| >There is an onus in the UK for the registered keeper of the vehicle to incriminate themselves or someone else for road traffic offences (confirmed by test cases). That's not how that works. You, as the registered keeper of a vehicle, have a number of duties relating to the provision of information to the police or other relevant authorities upon request. This isn't a controversial provision, something similar exists in practically every jurisdiction in which cars have a unique identifier. The s172 process avoids the situation where a speeding fine can be avoided by simply not saying who was driving. 172(4) provides a statutory defence which can be advanced by an individual who's vehicle was cloned: >A person shall not be guilty of an offence by virtue of paragraph (a) of subsection (2) above if he shows that he did not know and could not with reasonable diligence have ascertained who the driver of the vehicle was. And regarding the disclosure issue > The core objective of the police is to assert your guilt, not to provide you with any help for your defence. This is an incorrect statement - the police are obliged to disclose any relevant, unused material (eg material they have that they don't produce in evidence) that will either undermine the prosecution case or advance the defence. However, if you are being prosecuted for failing to nominate, it is more likely that you have completely failed to return the form rather than returning the form with a note saying that your plate appears to have been cloned, in which case access to the ANPR database is irrelevant because you need to explain why you did not bother to furnish the information rather than police not believing that your vehicle had been cloned. |
"Obliged"?
I immediately thought the case of the Guildford Four, and the scene in the biographical film In The Name Of The Father.
IIRC in the film the note in police files said "not to be shown to the defence"... :/