These get sent by snailmail to the 'owner'[simplification] of the vehicle using a government database. The owner must then, within a deadline, say who was driving the vehicle at that date and time.
If the owner fails to say who was driving, they have committed a criminal offence, and will be fined.
It looks like Tesla has in a bunch of cases not declared the driver on time. I'm willing to bet that's due to them just being slack with records in some cases - for example loaner cars, offences which occurred on the same day as a sale from person A to person B, etc.
18 offences across the whole fleet of >100k cars isn't much really, when you consider ~30% of motorists receive a fine in any given year.
If for some reason the letter isn't delivered (or indeed sent), the original offence is scrapped and a new offence issued for Failure to provide information.
Frustratingly, there is no obligation on the Police to provide proof of posting, and per the law, it is deemed received once sent.
Try proving you didn't receive something...
The US has their Service of process which is commonly seen in movies, which is often made into a joke in comedies.
A much older system is the one where by law people had to put a notice in the news paper, sometimes multiple notices, and then that was considered enough proof of delivering the notice.
It would be an interesting conversation to philosophy how a future system should be designed that can't be refused, where delivery to the recipient is guarantied, and where the sender and the delivery service must produce proof of their parts.
For a long while if you were changing lanes while speeding through the camera it couldn't capture the plate. Again the government didn't care. Of course now resolved with the archaic future technology we have now.
Really? Or have you (or someone else) just divided the number of fines by the number of motorists?
https://www.racfoundation.org/media-centre/drivers-receiving...
I suspect the division method.
I think automated enforcement of minor driving infractions is a good thing. More efficient use of government resources. Incentivizes drivers to follow the rules of the road.
People just want to drive irresponsibly and they will invent any reason to justify why they're the victim, actually.
The UK is not alone in using traffic cameras to enforce speed restrictions. There was a funny example in Germany where their automated cameras blur the face of any passenger... leaving them to be unable to see who was driving a UK left-hand-drive car with Animal from the Muppets in their passenger seat: https://boingboing.net/2008/10/27/german-traffic-cops.html
Besides, money is a big factor here. If you want to make it cost-effective for someone to physically flag down speeders and ticket them, you'll have to raise the ticket fines significantly. And (sensibly) the revenue goes to HMT and not the individual police forces, avoiding America's perverse incentives, so you'd have to raise the police budget as a separate line item.
(pursuing speeders is right out - police chases are extremely discouraged for obvious safety reasons)
Now, whether they’re that effective at reducing speeding is a bigger question. Because people just slam the brakes for the 100 feet around the camera and then resume speeding.
It's quite a different story in other countries at least in terms of visibility!
There is no reason to insist this must be face to face thing.
"Tesla has been convicted at least 18 times"
So, Tesla are 1 of 4000. I feel the article is missing a bigger story here to make it about Tesla.
> Tesla offers its vehicles on long-term leases, and in such a scenario the leasing company is typically the registered keeper of the car.
> Drivers of rented or company cars caught speeding have to be named before they can face prosecution and companies which fail to return paperwork to police can be prosecuted instead.
And before people say "think of the children" and "I learned something I should have already known on the course" - Speed limits are increasingly being changed for political reasons: Safety has nothing to do with it, therefore, these arguments no longer stand (my local authority is determined to make cars as slow as buses, and is more than happy to "set aside" any suggestions that they do not do this).
> Tesla offers its vehicles on long-term leases, and in such a scenario the leasing company is typically the registered keeper of the car.
> Drivers of rented or company cars caught speeding have to be named before they can face prosecution and companies which fail to return paperwork to police can be prosecuted instead.
> Tesla offers its vehicles on long-term leases, and in such a scenario the leasing company is typically the registered keeper of the car.
> Drivers of rented or company cars caught speeding have to be named before they can face prosecution and companies which fail to return paperwork to police can be prosecuted instead.
A company leases the car, and that car may then be available to multiple employees. The police need the company to confirm which employee was driving the vehicle at the time of the office.
Exactly the same is true if you own the car outright. You as the owner of the vehicle will be contacted and asked to provide the details of the person who was driving at the time.
In the UK, if a driver is caught speeding, they'll (generally) also get points on their license and after accumulating 12 points, they'll (generally) lose their license for a while. Points decay on some frequency which I forget.
Anyway, what's to stop someone from driving a company car and then just paying the fines via the company and refusing the name the driver?
This is also why I tolerate the widespread use of CCTV cameras, but strongly oppose CCTV networks. Closed-circuit television needs to be closed-circuit, with friction of access requests proportionate to the amount of footage requested, or it goes from an accountability tool to a mass surveillance tool.
The registration is _literally something issued by the DVLA_, so of course government agencies have access to it. The problem in this specific case is where the registration information is not enough to indicate the likely driver.
