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Serves him right, what a pleb.
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Strictly speaking this is "Refusal to pay fine leads to Jail" - still a result though.
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>>Strictly speaking this is "Refusal to pay fine leads to Jail" >>
According to the Daily Mail, apart from this point, he had previously been warned about driving with fog lights on and, therefore, it could hardly be "a genuine mistake" as the taxi driver claimed, whether he felt it was fair or not.
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This was featured today on Talksport, where I listen for all my intellectual stimulation.
The presenter ranted about how this is s waste of time and money pursuing trivialities while the country is full of illegal immigrants raping and pillaging, etc..
He said if it had been reckless use of main beam , perhaps he would have understood, as you have a dashboard light to advise you then- even though you should also have one for your fog lights.
Perhaps the best bit was the taxidriver refused to pay the £30 fine as he said some days he only earned £25...
All the more reason to pay attention then!
And if that's all you are earning perhaps cabbing isn't for you
And how much did you lose in earnings (a) going to court again and (b) spending 5 days locked up?
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My fourpenn'orth: people who drive with front fog lights on unnecessarily are almost invariably using their car, not primarily as a means of getting from A to B, but as a way of making some sort of rather pathetic statement about their inadequate (usually male) egos.
Taxi drivers are professional drivers, who, as far as I know, need no special driving qualification and whose standard of driving is frequently little short of appalling, particularly when it comes to performing unpredictable and unsignalled manouvres.
Put the two together...
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Is it not a requirement to have warning lights on the dash that say the lamps are on?
My old Beemer had orange (front) and green (rear) warning lights for the fogs...
plain as the nose on your face. I STILL have a 'gasp' when I see a warning light in my car - albeit a 'heated side mirror' or 'gearbox in sports mode' light - HOW can people ignore them??????
The Astra has front-mounted "additional driving lights" (Yeah - that's in the manual. Make of that what you will ...) which come on when the dipped/main beams come on.
They run off a seperate fuse, and that fuse has been removed by moi in my vehicle. Stupid car doesn't even come with REAR fogs anyway, so what's the point of front ones????
(Silly colonial model!)
However, some morons have had their cars rewired so that the 'additional lights' come on instead of the 'parking' lights.
They think it looks cool. I think it looks goddam stupid.
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>>Perhaps the best bit was the taxidriver refused to pay the £30 fine as he said some days he only earned £25...>>
That's not quite true.
What he allegedly said was that he had made about £25 that particular night and was then hit with a £30 fine for having his fog lights on.
I have no sympathy for him whatsoever in view of the fact he had clearly ignored previous police warnings (and, seemingly, each time let off with a caution).
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Its like the French Revolution on here sometimes. Someone mentions foglights and you lot are gathered round the basket like cackling housewifes baying for the blood of the aristo's.
Get a grip - there are far worse things happening on our roads.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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Its like the French Revolution on here sometimes
Brilliant........hahahahhaaha. Sums it right up !
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The difference between us and the French Revolution is that we are baying for the blood of the ignorant law-breaking peasants!
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Perhaps the title of this thread should read "Refusal to pay fine leads to jail"??
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Phil
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" Its still an excuse by the "so called" blinded driver. Must have eye trouble or a dirty windscreen. I can still see far enough in front of me to be safe even if Full beams are facing me."
How on earth can you tell? I'm like you - front fog lights don't particularly bother me, but I can see that they might affect other people's eyesight. Why are you being so negative?
V
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'It's good that people are fined for such misdemeanors,'
ABSOLUTELY. There is so little crime in this country now that our friends in blue stamping down on misdemeanors like this will soon mean no crime at all.
I mean its not like we have drive by shootings of 14 year old girls in this country...
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She was a drug dealer, and had a screwdriver and hundreds of pounds in her pocket!
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Whoops thread going all "Daily Right To Know !"
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Foglights on today - hit and run tomorrow?
The trouble is, there is no discipline these days.
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Vin - I am being hard on it because in the scheme of things driving with foglights on is such a pathetic miserable piddly inconsequential trivial offence.
Yet people on here think its a hanging offence, and as for someone who drives with foglights on being the next multiple hit and run murderer... well words fail me.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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"a hanging offence"
He was fined £30 (£30 less than I was fined for being 4 minutes late back to a car park). The jail sentence came from refusal to pay a fine - not for "driving with foglights.... such a pathetic miserable piddly inconsequential trivial offence."
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Phil
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He'd been told several times before, failed the 'attitude test' and then came out with "They could have just warned me"!
Idiot deserved everything he got. Give someone like that an inch...
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Taxi driver? - I agree the man is an idiot.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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Yeah going with you guys.
Fog lights, failed the 'attitude test a few times'. Deserves banging up.
Hijack an aircraft at gunpoint. Council flat and social security.
The guys with guns were probably real polite so yeah good choice.
Another reason we so respect the boys in blue.
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Another reason we so respect the boys in blue.
It's not the boys in blue that make the laws. They're merely paid to enforce the laws. Every law should be enforced as rigidly as possible within the constraints of the system. You must not use foglights unless visibility is seriously reduced. No ifs or buts.
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L\'escargot.
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Driving in to work this morning at 5:50, I could see the lights on the mountain from 15kms away, so I think we can assume that visibility was 'good'. However, the morons down the motorways STILL had their front and rear fogs on...
BUT guaranteed, WHEN it gets foggy, these are the clowns that will be bowling down the fast lane at 100, when visibility is down to about "40km/h safe", with NO lights on.
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>driving with foglights on is such a pathetic miserable piddly inconsequential
>trivial offence.
But it's still an offence and apparently not his first.
Please do tell us which "piddley inconsequential trivial" offences we should ignore.
Kevin...
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No tell you what, you tell ME which ones you ignore. And dont tell me you uphold every law on the statute book.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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Re "foglights point at the ground". Many don't, and do dazzle. It seems to be the fashion to drive with lamps in the fog-light position, with high-wattage bulbs and a wide spread of light, aimed at or above the horizontal.
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>>Why are people irritated by fog lights.....
Because its fashionable not to like them and is perceived to make you part of a crowd.
The reality is people don't have enough to worry about in their own lives and therefore need to worry about everybody else's.
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In Canada, studies proved a reduction in vehicle accidents when vehicles carried day running lights - so that has a purpose. Mind you, they don't have speed humps in Canada. So if that is such a worry, perhaps the trick is to avoid front day lights and keep speed humps HJ? Now that would be missing the point ;-)
I'm sure speed humps would go, if people stopped hitting each other in their cars and generally ignoring speed limits, especially around residential areas.
Perhaps asking a driver to "drive" with care and consideration is asking too much these days; be it using vehicle lights correctly and legally, or driving at a speed that is safe for the conditions. Bring on compulsary re-testing of drivers, where failure = back to school. All those who are any good have nothing to fear :-)
Clearing the road of such drivers (I use that term loosely)who are below the standard to hold the licence, will soon cure the congestion.
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The law is the law and dropping litter and killing someone are both offences against the law, although obviously of enormously differing magnitude. Where the system sorts things out is in the punishment, £30 fine or life imprisonment ie about 9 years! Most people do deliberately break the law, presumably they consider what the outcome is if they are apprehended. There is a lot of law breaking because people don't reckon they will get caught and don't fear the consequences of being caught IMHO
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Why are people irritated by fog lights and not irritated by daytime running lights? Foglights point at the ground and cannot dazzle. But Xenon daytime running lights can dazzle very badly, especially when a car is bouncing over a speed hump.<<
I have to be honest, I've never once been dazzled by daytime running lights. Or bikes with full beam on. Or fog lights either! (But rears do annoy me on a long journey) I'll admit though, I've never come across a car with xenon daytime running lights. Give me a few examples.
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He's lucky he only initially got a £30 fine (not aquite so lucky with the weeks prison sentence though).
When I got caught with my front fogs on, I got a £40 fine - of which I got away with on a technicality. A forum search will reveal more if you can be bothered.
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I don't see how any car lights can dazzle during the day, as the the pupils in your eyes are all set up for a bright environment. Car lights aren't as bright as a shiny surface with the sun on it.
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The lights that usually dazzle me in daytime are those at full beam on motorbikes. I guess they do it to maximize their visibility, but it sure is irritating.
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Don't worry...they get a slating on the bike forums too.
visordown.com/forums/showthread.php?t=262953
;o)
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I've just been reminded why I like this forum so much......
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I reckon they should make buses use them all the time, to increase their visibility ;-)
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My Dad's bike automatically puts the headlight on when you turn the key.
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I reckon they should make buses use them all the time, to increase their visibility ;-)
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All the buses in my area do have them on all the time.
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>>All the buses in my area do have them on all the time.>>
Same with Arriva in the Merseyside area.
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> Same with Arriva in the Merseyside area.
On a different note - do Arriva buses in your area cause active car radio interference when you approach them? As in - not just white noise but active whistling and crackling sounds in the entire FM range?
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[Nissan 2.2 dCi are NOT Renault engines. Grrr...]
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>>but active whistling and crackling sounds in the entire FM range?>>
Not in my car but I've experienced this for a long time on our household radios on FM stations and, in fact, the local paper had a letter on the very same subject about a fortnight ago complaining about such interference.
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Not when I've driven past them no!
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Same with Arriva in the Merseyside area.
And here in Essex our drivers also wear their bright yellow hi vis vests while driving their buses as well just to make sure they're visible in case you can't see the bus with its lights on!
My gripe with front foglights being used inappropriately is that in an urban night time traffic environment they reduce the levels of contrast of surrounding environs and it becomes very easy to 'lose' pedestrians, especially if they are crossing the road by threading through moving traffic. I know the pedestrian also has a duty to be safe on the road but I really have no wish to end up hitting a pedestrian with my hard metal box due to the lack of contrast caused by excessive light levels.
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>>it becomes very easy to 'lose' pedestrians>>
It also happens, in a slightly different way, with oncoming traffic where one or two of the line of cars are being driven on sidelights.
The headlights of other vehicles effectively render them almost invisible, which can prove troublesome when trying to turn right.
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I would rather have a cabby leave their fog lights on than drive a night with only parking lights particularly if one of them does not work, which is something the police don't bother with.
A lot of cabbies seem reluctant to put on even side lights untill its pitch dark. I think they want to save electricity and therfore fuel. It must save at least 0.1mpg.
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I've read elsewhere that when traffic police have not got more important things to attend to (eg. road accidents), they will "issue 20-25 tickets per shift" for non-working lights and fog lights on inappropiately.
Obviously the 20-25 tickets per shift (when they've got time), is such a drop in the ocean that the message doesnt get through that "you can get done for this".
It is the assumption that 'the police are not bothered' that leads to people to breaking these laws, thinking they are being unfairly picked on when they get done for it, and the odd few whinging to the press about it.
People have the "it only happens to other people" mentality; I wonder how many people read the Plymouth Today article, then put their fog lights on next time it was dark but not foggy?
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