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.
