OK, fess up time, average speed cameras caught me doing 40 in a 30 a week ago and the ticket has arrived today.
It names the road and the points in between which I was over the limit, which are in Meriden, borough of Solihull and under the jurisdiction of West Midlands Police, who have issued the ticket. But they have also stated that the road is numbered B4014, which is nowhere near here - it's in Wiltshire/Gloucestershire, some considerable distance away. The correct number is B4104.
Is this enough of a material error for me to contest the ticket and dodge the bullet?
Happy to hear an honest answer either way. If it's "no", then I'll do the decent thing and cough up, attend the speed awareness course or whatever, but as others have observed, if we ordinary citizens are expected to behave according to the letter of the law, then those enforcing the law ought to be held to the same high standards.
It's simply a typo. They know where it was, you know where it was, It's no different to a spelling error, which would be easily corrected in court if necessary. So it's a "no" from me.
Case law (Pope v Clarke) provides that whilst the requirement to serve a NIP within the 14 days is mandatory (except when not required), the required details (time, date, location) are "merely directory" - which means that if the notice achieved its legislative purpose of enabling the accused to identify and recall the incident in question while it was still relatively fresh in his mind, an error as to those details does not invalidate the NIP.
Yeah, figured it was a bit of a long shot. I'll respond as required.
Still, I'm a bit concerned that the police seem a bit hazy about the route numbers of the classified roads that they - or their machines - enforce the law on. Clearly you can't get the staff these days.
I fell foul of this years ago; the clock must have been wrong on their recording system as both my GPS and my dashcam showed that at the time I was allegedly snapped I was some miles away but, as
@andy_foster correctly says, it made not a jot of difference. Having said that, and now read Pope vs Clarke (1953, yes you did read that right! 1 WLR 1060) I don't find the argument to extend it to something where you might not even be aware that you had committed an offence let alone that it had been recorded terribly persuasive.
I don't find the argument to extend it to something where you might not even be aware that you had committed an offence let alone that it had been recorded terribly persuasive.
But the OP was aware of where he was alleged to have committed the offence. The NIP identified the location by the name of the road and the points between which it was alleged to have occurred. The only discrepancy was the number given to the road and this is almost certainly a typo with two transposed digits. The location seems perfectly well defined without it.
He would have to show that the NIP left him at a disadvantage because he did not recognise the location given as he was not there. But he did recognise it and he was there.
Yes, I'm not going to contest it, though WMP aren't making it easy to respond, as their online portal won't accept the details on the NIP, and their phone line isn't taking calls. Email it is to seek advice on where next.