Tesla fined for repeatedly failing to help UK police over driving offences

The reason for this "ludicrous" procedure is that the police can identify the owner of the car (based on the license plate), but not the driver, so the owner has to say who was driving. And all of this has to be done in a way that will hold up in court, therefore snail mail. The same procedure exists in Germany (of course, the bureaucracy here has its ludicrous sides too) and I bet in other countries as well.

And now you would never bother laying fiber to a speed camera when you can just put a SIM card in the thing.

Most traffic related fines are voluntary in my view… don’t speed and you won’t get one

You connect the dots.

These systems work. They change behaviour and they save lives.

American exceptionalism is tiring to no end.

There's no reason motorists shouldn't be able to go almost any speed on motorways, conditions permitting. Germany's system is fairly sensible in this regard and many American states have one or two good laws that correlate well with norms and should be adopted elsewhere.

If the rules and laws actually reflected norms of behavior there would be more appetite for enforcement.

> automated enforcement of minor driving infractions

Would not have prevented this:

> someone speeding through a red light

It's the think-of-the-children fallacy

Scotland has seen a drastic reduction in police numbers (unfortunately for you, not a Tory government :( oh well) despite record government funding levels. Labour's plan appears to be attempting the same trick with consolidation of forces, which should allow massive reductions in numbers. In Scotland, there are some days when there is one traffic car covering an area the size of England, and the expected time to respond to car accidents is usually 6-12 hours (this includes situations with serious injuries).

There is a lot more going on here than funding because government has never had more resources. The Tories, to their credit, actually put money in but (even then) the results were no better.

Also, in response to original comment, I am not sure why you think the Police are competent. Much of the policing function of a few decades ago not lies with private companies. Police numbers are generally high but the level of output has never been lower. You are seeing this in multiple areas of the public sector, public-sector output hasn't increased since 1997 whilst govt spending to GDP has basically doubled. The police have massive structural issues with their remit in the UK because of demographic change, and it is generally seen as a career for people of low ability resulting in fairly weak performance. It doesn't feel complex but than you realise that people don't understand that a politician looking to get elected might say it is even simpler. Does anyone actually work at a company where more spending increases results? I have never seen this to be the case. If anything, more spending seems to lead worse results.

In most US states, auto registration and auto titles are two separate things, which means our automated traffic camera systems can mail the tickets to the people who are probably actually driving the car. But I guess it's easy for a country like Britain to lay that kind of burden on auto manufacturers when they don't have any of them anymore.

And besides, as other commenters pointed out, even if things get lost in the mail or the government otherwise drops the ball, they'll still consider that your fault.

Reducing the speed limit to 20mph in large parts of Wales reduced injuries and accidents so much so that insurers have reduced premiums

Local councils are willing to admit they are directly harming the interests of people peacefully going about their legitimate business, in order to try to manipulate their behaviour.

It's all such zero sum thinking. Rather than reducing congestion (and thus pollution) by making the roads more efficient, they prefer to make them LESS efficient (with LTNs, modal filters, speed bumps, chicanes, one-way etc) in the hope that this will discourage traffic. All it does is move the congestion from one place to another, and make the situation worse overall.

But let's be clear, the edited footage does not misrepresent the nature of what happened; Trump was an insurrectionist.

You don't have to take my (or the BBC's) word for it. Jack Smith's final report [1] makes it clear that Trump knew what he was doing on January 6th (emphasis mine):

> ...the evidence established that the violence was foreseeable to Mr. Trump, that he caused it, that it was beneficial to his plan to interfere with the certification, and that when it occurred, he made a conscious choice not to stop it and instead to leverage it for more delay.

The main reason Trump wasn't charged with insurrection was down to the lack of case law (emphasis mine):

> [insurrection] typically involves overthrowing a sitting government, rather than maintaining power...

As such, the case would likely be bogged down for years as Trump attempted to wiggle through his favourite loophole, "nobody anticipated such an awful person being in charge."

[1]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/read-the-full-special-...

And yes, he was responsibke for the violent attempt to overthrow the election. And yes he is both criminal amd failed businessman.

In Germany when that happens and the company cannot (or does not want to) name the driver... they may get ordered by the authority to keep a logbook. And such an order shows up at any police checkpoint - and if the cops run the plate, they will ask for the logbook. And check the logbook. And if the logbook isn't up to speed... that means some hefty fines.