For years now we Brit’s could get on the spot fines for breaking the motoring laws in other countries in Europe.
Hiring a car on holiday in Europe used to be a licence to be an anarchist as frankly, you could speed when you wanted, park where you wanted and run how ever many red lights you fancied. That all changed and I guess it’s only right it did.
The changes however are at long last going to cut both ways, with the news that foreign drivers could be asked to pay fines (or what’s referred to as ‘deposits’) of up to £900 for offences they commit on the roads in the UK. Its suggested fines (deposits) will be in the region of £60 for those caught speeding or using a hand-held mobile phone, whilst something like careless driving could be £300.
It seems though that offences caught by fixed cameras will not attract any penalty and apparently, an EU-wide enforcement plan is going to be put in place to allow the police to issue fines to foreign drivers caught by speed and red-light cameras and this is expected to be introduced in the next few years.
Under the on the spot scheme however, there will be no penalty points added to these drivers’ licences and that’s maybe something that should change, as we seem to unify everything else across Europe and don’t forget, the penalty point system exists to remove habitually dangerous drivers from our roads.
It’s reported the legislation will come into effect on 1st April and strangely, the law is also going to apply to British residents who are not able to prove they have a valid UK address when they are pulled up at the roadside.
Whilst effectively, these are fines, they are going to be referred to as ‘deposits’ as they might well be returned to the driver by the court, if eventually, they are found not guilty. In truth, I can’t envisage too many foreign drivers coming back to the UK to contest their cases in court, so in practice no matter what they like to call these on the spot charges, they pretty much seem like fines to me (and quite right).
Currently, all the Police tend to do is issue a verbal warning to foreign drivers, whilst you and I get nicked, and that cant be right, so Its good that this kind of action will in future be against any foreign drivers that break the law and in truth, there is a strong argument that perhaps they have got away with it for too long.
I guess in all honesty, most of the foreign drivers that will be affected will be truck drivers, who I am told constantly flaunt the law in respect of the number of hours they can drive and running trucks that are overweight. Safety is another reason as many Lorries from overseas have been found to have things such as ineffective brakes etc and in fact, some spot checks carried out recently in Anglesey found that 75% of trucks that failed these tests were not registered in the UK, but overseas.
So this mostly makes sense, I suppose and it’s only right that overseas drivers don’t get away with breaking the law, just because they are not in their home country, but I have visions of streams of our finest in blue, hanging around by cash machines whilst foreign drivers attempt to get some cash out and that leads you on to asking what if they are not able to get the cash out? It also suggests that this isn’t going to be a quick process, as a driver pulled up on a motorway will need to be escorted to a cash machine with all that involves and whilst we cant allow people to drive dangerously on our roads, you have to wonder if the officer’s time could be better spent.
