Dear London Borough of Waltham Forest,
The video starts at frame number 4690587 and even from the naked eye it is clear the car is moving at least until frame 4690782 when the camera operator starts to zoom in.
When we get to video frame 4690796 it is clear the vehicle is still moving, as playing the video frame by frame clearly shows:
Indeed by playing the video one frame at a time, movement can be detected up to frame 4691000 or 16.600 seconds into the video.
This can be confirmed by playing frames 4690980 to 4691010, or from 15.800 seconds to 17 seconds and observing the movement of the offside mirror:
Hence the car is stationary when the camera operator zooms out and reveals the following scenario:
It must be remembered at this point that it is only a contravention to stop if a vehicle is forced to stop owing to the presence of stationary vehicles. When my vehicle became stationary, the rear wheels and bumper where within the box markings but it can be seen that the car did not protrude into the box, with some approximation, more than the end of the first set of diamond shapes where the red line is drawn below:
This distance can be shown to be approximately 3 feet 4 inches:
Even making a generous 25% allowance for the angle of the camera, my car would still only be protruding into the box by approximately 4 feet 2 inches or 4.16 feet:
The width between the dark coloured car on my nearside and the van on my offside is plainly wide enough for my car. If for argument's sake those two vehicles had broken down, there would have been more than ample space for me to drive through the gap between those two vehicles.
Therefore the only issue is whether my progress was impeded by the white car ahead, and I contend that it was not. This is because the white car ahead was stationary on the far-side of the northwesternmost diagram 1055.3 marking, which are situated no less than 13.28 feet northwest of the yellow box:
It follows that given the size of the gap, there was more than ample space for me to pull forward. Hence I did not stop in the box junction because my path was impeded by stationary vehicles, rather I stopped because I chose not to obstruct the pedestrian crossing. It is a common myth perpetuated by councils that stopping in a box junction for any reason is a contravention, but this is not the case: it is only a contravention if the vehicle stops because it cannot proceed owing to the presence of stationary vehicles. Where a vehicle stops for some other reason, whatever that reason might be, the contravention alleged cannot occur.
It follows that the PCN must be cancelled.
Yours faithfully,
You'll have to put this all in a PDF file in order to preserve formatting, indentation and so on. Also,
use the youtube links I've put on this thread, I'll send you some special links (that you must
click on) that we can use to check if the authority actually watches the videos we're supplying. If they don't, we'll have them on the hook for failure to consider.
