Common sense wins - after 8 months - £30 fine cancelled
tinyurl.com/c3f4y2z
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The council's statement is utter lunacy!
They reckon that she should have pulled over and stopped to avoid causing an obstruction.
Presumably they reckon that pulling back into traffic from stationary is far less obstructive / dangerous than performing a lane change.
Idiots. They should just admit they were wrong and attempting to defend the indefensible. Spouting fatuous cobblers in an attempt to justify their position is just making them look even more daft (difficult, but you have to give 'em points for trying).
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Just imagine how many more motorists suffered this and those cases didn't came to light because they didn't contest.
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Well, only a police officer can instruct you to jump red lights; not a fire officer. I imagine the same is true with bus lanes.
No common sense in the law I'm afraid.
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I wonder how much it cost her to contest the fine.
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>> I wonder how much it cost her to contest the fine.
Only her own time I think. In England and Wales there is no charge to contest a council enforced bus lane fine. Apellants are however giving away the opportunity to pay the 'reduced rate'.
I doubt it's different in Scotland.
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Why didn't the fire appliance use the bus lane??
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Because some jobsworth from this lame-brained council would have given them a ticket, probably!
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Bus lanes are painted on the road (rather than fenced off with impassable barriers or high kerbs) for a good reason: buses may have to leave them and other vehicles may have to pass through them for a variety of reasons. Quite often there is nowhere else to go. And far from easing traffic congestion, they very often increase it by depriving non-buses, non-taxis and non-cyclists of what is usually half the carriageway.
They are a malevolent Livingstonian invention and many councils now employ whole departments adept at cropping cctv shots to make cars or vans look more culpable. Whole departments of smelly pickpocketing swine. No one should ever pay a bus-lane penalty without arguing as rudely as possible.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Wed 27 Mar 13 at 14:27
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My all time favourite piece of Bus Lane idiocy was when I found myself, some years ago, attempting to turn left into Wigmore Street from Baker Street in heavy traffic.
Bus Lane on the inside, so I am outside that. Now the Bus Lane ran right up to the junction and where it was interrupted for the junction, there were clear "give way" markings at the end of it.
Do you think any one of the queue of buses in the lane took the slightest bit of notice of the markings? I was sat there for a good fifteen minutes, much to the fulminant annoyance of everyone trying to go straight on. Fortunately I have a thick skin and was able to sit there, unruffled, as the cacophony of horns played itself out behind me and the traffic snarled up back across the Marylebone Road.
Last edited by: TeeCee on Wed 27 Mar 13 at 16:15
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There is huge amount of bad publicity around the Glasgow bus lanes , but this article states that the income was £1m in fiens for the first 11 weeks!
But then claim that it is a way of recouping the £30m cost that was spent implementing the Glasgow transport policy.
Oh how I would love to be bothered to pursue the council for a breakdown of that £30m !
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I agree with Mapmaker with his comment about no common sense in the law - but this is baby law - not criminal law - if these idiots cannot use common sense and discretion it's time it went back to the Police and CPS. Obviously they have as much back bone as an Ameba -bunch of small minded, pen pushing, mealy mouthed, public money wasting idiots.
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It's a pickpocketing scam. The waffle about improving public transport is equivalent to the waffle about safety where technical infringements of speed limits are being penalised.
Perhaps they can't help being pickpocketing swine. Perhaps it's environmental, petty local civil servants internalising the prevailing morality. Like the lower management types who slowly but surely become part-time psychopaths or sociopaths on behalf of the organizations they work for and admire. It usually spills over into their social or family lives sooner or later. It's hard getting away with living under late capitalism.
:o}
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This will never stop until there is a significant cost to the councils for pushing unreasonable tickets all the way to PATAS (I don't know what the equivalent is in Scotland).
At the moment it costs them pennies to send out their letters in which they turn down appeals with some waffle, hoping that the motorist crumbles and pays.
If it gets as far as PATAS they might finally fold if they think there is a risk of them having to pay expenses.
Instead, if an appeal is rejected at the formal representations stage, but is then won at PATAS (or the council withdraws), the council should have to pay the driver twice the amount of the ticket.
Then they might be a bit more balanced in accepting reasonable appeals.
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I noticed in particular that the council spokesman called appeals against fines for bus lane offences 'selfish'.
Be a proudly selfish motorist! Yes! The automobile is a monument actually to bourgeois capitalist selfishness!
Always appeal unless you are an honest person and were really using the bus lane cynically and obstructing buses. I'm surprised the French haven't organised a mass angry-motorist invasion of bus lanes before now. Or perhaps their enforcement is more rational.
Anyway it would be good to see a Poujadist demo like that here. That would learn the carphounds, but no chance I'm afraid.
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The inept* County Council here decided that a 20 metre length of street in the county town was to be designated as such - the Police uttered dire consequences for anyone caught using it - such was the disregard for it that the Council eventually reverted it back to proper access road - cost must have been pretty significant.
*As described by an equally inept Welsh Government...
Last edited by: R.P. on Wed 27 Mar 13 at 18:49
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Bus lane fine for giving way to Fire Engines! - TeeCee
