8th May 2005
So why is he laughing? Maybe because he’s foreign and our law can’t touch him. Speeding foreigners who exploit a loophole in our fines system are a growing menace, writes James Luckhurst of The Sunday Times
If you speed, you expect to be caught and pay a fine. Right? Not if you’ve got foreign plates. In Kent 1,148 foreign cars were caught on speed cameras last year. No action was taken against any of them. In East Sussex the number was higher - 1,718 foreign-registered drivers escaped fines.
Figures from Lothian and Borders Safety Camera Partnership show that over a two-month period earlier this year one-third of drivers caught speeding on two of the region’s busiest roads were foreign nationals. In the majority of cases no action was taken.
With foreign plates you can speed, drive through the congestion charge zone in London, park without paying (provided you are not clamped) and never get fined. This is because the system used to administer fines in Britain is unable to trace foreign plates and therefore has no way of enforcing a fine. Even if a summons is issued, the offender is unlikely to turn up in court.
The loophole is being exploited to almost farcical effect. Last month a car magazine deliberately racked up parking fines of £880 in a French-registered Renault 5, and heard nothing from the authorities unwilling to chase it up.
The carte blanche afforded foreign plates has more serious implications for road safety: there have been 35 fatal and 29 serious crashes in Kent this year. Of those, 14 - nearly a quarter - involved foreign vehicles.............
...............The Department for Transport is seeking to tighten the law in Britain as applied to foreign drivers. A clause in the Road Safety Bill would require drivers of foreign-registered vehicles to pay a deposit when stopped in the UK equal to the highest penalty that can be awarded for the offence committed. Any difference or the whole amount would be returned when the driver the bill ran out of time attends court. However, the clause applies only to HGV drivers, and in any caseafter its third reading before the election and has no chance of becoming law until well into the next parliament...........
From:
http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,12389-1600866,00.html
Had plenty of time for foxhunting and the postal vote though!