That was true of the first generation of SPECS cameras, but the newer ones (which means most of them now) can detect regardless of lane changes.

Not in relation to a fixed penalty. A fixed penalty is essentially an offer to dispose of the matter without a court appearance and it's entirely your choice whether to accept it (by paying £100 and surrendering your licence for endorsement) or not. Not accepting it leads to a summons for speeding. If you're eventually convicted by a court then that's when you do have an obligation to surrender your licence and the DVLA will demand that you do this - and then revoke your licence when they get bored of waiting. But the OP isn't at that point yet.

Easiest thing to do is to send in a postal guilty plea, with a statement in the mitigation box apologising for taking up the court's time, and saying that you would have accepted the fixed penalty had your licence been available. The most likely result is that you'll still get 3 points, but the fine will be a bit larger (around a third of your weekly post-tax income, plus another £100ish in costs and victim surcharge). If you're very lucky the magistrates might see this as an administrative reason beyond your control for not taking up the fixed penalty and fine you at the same level (ie £100 and no costs) though I wouldn't get my hopes up too high on that front as it sounds like you had plenty of opportunity to send off for a replacement licence. There's no need to attend in person if pleading guilty though turning up well dressed and making a good impression may improve your chances of keeping the fine down - whether they improve it enough to make it worth missing a day's work is another question. Meanwhile the ticket office should return the £100 you originally paid as you didn't comply with the rest of the requirements for accepting the fixed penalty - contact them if they haven't done it already.

Existing points and other driving history aren't taken into account when deciding whether to offer a speed awareness course. However if he's got that many points I'd guess that he's already done a court in the last 3 years as well - and that would disqualify him from doing another.

The limit is 40 and in principle there's no reason why he couldn't be prosecuted for doing 41 - any tolerance is a matter of discretion on the part of the police rather than law. In practice most forces do apply a margin of 10%+2, but that means that 46 is the lowet speed you'll be prosecuted for, not the highest you can get away with. If he's already had a totting ban that has the effect of wiping the points that led up to it - so when you say he's on 10 points do you mean he's got 10 more points since he got his licence back, or are you also counting points from before the ban? If it's the latter then he shouldn't be at risk of a ban this time. If he got a 3 month ban rather than the usual 6 on reaching 12 points presumably he made a successful exceptional hardship case? Presumably he's aware that he can't make a second exceptional hardship case on the same grounds for 3 years?

If it was just for a handful of days I'd be inclined just to take the car off the road, let the insurance lapse and not bother SORNing it. Strictly speaking it's illegal under continuos insurance regs but the chances of actually getting into trouble would be minimal - normal practice is to send out a letter warning that the car needs to be insured or SORNed and only to take enforcement action if you don't ISO anything in response to the letter.

Unless this was in Scotland 41 in a 30 would normally see the offer of a speed awareness course which takes half a day but avoids any points on her licence. The cost varies by area but is typically of the order of £100. If she' doesn't do a course it will be a fixed penalty (3 points and £100). She won't be getting banned.

No, while the endorsement can be removed from your licence four years after the conviction, it's the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act which determines how long an insurer can ask about the conviction for - and under the terms of the ROA it does not become spent for 5 years. So insurers can still ask about it until next year. You're not due a refund if it becomes spent midway through an insurance year as what's important is whether it's spent at the time you enter into the contract. If it's a matter of a few days and you're still finding that it makes a significant difference then what might be worth considering when your current policy expires is taking out a short term policy for a few days (or keeping the car off road and not insuring it) and delaying taking out an annual policy until the conviction is 5 years old.

The fact that you think the speed limit should be higher isn't a defence to exceeding it, any more than the fact that I think cannabis should be legal would be a defence if I got pulled for possession. If the speed limit has been set by a traffic regulation order then what would be a defence would be if the order was defective or if the council hadn't followed proper procedure in making the order. But it doesn't follow that if the speed limit is unpopular that the council must not have followed procedure. And if the road in question has streetlights then 30 is the default limit and no TRO iwould be required at all, unless it previously had a different limit.

Drink driving is on page 124 of the sentencing guidelines here http://sentencingcouncil.judiciary.gov.uk/docs/MCSG_(web)_-_Complete_8.pdf As you can see, you can expect a ban of 12-16 months (probably 16 as your alcohol reading is at the top of the first band) and a band C fine - which means around 150% of your weekly income, reduced by a third if you plead guilty.if you're out of work and on benefits your income will be assumed to be £110/week, so expect a fine of around £110. To that you can add costs of around £85 (may be reduced for people on very low income) and a victim surcharge of £20. You'll normally be allowed to pay the fine by installments. You'll likely be offered the chance to take a drink driver rehabilitation course which would reduce the ban by a quarter. You won't be going to prison unless there's something big that you haven't mentioned. Jail is reserved for repeat offenders, those WAY over the limit, and those who kill or cause serious injury while drunk. While the details of the conviction stay on our licence for 11 years, it only has to be declared to insurers for 5 years, as that's how long it takes to become "spent" under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. However you can expect a significant premium hike for those 5 years. You're more likely to be dealt with by magistrates than by a judge. The correct form of address for magistrates is "your worships", but if you get flustered or you're not sure, nobody is going to get upset if you just say "sir" or "madam".

I guess most people don't think it's worth the risk of going to prison for the sake of a speeding ticket. That's the likely outcome if you falsely claim that a foreigner was driving your car, and get caught. As Raykay alludes to, even if the police can't prove that the mysterious foreigner you just named doesn't exist, it's very unlikely that he would be insured to drive your car, so you'd be setting yourself up for a charge of causing or permitting him to drive without insurance. In the OP's case I assume that the German friend both exists and had appropriate insurance cover, in which case the OP has nothing to worry about.

The company cannot pay an FPN for speeding on your behalf, for various reasons, not least because even if they did pretend to be you and attempt to pay it for you, they would have to send in your driving licence in order for payment to be accepted. My guess is that the £36 is an administration fee which the lease company charge for responding to the NIP and passing on your/your company's details to the police. Whether they can do this depends on the terms of the contract, but it's a fairly common clause in lease agreements. You have nothing to lose at this stage by contacting Avon and Somerset and asking about the status of this. They certainly won't be sending you on a speed awareness course nine months after the fact and in order to prosecute you for speeding they have to begin court proceedings within 6 months of the offence - so if they haven't summonsed you yet, you won't be getting a summons. And there's no need to pretend that you can't remember who was driving - you can shout from the rooftops that you were and it will not make an iota of difference. The worry would be that the company have made a mistake and provided the wrong address for you, and that a NIP has gone to that address, followed by a summons for failing to respond. You could end up being convicted and fined n your absence, and if that happens the first you knew about t might be when bailiffs are dispatched to collect the fine, track down your real address and turn up n your doorstep with a bill for several hundred pounds. While there are ways of dealing with that situation if it happens, it would make your life a lot easier if you nipped it in the bud before it got there. In other words contacting the ticket office can't possibly make your situation worse, and might potentially make it better. Incidentally it's not remotely unusual to be NIPped for 35 in a 30 - the 10%+2 guideline means that 35 is the lowest speed you'll be prosecuted for, not the highest you'll get away with.

Dangerous driving carries an obligatory one year ban. It would only attract points if for some exceptional reason the ban were not imposed, in which case the court would have the option of imposing 3-11 points instead. The two types are indeed separate offences, but would not generally have got you points as well if committed at the same time as the dangerous driving, especially if the dangerous driving charge related primarily to the condition of the vehicle. Regardless of the number of points though it's still a matter of fact that you were convicted of three offences, so you have to tell your insurer about them all if they ask.

Admiral by any chance? A few insurers do have clauses saying that they'll do thi in the event of a drink related accident. What the solicitor means is that the exclusion is covered by section 148 of the Road Traffic Act http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/52/section/148 Drunkenness would come under the physical or mental condition of the person driving the vehicle, so the insurer cannot refuse to pay a third party claim on account of it. However the section goes on to say (subsection 4) that the sum paid is recoverable from the insured. So if they've worded the exclusion correctly then in principle yes they can do this I'm afraid.

The car can also be seized for driving without a valid licence (which the OP is certainly doing), regardless of whether she has insurance.

Unfortunately a US licence isn't exchangeable for a UK one. The OP will need to take a theory and practical test to get a UK licence.

Generally speaking with two offences committed on the same occasion she'd only get the points for the more serious one, so at worst 6-8. I also don't think it's obvious that she'd be uninsured. Many (probably most) insurers merely stipulate that the driver must either hold, or have held and not be disqualified from holding a valid licence. It means that people who, for example, forget to renew their licence every 3 years when they turn 70 aren't left uninsured. The OP's situation is not dissimilar - she has held a valid licence (her US licence was valid for a year) and she is not disqualified from holding one. I'm not certain that I'd want to stake my driving licence on that argument though, let alone my passport. And OTOH some insurers (eg Admiral) simply stipulate that you must hold a valid licence, which would make her uninsured.

That's melodramatic - anyone else involved could still claim compensation from the OP's insurers (it's extremely difficult for an insurer to avoid their liabilities to third parties, even where the policy is not valid), or in the worst case scenario the MIB. not that that makes driving without insurance a good idea of course.

Nobody's going to tell you that you have to stop (until you end up in court, by which point it's too late) - the onus is on you to ensure that you're entitlement to drive is valid. It's your choice of course, but be aware that you're driving without a valid licence and, depending on the terms of your policy, quite possibly without insurance as well. On top of being very expensive in their own right, being convicted of either of those things would pretty much scupper any remaining chance you have of getting citizenship in the next few years.

AIUI your US licence can only be used here for 12 months from the date you become resident in Britain - not 12 months fromtt the date you first drive here.I wonder if that was part of the reason they didn't laccept the payment of the fixed penalty - though if they picked up on that it's odd that they didn't also charge you with driving otherwise than in accordance with a licence. Going forward though it sounds like you ned to get a UK licence as soon as possible. I assume that the thinking behind differentiating between fixed penalties and actual convictions is that minor traffic offences are usually dealt with by fixed penalties, and if you end up in court it's normally because it's a more serious offence (eg driving a long way over the speed limit) or because you've already had multiple fixed penalties. The situation of someone who'd normally get a fixed penalty ending up in court because of an administrative error doesn't seem to be covered in the guidance. I'd certainly hope that that you'd be able to get citizenship despite this but I don't know - you need to speak to someone who understands the system. The immigration lawyer sounds like a good place to start.

Road traffic offences are criminal offences. There's no such thing as a non-criminal offence. hence every piece of legislation which creates an offence, from speeding to rape simply says "offence" without feeling the need to classify them into criminal and non-criminal offences. Your magistrate friend may mean that it's not a recordable offence in that it does not lead to a criminal record in the normal sense (recordable offences are basically ones for which you can be sent to prison), however from the link I posted above clearly it is something which the Home Office regard as relevant to citizenship applications.

That link doesn't come close to listing all offences - hundreds are created every year (link). The offence is created by Road Traffic Act Section 41D The actual construction and use requirement is here. Until recently minor motoring offences were generally disregarded as far as citizenship applications were concerned, but the latest version of the guidelines seem to have tightened things up (page 18)

What's the two tenths rule? Google has never heard of it. A laser speed gun takes around a third of a second to take a measurement, so if your speed only crept as high as 84 for a few seconds, that would still be ample time to get a reading. The photos (or actually stills from the video) would show if there was any possibility of the reading coming from another car. The police aren't obliged to let you them at this stage, but often will if you write back with a polite request. Note that you still have to name yourself as driver within 28 days of receiving the NIP or risk being charged with the more serious offence of failure to provide driver details - entering into further correspondence doesn't stop the clock.

Proof that it was posted creates a presumption that it was delivered. In theory you can rebut the presumption by giving evidence that you didn't get it and impressing the magistrates with your obvious honesty. Whether they believe you is another matter. It would be a high risk strategy as if they didn't believe you your wife would get 6 points and a stonking big fine. Or you can take the offer to plead guilty to the original speeding offence and get 3 points and a small fine. You can ask the magistrates to restrict the fine to the original £100 and they might agree - if they don't it will still be smaller than the fine for failure to provide driver details. The speed awareness course is not an option at this point. The court has no power to send you on one, you have no actual right to do one and they're purely at the discretion of the police. Generally there's also a time limit (3 or 4 months since the offence) in which they have to be completed, and I assume that's long gone. Sorry, it's frustrating but that's the way it goes. The prosecutor's offer is the best you're likely to get.

Note that several different offences have been mentioned on this thread, and some of the advice is only relevant to specific offences. If in the end you've been charged under railway byelaw 14(1) (1) then I don't think the status of the road (ie public or private) has any relevance.