SPEED CAMERAS IN THE DOCK
16 November 2004 - Safe Speed

Motorists'' Right to Silence Defence to be heard by European Court of Human Rights

The European Court of Human Rights has accepted eight motorists'' applications claiming that S172 of the 1988 Road Traffic Act breaches the right to silence implicit in Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Given that 90% of applications are rejected at this first stage, this is an important step in a process which, if successful, will make the speed camera system unworkable.

Legal Background

The great majority of speed camera photographs do not identify drivers, and so S172 of the 1988 Road Traffic Act is used to extract confessions by threatening ''similar'' (but in practice more severe) penalties for failure to do so. Several million fixed and other penalties, and the Safety Camera Partnerships, rely on these forced confessions, under a 2001 Privy Council judgement (Brown v Stott) citing the public interest in road safety as justification for removing the right to silence not only implicit in Article 6 of the European Convention but explicit in centuries of British common law.

The eight applicants claim that evidence obtained under duress should not be admissible in court, and that convictions based on such admissions should be quashed, as should penalties imposed for failing to identify the driver. The British government has been asked by the European Court of Human Rights to respond to these applications by January 18th and 19th. The applicants will then be able to respond in turn and a court verdict is expected some time in 2006.

Idris Francis, whose case involving a 1938 Alvis Speed 25 received national publicity in 2001/2 comments that:

''Contrary to the verdict of the Privy Council, Article 6 of the Convention does not allow the public interest to be cited as justification for breaches of such fundamental rights to a fair trial. Further, casualty data shows that speed cameras act against the public interest, causing more accidents than they prevent, not least because they have been used as an excuse for cuts in more effective police patrols and other measures. The past decade of increasing use of speed cameras has been uniquely dreadful in terms of road fatality trends, while the data presented by the authorities, far from being ''robust'' as they claim, is seriously flawed, misleading, highly selective, partisan and increasingly dishonest''.

www.safespeed.org.uk

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