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Comment by gambiting | Hacker News Reader

I live in the UK, but never understood this. What if you really, genuinely don't know who was driving the car at the time? Can you give a list of people who could have been driving it, to the best of your knowledge? After all, it's the police's job to establish who committed the offence,not yours?

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Germany handles this somewhat similar (the owner is supposed to know who's driving). It is possible to claim 'I have no idea', but the court is able to respond with 'Well, from now on you're documenting every single ride with your car for quite a while'. That means that every driver of this car now is required to document

- the current date

- the time you start the ride

- the license plate number

- the name of the driver

and immediately after finishing the ride

- the end of the ride

- the driver's signature

I personally would like to avoid that..

I think this is quite a good example of why protections like the 5th amendment are important.

A person might be tempted - in such a case - to confess to the crime and take the fine simply in order to avoid getting entangled in a bureaucratic nightmare. And because of that the state is encouraged to threaten bureaucratic nightmare in order to elicit a confession.

Isn't this exactly the situation that protections against self-incrimination are designed to avoid?

I'm confused. But then again, I know little/none about US laws. My naive understanding of the 5th is that you can remain quiet if you'd otherwise have to point at yourself (or your family?). If your coworker is the offender, can you plead the 5th?

If that's close enough: How is that a problem? Yes, people over here might just pay the fine (which is completely legal for a lot of cases: In all cases where the state doesn't care about the offender's identity).

But if the 5th only means that you're allowed to protect yourself (and yours), isn't it correct to pay? I currently parse your comment as "Wouldn't the people pay up if they are guilty in the first place?".

Not my native language.

If you are suspected of doing something illegal (speeding) because your car was photographed using photo radar, I'm reasonably sure the 5th amendment applies to the police or prosecutor asking you to answer any questions about that accusation.

The answer could be "X person borrowed my car", which isn't, itself necessarily covered, however the answer could be "I was driving my car at that time", which is definitely covered by the 5th amendment. Since one of the possible truthful responses counts as testimony against yourself, you don't have to answer the question at all, otherwise non-answers could be seen as implicit confessions.

> After all, it's the police's job to establish who committed the offence,not yours?

The police's assumption is that as the car's owner you are responsible for its use, and have committed any offense involving it.

Well, then if you don't mind me saying so, it's a dumb assumption. If say....you have 4 children, all insured on your car, and all of them refuse using it at the time(or maybe they all say they have used it, and all have driven on the road in question, or maybe the case is now year old and no one remembers who was driving that day), then how could you possibly, in good faith, be hold liable for this?

The link upthread mentions this. You ask for the photo. If the photo doesn't answer the question you can say you don't know, and ask for further evidence.

> then how could you possibly, in good faith, be hold liable for this?

Because you're the person responsible for the vehicle. That's literally what "responsible" means. It's your job as a car owner to ensure situations like this, where you don't know who was driving, don't happen.

I think that's one thing that's different vs the US. It's not the car being charged but an individual. That's the article's point that in the US they can't arbitrarily decide that someone was responsible for a crime like that, it's a direct violation of our requirement of due process and other proceedings.

But I am not required by law to keep the record of every single person driving that car, am I? Like I said, I can, to my best effort, know that on the evening of day X, 3 people drove my car, because they were all running errands. I don't know the exact times when they were all using it, but I am happy to supply the list of names.

> But I am not required by law to keep the record of every single person driving that car, am I?

No, but if you do not it's on your head, you are personally responsible for the use of your motor vehicle.

it's reasonable to expect that a person know where their car is, but that does not amount to a legal requirement to do so, as you have admitted. In point of fact, you are not responsible for what other people do with your things. If you borrow a gun from me and shoot someone, I cannot be held liable for that shooting. Ownership may imply responsibility, but not liability.

If someone is killed by your gun and you don't tell who, you will be jailed at least.

This is not phrased such that it can be said to be true or false. Yes, accessory to murder is a felony itself. Accessory to speeding is not, and being ignorant of the crime is the opposite of accessory. Would you like to rephrase your objections?

Car is dangerous. It's easy to kill someone by accident using car, just by pressing accelerator pedal long enough. Just compare number of killed or injured by a car and by a weapon. Car is still the most dangerous thing we have: http://www.vpc.org/regulating-the-gun-industry/gun-deaths-co... .

Yeah, you left out a part of that.

"If you borrow a gun from me, and I don't know that you did, and you don't or won't tell me that you did... oh well. shrug" becomes your expectation of what should happen next.

"Oh sorry, you weren't driving your vehicle, and you have no idea who was, when it was involved in that accident. But you know it wasn't stolen. Guess there's nothing more we can do here, have a nice day."

You're arguing that because a gun or car is dangerous, ownership implies liability. There are few things which can be possessed which cannot be dangerous in the wrong hands, and a car is not actually intended for the purpose of murder, so one should probably not judge it by that standard. However, I did explicitly consider the case of an inherently dangerous object, so I cannot have left out that part as you suggest. I am really not sure what part of this concept you could possibly have an objection to. You know we're talking about a car, right, not a hydrogen bomb? Surely you can do better than that?

Your scenario seems a bit off. I imagine that if your kids did something stupid they should admit it - or they lose access to the car, period.

'A year old' case seems unlikely as well. I don't know about the UK laws, but over here most (all?) traffic violations expire after 3 month. There's no way to receive questions about a speeding ticket in the distant past..

Ok, if the "year ago" scenario is far fetched, then I'm not even going to pretend I can remember when I was on this day a month ago,much less where my car was and who was driving it. Like I said, I am not required by law to keep a record of every single person using my car with the times they used it, so how can the law require me to produce said information? If me + 4 other people are insured on a vehicle, that means that possibly, it could be one out of 5 people driving it on a given day. I have no idea which one it was. What then?

I can only state what the law requires here, in DE. It requires you to know that (but admittedly you're usually going to get a picture with the first request for information, so it's mostly a matter of "Hey Joe, you've got a new mugshot!" and passing it to the right one of five) and has ways to "motivate" you if you fail this in a harsh case or repeatedly.

Which is fair in my book: You own the car, you are responsible for it. You're not on the hook for offenses that you didn't cause. But you were careless with your car if nobody steps forward after an incident.

Are you suggesting collective punishment? How do you know who to revoke access to the car if they don't admit it?

Also how do they if they actually were the one that was speeding if more than one used the car on the same road.

Uhm. Yes. If I give access to 2.x tons of steel and someone abuses that, I'll revoke those privileges.

Collective punishment? You make it sound like Full Metal Jacket. I'd call it responsible behavior, protecting the person involved (unfit for driving if unable to admit errors) and myself (responsible for that heavy machine and the one whose trust was abused).

Obviously that doesn't apply to a random parking ticket or even a minor (slap on the wrist) speeding ticket. But accidents, running red lights, sever speeding? See above. Admit it or gtfo.

I really, really fail to see the reason for artificial "4 kids have access, they took turn driving and it was a year ago. What can these poor souls do?" arguments.

What is so hard about getting this, I really don't understand??

Wife takes car in the evening to do some shopping. She comes back, daughter takes the car to see some friends. They both drove on the same road. Month later, you get a letter saying that your car has been photographed doing 5mph over the limit on that day. The photo has a time stamp, but there's really no way to tell who was driving at that time, it could have been either your daughter or your wife.

What do you do? Do you pay the fine, knowing fully well that it wasn't you driving? Or do you tell your wife or daughter to take the points? At the same time, you are aware that naming the wrong person is actually a criminal offence, and since you are not 100% certain who was driving, how can you name anyone??

Why shouldn't you demand more evidence from the police? Why shouldn't you tell the police that you simply don't know and have no way of knowing who was using the car at the time? How can the police ticket anybody in this case, since they don't know who was driving?

I really, really fail to see why is it so hard to understand this. Actually, I bet this happens all the time, but people prefer to just pay the fine and be done with it, instead of fighting for their rights.

The red light cameras here now started adding a photo of the driver side window to clarify this concern.

Well, all over this subthread I'm comparing it to my local laws and procedures. My answers are to be read in that context.

Over here you get a picture showing license plate and driver for most offenses (obviously not for parking tickets etc). Pointing out that the picture shows your wife or your daughter should be a trivial exercise.

But I understand that this might not be the case in your jurisdiction. Now, I hope you do get some evidence. The license plate at least?

If the car you own, that you are responsible for, is caught speeding, then there's no way in hell that you can shrug and say "Well.. Could've been anyone, really. The keys usually are in the lock, anyone could be the driver". That excuse seems mind-blowingly easy to exploit. Sure - you might not know who drove the car. In my world, that should have consequences for you, the owner (over here it's on a case by case basis, not a strict consequence).

My understanding so far is that someone wants to weasel out of that responsibility by paying a lawyer.. or teaching law. "If you cannot tell who drove it's your problem" is a crappy answer imo, because that can only lead to more surveillance. And there lies my problem, my issue.

The only weaseling here is by the entity that would levy a fine/penalty without presenting sufficient evidence. Moreover, it is or should be a natural right for the accused to confront their accusers. Both of these important ideas are trampled if you accept violations issued by a machine.

Old, old news, but still funny IMHO:

http://arbroath.blogspot.it/2008/10/german-police-seek-speed...

Shouldn't they need something more solid than an assumption to hit you with legal penalties?

> A person shall not be guilty of an offence ... if he shows that he did not know and could not with reasonable diligence have ascertained who the driver of the vehicle was.

So yes, if you only had a list of names and couldn't do anything else, you could hand that over. The police could then require information from each of those people in the same way.

There is a statutory defence if you can't identify the driver "using reasonable diligence", but it's a very tough sell. It's certainly not as simple as "Well it could have been me or my wife, but neither of us can remember which." - you'd have to be able to demonstrate what attempts you had made to identify the driver and why these had all been unsuccessful. You are expected to know who is driving your car at a given time.

There was a case which was successfully defended, where the defendant asserted that the "reasonable diligence" requirement only applied after the request was received, and that there was no such requirement for you to retrospectively exercise such diligence. In other words, you must do everything you can to find out who was driving when you receive the notice, but that doesn't mean you have an obligation to keep records of who was driving in anticipation of such a request.

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