£60 & 3 points would have been cheaper!

Honest John Back Room » Motoring discussion
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Thu 6 Nov 2008 06:56
£60 & 3 points would have been cheaper! - Falkirk Bairn
BBC Reports

A man has admitted perverting the course of justice by taking photographs of his registration number on another car to attempt to escape a road fine.

Richard Scott Kirton, 26, of Braunton, Devon, jumped a red light in his red Mazda MX-3 in September 2007.

He claimed a cloned vehicle with his registration had committed the offence and submitted the pictures as evidence.

After pleading guilty, he was given an eight-month suspended sentence and told to pay £1,100 in fines and costs.

Perverting the course of justice ! He was lucky not to be sent down for 8 mths and not had it suspended (bebefit to him of overcrowded Prisons)
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The driver must think £60 and 3 points looks cheap.
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Thu 6 Nov 2008 07:30
£60 & 3 points would have been cheaper! - L'escargot
Honesty is the best policy has always been my motto.
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Thu 6 Nov 2008 10:57
£60 & 3 points would have been cheaper! - zookeeper
how did he obtain photos of the cloned vehicle, surely any one in there right mind would have rang the law and reported the crime if they new the supposed location of the cloned vehicle?
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Thu 6 Nov 2008 11:03
£60 & 3 points would have been cheaper! - Steve Pearce
I assume he found a similar car parked somewhere and stuck one of his number plates on it and photographed it.
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Thu 6 Nov 2008 11:05
£60 & 3 points would have been cheaper! - DP
Photoshop. A 10 minute job if you know what you're doing.
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Thu 6 Nov 2008 14:09
£60 & 3 points would have been cheaper! - Steve Pearce
Here is a fuller description of what he did:

He submitted a letter to the court stating that the vehicle was not his and enclosed photographs which showed several differences between his and those taken by the camera.

However, a police investigation revealed that a woman in Barnstaple had reported seeing a man attempting to remove the registration plate from her car, a similar red Mazda MX-3.

She made a note of a number plate he was carrying at the time, which was that of Kirton's car.

Edited by Steve Pearce on 06/11/2008 at 14:09

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Thu 6 Nov 2008 17:51
£60 & 3 points would have been cheaper! - NowWheels
They tightened up the laws on numberplate making from 1st November. They've found a way
to milk motorists and they're doing all they can to make it even more efficient.


Fake numberplates aren't just an impediment to enforcing speed limits and other rules of the road, such as the requirement that a vehicle should be insured. They also also help stolen cars evade detection, and provide cover for those using vehicles for other criminal activities.

There's a decent and honourable case to be made for opposing automated enforcement of traffic law, but I'm surprised to see Honest John apparently objecting to a clampdown on dishonest use of numberplates. I hope you aren't saying that dodgy use of numberplates is a good thing.
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Thu 6 Nov 2008 18:00
£60 & 3 points would have been cheaper! - Bromptonaut
I suspect what HJ is saying is that the rules for making plates impose too many complex and expensive conditions. It may well be true that they inconvenience the honest while still leaving other roads open for crims and fraudsters to obtain dud plates.

Whether they're a backdoor tax is another question - can HJ post a link to the revised conditions?
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Thu 6 Nov 2008 18:21
£60 & 3 points would have been cheaper! - NowWheels
I suspect what HJ is saying is that the rules for making plates impose too
many complex and expensive conditions. It may well be true that they inconvenience the honest
while still leaving other roads open for crims and fraudsters to obtain dud plates.


This appears to be the DVLA press release on he subject: www.dvla.gov.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/010808_0...x

So far as I can see, it means

a) the tighter rules introduced in 2006 for England+Wales are extended to Scotland and Northern Ireland
b) A ban on the sale of non-compliant number plates as well as on their use

I don't see any excessive complexity in all this. When I went to get new plates for my car, I just took all the paperwork to a plate-maker; he checked and noted the documents, and then a machine printed the new plate to DVLA specs. No great inconvenience to me.

It's about time that there was a serious crackdown on plates which misrepresent the letters and digits or use non-standard typefaces, and making it an offence to supply them inconveniences nobody except those making money out of supplying something which could not be legally used on a car.

So unless I have missed something in the new rules, I still can't see what legitimate activity HJ feels is impeded by the changes.
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Thu 6 Nov 2008 20:24
£60 & 3 points would have been cheaper! - nortones2
And a crackdown needed on the rotatable number plates openly sold to bikers. Spot rear operating camera, cue solenoid to hoist plate to horizontal. Alternatively, a cord onto a hinged plate. Sadly for the outlaws, the mechanism is obvious. Hopefully the traffic cops are fully awake/aware and waiting at gathering points.
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