Minor traffic offences warrant no arrest

Columnist

What is your thinking on the latest list of minor motoring offences?

Several readers

If a traffic officer stops you, he has three options: to give you helpful advice, to give you a warning, or to give you a ticket. The on-the-spot “sale” of one option as opposed to another is not part of our legal architecture. You and your family should not be stopped 300 km from home in the middle of a long journey and summarily hauled off to a police station or courtroom for several hours. That is “arrest”, which requires the alleged offence to be “indictable”. Minor traffic offences are not. If the policeman does not have a ticket, that is his problem, not yours. If you are served with a ticket – promptly – you can then continue your journey and, without undue delay, plead guilty in writing and pay the fine, citing any mitigating circumstances for the court’s consideration. You do not have to attend the court hearing.

We do all realise that the administrators have a nigh impossible mission and that the definitions of each offence are perforce “generalised” – an "ill-fitted number plate" could be bent with sharp edges and be near falling off, or could be flat, securely mounted…but slightly crooked; driving on the pavement could be clumsy parking or motoring at speed next to shop doors; failing to renew a licence (whether the certificate of competence to get it was genuine or forged) is usually no more than forgetfulness and has no physical consequence whatsoever; ignoring a stop sign is somewhat different from ignoring a no U-turn sign; having part of your body outside a moving vehicle could be anything from an elbow on a window sill to doing yoga on the roof rack at 100kph, etc. We also understand that the limits on human resources and finance mean the rules have to be designed to suit those who enforce them, and only secondarily for those expected to obey them. And we do also recognise that enforcement is selective, and ranges from draconian to zero in different places.

Minor traffic offences warrant no arrest

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