Uhh, I thought he wasn't charged for speeding. Something else at work here. Sounds like they said he was probably doing over 40 or something and charged for reckless driving.

Gary,

As MD says he wasn't charged with speeding. He was charged with careless driving for doing "nearly 40mph" in their words. But I'll check out the link anyway - there might be something useful there. Thanks.

The speeding thing is out of the window now - no laser, no callibrated follow. The question as has been said earlier is the careless driving and what he did that amounted to it. His driving will have had to have fallen below the standard of a competent driver/rider. So what was it that he did? You need to get a very clear picture of exactly what happened and when from Niall, it may be he has done something obvious without realising it. Was he riding with anyone else? What exactly was he riding, what condition etc. I think you would be well worth getting in touch with your local police station and finding out when the officer concerned is next working. Then get in touch with him and speak to him about it, voice your concerns and ask him the full nature of the incident. He should be more than happy to explain and it'll put your mind at rest to some extent. I'm not suggesting anyone is in the right or wrong without knowing the full situation but it's worth remembering there are two sides to most things and youre better off knowing them both before rushing to conclusions.

You never know, your son Niall may have just been issued a producer and been given a ticking off for whatever. On giving a producer the caution has to be read out (in England at least) and most people who've never been in bother start to panic. Lets just hope he got it wrong in confusion... fingers crossed.

personally, i think all solicitors are bastids, at least the criminal defence ones....geese how do they sleep at night???:puzzled: closely followed by estate agents..what qualifications again?? then there's dentists, all going private, smary sales people.........officious secretaries that want every little detail.

My point is there are bastids everywhere, in fact i could be a bastid?? :lol::lol:

I agree the Police should be Victimised.

Except when you want some help........................;)

I usually call my psyco analyst then...

I usually call my babe for a little psycho therapy in Japanese (psycho babble??) But I tend to agree with rob as his seems to be the most level headed approach. You may also get a read on the officer involved. If you approach as a concerned parent looking for an answer without being accusatory, a professional officer would probably be more than willing to address your issues. If he just fobs you off, then you probably have a rogue on your hands.
My guess is that is not the case.

Guys,
I said I would let you know the outcome of my son's "Careless Driving" charge.

Well he got 5 points and a £200 fine and it could have been much worse!!

Six weeks or so after the incident he got a summons for "Dangerously driving a motorcycle at speeds up to 50mph". Conviction for this would have resulted in a mandatory ban and remained on his licence for 10 years. We of course got a solicitor to act for him. At the plea the Fiscal's Office indicated that they would accept a charge Careless Driving if he pleaded guilty. He was advised not to accept ths and to plead Not Guilty.
As it turned out the Police's evidence was a string of lies. They claimed to have heard a motorcycle accelerating rapidly for some time before he came into veiw. They claimed that they then saw him approach them at a speed up to and exceeding 50mph (at the time the said he was doing nearly 40) and that the roads were particularly busy at the time due a local funfair. They also claimed that they heard his tyres screeching!! The map they presented showed them positioned at a road junction when in fact they were not at the junction but some 15 yds back, behind bushes where the could not have seen Niall or more than a second or two.
He had just come out of a filling station 50yds round the corner and could hardly been accelerating hard for the time they claimed.
The roads were not busy at the time (9.40pm) and they failed to mention that Niall was following a car so was unlikely to have been travelling faster than it. And as for screeching the tyres that was simply added for effect being virtually impossible on a bike unless you're Valentino Rossi.
We also found out that a complaint had been made to the police by some retired senior policeman about youngsters wheelying in a nearby carpark. These two policemen had been sent to investigate and presumably told to catch somebody for it. They didn't find any bikes at the carpark so staked out the road nearby. 12 minutes later Niall was the first young biker that came along and they must have reckoned "this one will do" and set him up.
The trouble is that the Court doesn't take kindly to people saying that the policemen involved are a pair of liars and there's not much could be done since Niall had no witnesses to back him up.
Lessons have been learned from this and we are grateful that Niall didn't get banned as that could have cost him his job as well. Not a nice way to start his motoring career and he will never ever trust a policemen.:flame:

stinky, stinky smell - i know it will leave a bitter taste in everyones mouth (except the coppers - who have "done their job"), but best get on with life.
no consolation i know - but my wife got stopped on her scooter by 2 of our finest (on bikes too??) for turning into oxforD st when she wasn't meant too. got a £30 fine, a talking too because her L plate was broken, told that she would have been done for dangerous driving if she hadn't slowed at the ped. crossing and then lectured for half an hour on.........the merits of an iPod nano (which she was off to buy me for my birthday) i would have thought a warning might have been OK then they could have got on with catching criminals or at least 1 or 2 of the thousands of drivers in london with a mobile glued to their ear. tell your boy not to worry and enjoy riding his bike.

Seriously....?:lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:: lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:

It doesnt end there Derek,his insurance company will gleefuly pump up his premium for years to come making the initial fine seem paltry.
When I was young we were taught to have respect for the police,I certainly wont be passing that lesson on to my sons,keep your distance and dont trust any of them!!!

Must admit that this is a very sad affair all together.

I had a similar experience in September 2001, comig back from a Club meeting one Sunday lunchtime. Two coppers hiding on bikes, behind some bushes down near the roundabout, where we turned round to come back up a dual carraige way home.

Lots of traffic over the 300 yeards to the next roundabout then a 1 mile stretch to the next one. Yes I got to the front of the traffic and opened up the bike for the mile run. No two ways I exceeded the 70mph speedlimit and probably touched 95, but did not go over the ton.

Held up after the mile at the next roundabout by traffic and got a tap on the shoulder, pull over sonny! Interesting thing was that when I took my helemt off he realised that I was probably 10 years older than him!

Anyway he informed me that he had followed me for half a mile at a speed in excess of 100-110 mph and would be repoting me for same. Also got a producer.

Heard nothing, so thought that it had gone away, until end of Jan 2002 with a summons. Speeds in excess of 100, followed for half a mile on the A229 by Officer XXXXXXX, Court date early March, mandatory attendance as I was up for a ban.

I went and saw a Solicitor who pointed out that teh Court would always beleive a Policeman (expert witness, not subject to bias, etc) over the defendant. I spoke to a Barrister about the fact that how could I have been doing 110 for half a mile, including accelerating and braking from the 1st to the 2nd roundabouts on a piece of road barely a mile long. Their view was that with an expert witness it would be possible to dent the calim, but with a less than 25% chance of getting a result.

The good news was that the CPS got the charge wrong, they had charged me with speeding on a Motorway and it was just an A road. The Court date was two days over the 6 month limit. We sat tight went into Court and pointed out that the Charge had been wrongly presented and the case was thrown out.

I have to say that I was very lucky, I would almost certainly got at least a 4-8 week ban and 3 points, not to mention an earnings related fine.

As with the above case, it means that I would be very unlikely to trust a Policeman again without additional unrefuteable eveidence.

I suppose the moral is to drive at 10 mph below the speed limit!

boring afternoon - so thinking cap on - don't know what bike your son has but here goes say..... it does 0-60 in 6 secs; 0-30 in 3 secs and that on the way to 30 it averages 10mph how far would he have travelled in 3 secs?? about 13.33 metres (i think) certainly not 100metres from roundabout see i told you i was bored (actually recovering from hangover)

That really sucks, and so do the coppers involved, youngster + motor bike = easy target :flame:

and risk getting prosecuted for interrupting the flow of traffic or driving without due care and consideration for other road users?

I follow the same motto as my signature, never trust a copper with a round neck.

Commiserations to your lad derek, spose that's tainted his and many others views of coppers for a very long while.

Just a thought having read all of the above posts - will this type of thread become an endangered species if the latest bill of "incitement to hatred" gets through parliament?

My 2d worth.

Sounds like your son got a very raw deal. A similar thing happened to me many years ago and under totting up I got a 12 month ban.

Boy did I hate coppers after that, A.C.A.B. on the back of my leathers etc. It cost me a fortune in inflated insurance premiums for years afterwards too.

After a while I realised how many times I broke the speed limits by a wide margin without being caught ( Isn't youth wonderfull, you think you are indestructible) and decided to be philosophical about it.

Some years later I ended up working very closely with the police regarding some pretty nasty criminal elements. I found them all to be very concientious and prepared to go out of their way to offer support at all hours of the day and night.

The problem is however that police officers come from the same society as us and they will range from really nice blokes doing a difficult and sometimes extremely dangerous job right down to a very small minority who will lie and cheat.

Hopefully your son has met two from the minority and in future will meet the good cops.

Phil

[Edited on 19-10-2005 by philthy]

well what an interesting story!

Firstly in defence of the boys in blue on here!

They can never win;)

First people you call when your in trouble:)
First people you **** off when it suites you:smug:

My own dealings with 2 bent coppers was two years ago!

you all have gathered by now that i have spent most of my life "ON THE ROAD":cool:

and with more catagories on my licence HGV, PSV, BIKE, and a member of Rospa, Iam, etc etc
joking apart i take my Driving/riding very seriously:D

so anyway, one sunny sunday morning i was out with my missus on my brand new R1 (Running it in) we headed of to a local bike cafe for breaky! on route we were bimbleing along at about 55 in a nice country lane when , 5/6 sports bikes went past us at 100 plus mph (estimated) they were on a mission:lol:
about a third of a mile further on i looked in my mirror and coming up behind me was a squad car with blues/two's blaring away.
it was a realy tight section of road with a blind crest and the road was divided with Double whites!!!
I indicated to the left and tooked in real tight,as it was obviouse he was after the said bikes that has just left me in their wash:lol::lol:
well was i supprised when he pulled me in the next layby and started reading the riot act to me and explaining that i must tell him who the other riders were!:puzzled:
and that he had clocked me at 98mph and he had done speeds in excess of 140mph to catch me and my Friends of which i knew none of them!
anyway after a 1hr roadside heated discusion , which resulted in them actualy telling me to accept the £60 fine and 3 points as it would be a lot worse if i went to court!:mad:
I took the ticket(Bad move) and made a note of the officers colar no's and went home :mad::mad::mad:

monday morning i was in my solicitors office Pronto

Ok up shot for me!!!!

I now carry with me a Dictaphone;) and whenever i'm stoped i simply ask nicely for the officer to speak into it,explaing that i'm thick and have a attention deficiency;) and that he/she will need to talk into the machine and tell me why/what i have been stoped for? and what if any charges i will be faceing:(
also explaining that i will be handing the recording to my solicitor and they will be hearing directly from him;)

so far in 2005 i have been stoped eight times in about 80.000 miles car/bike for one thing or another :D so far no officers have taken me up on my Karaokee machine:lol::lol:
and i have been told the error of my ways,and sent on my way:smug:
"Works for me":P

so the moral of the story is Dont knock the coppers you never no when you will need one:)

just play the game there's good and bad in all walks of

life:roll:

Andy and rushjob etc do a real hard job! as most of us do !
their bit of fun is the same as ours being part of a great club and avid motorcycleist's

just my 10p worth...................mav

ps dereck hope your boys ok

"The trouble is that the Court doesn't take kindly to people saying that the policemen involved are a pair of liars and there's not much could be done since Niall had no witnesses to back him up."

So are "the courts" in on the lies too?
:D

:o Oh lighten up you,like we discussed the"all of them are bastids" will never change wrong place wrong time that's it.life's unfair get feckin used to it...

Bit like saying "all jocks are tight!":D;)

Jeeez Derek,sounds like your boy got a really rough deal.What's the matter with these people...you'd hope that everyone entering the police force wanted to act honestly and truthfully. Hopefully Niall will see that he just got real unlucky + can move on.

That's not what he said though, is it. What he did say was:
"As it turned out the Police's evidence was a string of lies."

Of course we all know that the Courts will always believe the word of a Policeman over the word of Joe Public because they are there to uphold the law without prejudice and to tell the truth under oath.

This is unfortunately where it all goes wrong.

In front of the magis you are GUILTY unless you can prove you are innocent with HARD evidence.

They invariably believe the officer of the law when they state they saw you doing 1001 MPH on the back wheel of your FS1E.
Unless you can produce evidence that said FS1E cannot do 1001 MPH.

The magis don't know any better and as biker you are "known" to be a danger to all and sundry.

The police are under pressure to "do the numbers" much like any other profession and in some circumstances do a VERY difficult job VERY WELL.

Unfortunately IMHO Police officers are in the position where they can in effect "convict" someone on the spot based on their own desire to "do the right thing". They can exercise powers that have been increasingly handed to them by the Nanny state.

Sometimes the consequences are less serious than others. In certain situations they are under enormous pressure to "do the right thing" in a life or death situation so you can expect some things to go wrong from time to time despite extensive training.

Pulling a road user up for "speeding" ain't one of those situations.

Ray

"The trouble is that the Court doesn't take kindly to people saying that the policemen involved are a pair of liars and there's not much could be done since Niall had no witnesses to back him up."


This is what he said Ant.....I do believe that that is deemed OPINION, not fact, and quite rightly you will not get very far with opinion....unless it is expert! Of course the two Officers are not experts either!

I can also assure you that the Magistrates are told not to believe a Police Officer just because he is a Police Officer.

And how much of this is due to various elements of society blatantly and excessively disregarding the law???

The other day I was driving at 55mph in a 50mph limit - and was the slowest vehicle on the (busy!) road. Its a fact that well over half the road users out there seem to be incapable of obeying a simple law such as a speed limit. So if a copper pulls someone over - he's got a better than 50% chance of being right. :devil:

OK, devil's advocate mode now turned off.

.......or are the speed limits wrong??

That's not how I understand it (or believe it to be) but I'm sure you have a lot more experience than me in this!

My brother is a Magistrate... he found it difficult to rationalise that bit of his training with two brothers being Cops.
But it is true.

In some cases yes probably. But were likely put in for a reason at the time. It would be nice if we could be left to choose an appropriate speed for the conditions, however a lot of folks would see that as a licence to use warp speed all the time. Which is possibly why we have silly limits in some areas now.

160mph on a straight motorway with no other traffic in daylight is safe, but 70mph when foggy, busy and dark is unsafe. 30 or 40 might be more appropriate, but how many people actually slow down in those conditions????

Until ALL road users can be mature enough to be reasonable, then our behaviour will have to be policed. Unfortunately.

C0,

Don't get me started on the nanny state stuff. We are living in a society where everyone wants to know where the boundaries are for every aspect of life, presumably so that the common sense bypass operation they had can be deemed as success and they don't have to take responsibilty for anything they do as long they we following the rules/law.

The latest classic full circle is the "teachers now allowed to use reasonable force" to keep pupils under control. Not that long ago the policy was "you can't touch 'em"

The police arrest somone for wheeling a motorbike along with the owners permission cos he is pi5hed ( not the owner) and stop him making the thing secure and it gets nicked. Basically the cops says its "policy" to stop the guy doing anything after he has been arrested!! In this particular situation coomojn sense has gone out of the window.


SPEED DOES NOT KILL, accidents do, the only "safe" speed is zero. Speed has a link to the consequences of the accident.

100 down a foggy road is "safe" until you have an accident. Driving at 10 MPH on a foggy road DOES NOT remove the possibility of an accident, merely reduces the consequences.

Nurse, Nurse, time for me medication!

Ray.

So they are supposed to hitch up a bike trailer and take it in with him are they?
Get real.
The lack of common sense was when the individual decided to be in charge of a bike when over the limit.
Mind you, I suppose you would know exactly what to do in every circumstance and would never get anything wrong.
Could I ask you to publish your mobile number, then every time a Cop has a decision to make, they can give you a call thereby getting it right every time.
In the words of Billy Connoly, " Don't tell me how tae do my job.... do I come to your works and tell you how tae sweep up? "
;)

There is a big difference between "hitching up a bike trailer and take it with him" and allowing the guy to secure it and hopefully prevent a theft.

You wouldn't expect an arresting officer to stop you closing and locking the door of your house would you? Same principle in my opinion.

Personally, I think that it is not unreasonable that if the police wish to "take you into custody" then then assume responsibility not only for you and your safety but also the safety of any property you were carrying or were in charge of at the time.

Anyway, that's my opinion - which I am entitled to (I think I still am entitled to it, for the moment)

If it is within the guidelines of personal property - bags, goods & possessions in your pockets - yes.
As for vehicles or contents that can't easily or safely be carried - no.
They will be left parked & safe, locked if possible depending on the condition of the vehicle but we take no responsibility for loss etc.
Remember, the driver has been arrested.
Simple - don't wan't to be placed in that situation??
Don't get yourself arrested!
As for opinions... we're all allowed them and that works both ways!


Edited cos I put the wrong quote in.....

[Edited on 21-10-2005 by Rushjob]

I have 5 mates who i have grown up with !

they are police officers

3 guys are bikers

1 guy is a DCI

and the other nicked his old man for beating the crap out of his mom!

which one would i trust?

answer all of them !:smug:

why?

because they are my mates!
simple we all have a job to do!:D

is it that easy...so one ever gets falsley arrested?