LollyKat wrote:I had never heard of the entrapment you describe. I was thinking of all the eejits who bang on about the 'war on the motorist' and complain about speed cameras, traffic light cameras, public parking, etc.
I'm not one of those eejits, I agree they are eejits. I believe in enforcement. But if you give public authorities powerful methods enabling them to make lots of money from dodgy practice, history suggests they will take advantage of it.
I'm not talking about the friend of mine who got debt collection notices for parking tickets he'd never received. The warden moved his moped before photographing it, and then putting it back, putting no ticket on the bike, and then using a corrupt debt collector to try and collect the unpaid debt: that's just fraud. Fortunately my friend met someone who witnessed it happening and the warden ended up in prison.
When speed cameras were first permitted to be widely used, quickly police forces started to apply entrapment. It didn't last very long, because it was clamped down on quickly too. But clamping down on it did involve what were arguable stronger restrictions than would be desirable for proper use of the cameras. Let me give an example of entrapment that resulted in my first speeding ticket. Along a road in Oxford was affixed a 40mph speed limit sign on every lamppost. Then came one 30mph sign only briefly visible among thick vegetation. Then the camera. I was surprised to get a ticket because I thought I was observing the speed limit, unsurprisingly not having seen the briefly visible 30mph sign among the forest of 40mph signs. But since I live 30 miles from Oxford I was only able to examine the nature of the trap after the time to pay the ticket, so I paid. But it was all dismantled a few weeks later, so presumably some people made a fuss about it.
A street very close to this office was once an example of parking entrapment, though it depends upon a rather specific consideration. One side of the street is in Camden and the other side in Westminster, and each has their separate parking meter. Originally, there was no clear signage so people would put money in the wrong meter, then get tickets, start arguing as they had the meter ticket, and the councils used it as a nice earner. But it gives an indication of how unclear signage can be used as entrapment. People have been fined for parking on invisible yellow lines, etc.
My wife got entrapped by a parking machine the other day. Assessing that she had adequate coins in her purse to pay in coins, she started a process of paying, to find the machine wouldn't accept her 20p coin. However if she cancelled the procedure to pay by another method (card was possible), or go and get some more change, it would keep whatever money she had already paid, and forget she had paid it - it said so clearly. She felt she had morally done her best, and just hopes that the failure of the camera to read her numberplate properly means that they won't pursue her for a large fine for underpaying by 20p.
And sizes of penalties for small transgressions is an issue. Staying a couple of minutes longer than you paid for is a rather different case from being just a few mph over the speed limit, after all there isn't any danger involved, merely the loss of income to the car park from your excess occupation of the space designed for parking. A case at the appeal court is in the news today. A parker was fined £85 by a private parking company for overstaying by a few minutes in a space for which he had paid in advance £2. In the past the courts have thrown out such private penalties as disproportionate. However on this occasion the parking company tried again with a novel argument and got judgement in their favour, which has just been confirmed at court of appeal. It can still be appealed to the supreme court. Scotland has certainty on this matter, since they passed a law stopping such abuse, but apparently Westminster is unwilling to pass similar laws.