140kph V-Sign to Speed Camera = No Ban

**YellowDog** · 15th March 2008, 07:32

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/b...ts/7296889.stm

A motorcyclist who stuck two fingers up at a camera as he raced by at up to three times the speed limit has not been banned from driving.
Patrick Sheehan-Dinler, 29, from Hertfordshire, was captured 65 times by the same 30mph speed camera as he reached speeds of up to 88mph.

All he had to do was admit he had been a naughty boy and say sorry!

**James Deuce** · 15th March 2008, 07:41

Good. Someone in the UK judiciary has a sense of humour.

**mowgli** · 15th March 2008, 07:42

An interesting precedent. I wonder what the sensible sentencing trust would make of that

**toebug** · 15th March 2008, 07:47

Awesome! I like doing that!

How did they get him with no front plate? I guess he did it that many times on his way to work they probably just waited for him?

**YellowDog** · 15th March 2008, 07:47

It just seemed quite amazing that he escaped without any kind of ban.

Unless he gets caught doing it again, he will have completely got away with it.

If the prosecution was to appeal and this was put in front of another judge, I suspect the outcome would have not been the same.

**Mikkel** · 15th March 2008, 13:25

Originally Posted by toebug

Awesome! I like doing that!

How did they get him with no front plate? I guess he did it that many times on his way to work they probably just waited for him?

The speed cameras in Britain takes a photo of the back of the vehicle I believe... Some of them do at least.

**MaxB** · 15th March 2008, 22:53

I love the judge's comment:

Judge Barbara Mensah said: "Offences of this nature divert valuable police time, where officers could be investigating serious offenders and offences."

So 88 speed camera offences are not considered serious. In this country a big ticket speeder was given a harsher penalty than a pair of theives caught robbing a farm armed with a tomahawk and a baseball bat. On the same day in the same court.

**90s** · 18th March 2008, 08:25

Originally Posted by MaxB

I love the judge's comment:

Judge Barbara Mensah said: "Offences of this nature divert valuable police time, where officers could be investigating serious offenders and offences."

So 88 speed camera offences are not considered serious. In this country a big ticket speeder was given a harsher penalty than a pair of theives caught robbing a farm armed with a tomahawk and a baseball bat. On the same day in the same court.

Well, if you search here or on the net you will find link to a similiar situation last year in the UK, where although Mikkel is right and no front numberplate was captured in the photos, the police tracked down the bike by identifying it was a BMW, then getting all the records of BMW sales + custom work to identify the specific bike. When they found the guy, they busted him hard because he was willingfully mocking the system by giving the fingers to the camera.

As I have posted before with detail in the UK different police forces interpret their job differently - some have been fined by the regulator again and again for pointless use of speed cameras and entrapment and others take the sensible line that on "their" motorway 85pmh is fine and under that they will leave you alone and concentrate on policing dangerous rather than 'fast' driving.

The moral - you pays your money and takes your chance

**YellowDog** · 18th March 2008, 08:37

Originally Posted by Mikkel

The speed cameras in Britain takes a photo of the back of the vehicle I believe... Some of them do at least.

That's right however by law they are all marked in a florescent Yellow, so you can slow down in time.

Apparently hiding them was deemed to be an infringement of personal human rights or something.

**Ewan Oozarmy** · 18th March 2008, 10:17

Originally Posted by YellowDog

That's right however by law they are all marked in a florescent Yellow, so you can slow down in time.

Apparently hiding them was deemed to be an infringement of personal human rights or something.

You're right. When the government over there were accused of using speed cameras to generate revenue they responded by saying that speed cameras were only positioned in "accident blackspots" and were subsequently instructed, that if this were the case, to paint them yellow in order to "warn" drivers of the impending hazard.

**MisterD** · 18th March 2008, 10:33

Originally Posted by Mikkel

The speed cameras in Britain takes a photo of the back of the vehicle I believe... Some of them do at least.

Most of them do. But you'd have to be blind not to see them - as already mentioned - they're bright yellow, and there are white markings along the road to verify the speed (GATSO takes two spaced photos, so speed can calculated from distance travelled)