras by the side of the road so I may have been lucky, perhaps he was just practising with it or something.
 
I got flashed about 2 weeks ago doing 40 on a 30 mph zone, it was around 1am though and I was the only one on the road.

Will I get fines and points?
 
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