[sensecall]

It's a ludicrous system – I've experienced it first hand.

If for some reason the letter isn't delivered (or indeed sent), the original offence is scrapped and a new offence issued for Failure to provide information.

Frustratingly, there is no obligation on the Police to provide proof of posting, and per the law, it is deemed received once sent.

Try proving you didn't receive something...

[belorn]

The primary alternative is to have signed delivery, in which case some people will simply refuse to sign it and thus prevent delivery. Signed delivery is the way the postal service usually differentiate between normal delivery which has some kind of error rate which the postal service do not take responsibility for, and the signed service which usually carry some insurance (up to a maximum) of delivery.

The US has their Service of process which is commonly seen in movies, which is often made into a joke in comedies.

A much older system is the one where by law people had to put a notice in the news paper, sometimes multiple notices, and then that was considered enough proof of delivering the notice.

It would be an interesting conversation to philosophy how a future system should be designed that can't be refused, where delivery to the recipient is guarantied, and where the sender and the delivery service must produce proof of their parts.

[sensecall]

Perhaps, though I’m fairly confident that given enough thought we could fairly quickly come up with a much better process; and without the risk of convicting individuals because of unsent or undelivered post.

[doublerabbit]

My father worked on the early 90's contract that implemented the speed camera's on the motorway. The future road map was to make these digitally automated. Dark Fibre was laid but the plans were scrapped as the government saw it as a waste of money. This is why we are stuck with the ludicrous system.

For a long while if you were changing lanes while speeding through the camera it couldn't capture the plate. Again the government didn't care. Of course now resolved with the archaic future technology we have now.

[rob74]

I'm not sure what the technology by which the data from the speed camera is downloaded has to do with identifying the driver?

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.

[jaennaet]

In Finland automatic camera fines (they're not exactly fines but I have no idea how to translate "liikennevirhemaksu" so work with me here) are the problem of whoever owns the car. If the owner wasn't the one driving the car, then it's up to them to inform the police who was actually driving

[rob74]

Interesting! If I translate it from Finnish to German, Google says something along the lines of "traffic violation fee". Usually you can't punish someone for something someone else has done, but maybe if you call it a fee (which doesn't imply punishment) instead of a fine, you can (at least in Finland)?

Reminds me of the fines for using public transport without a ticket in Germany: they're not called fines either, but "erhöhtes Beförderungsentgelt" ("increased transportation fee"). I'm sure there's a very good reason for this name too...

[jaennaet]

"Traffic vioaltion fee" is a great translation. As far as I understand the logic behind them, they're meant for relatively minor violations where a fine would be kind of overkill and specifically have to be "directed" at the right person.

The downside is that unlike fines which scale by income here – the term is "päiväsakko" or "day fine", a fine unit that scales with net income – the fees are fixed sums, so unless a person with high income really does something heinous with their car, they're not as likely to get 200k€ (really) speeding tickets.

So now if you're rich you can speed all you want and pay a relatively small fee for it, as long as you're not doing 200km/h in a school zone or something like that

Edit: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna4233383

From 2004. He was driving 80km/h in a 40km/h zone.

"Millionaire hit with record speeding fine"

One of Finland’s richest men has been fined a record 170,000 euros ($217,000) for speeding through the centre of the capital, police said on Tuesday.

[rlpb]

> And all of this has to be done in a way that will hold up in court, therefore snail mail.

This needs to change. Snail mail is no longer reliable. Letters often get delayed by weeks or go missing altogether, but the law still assumes that justice is being done by it being sufficient to assume that a letter that was posted has been received within a few days. It's no longer true.

[dylan604]

Wouldn't it be more reasonable to just issue the fine to the owner of the car? The owner allowed the person to use their car and accepts that responsibility. If it was stolen, then just say so. Even in the case of fleets, someone is responsible for know who is operating the vehicle and when. The gov't shouldn't care about it any further than holding the owner responsible. If the owner doesn't want to rat out the actual driver, then the owner takes the hit on points/fines/whatever

[adamauckland]

Speeding is a criminal offence, lying about who was driving is punishable by prison.

[londons_explore]

> Dark Fibre was laid

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

[UqWBcuFx6NV4r]

It, in reality, works just fine. Stop trying to harbour sympathy from Americans with their prebiotics traffic safety systems.

[jen20]

That is indeed ludicrous - I bet the same does not apply to your returned information either.

[sensecall]

Correct. Obligation is on the individual to prove receipt by the Police (in the event they claim you didn't respond).

[ndsipa_pomu]

I believe that for Royal Mail at least, proof of posting is considered sufficient to work as proof of receipt.

[RansomStark]

that's difficult when most post is dropped in a metal box on a street. But I'd argue that not the issue people have with the way these laws work in practice.

For those that don't use the UK postal service, Royal Mail has a recorded delivery option that can show that, at least something, mostly likely what was sent, was delivered to the address.

The issue here is that the UK government has given itself a pass that, 'trust us, we sent it' is fair and legal, while at the same time refusing to allow not the government to use the same argument.

People tend to get upset when laws and legal defenses are asymmetric, doubly so when its skewed to protect the bureaucracy at the expense of the citizen.

Just for reference the Royal Mail uses complaints to track losses, in the year 2017-2018, Royal Mail received 250,000 complaints for lost items, out of around 6 billion items processed [0]. Of course that requires that the sender somehow knows that the item was lost, so losses are likely significantly higher.

Without a recorded delivery, 'I never received what you sent' should absolutely be a valid defense. Although, 'Trust me I sent it', should not be a valid argument for either side, unless they can show that the item was send and received.

[0] https://descrier.co.uk/business/how-frequently-is-post-lost-...

[amiga386]

The Scottish court system uses Royal Mail Signed For to send citations, I believe it makes two attempts to deliver, and won't consider the citation delivered unless the named addressee signs for it.

...on the other hand, if you don't respond to citations e.g. for a criminal case, they might then escalate by issuing a warrant for your arrest.

Looking at the English civil courts, I'm having trouble parsing their rules:

https://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/civil/rule...

My reading is that either the court sends the summons (claim form) and comes to its own conclusion if it has been served or not, but if you choose to do it or have a process server do it, you have to submit a certificate of service to the court. If you do that, all it says they require is the method and date you sent it, no proof it got delivered!

Furthermore, rule 6.18 says that if the court posts the claim form itself, it will inform you if the form is returned to them undelivered... but will deem it "served" anyway, provided you gave them the correct address?

[sensecall]

You articulated my frustrations much better than I did.

Given more time, money and determination, I’d love have properly challenged the court system/law around this.

Alas, I didn’t and just got slammed with points and a fine. I’m still bitter about it all these years later.

[paganel]

It's ludicrous that the British put up with those laws, at some point they have to assume responsibility.

[UqWBcuFx6NV4r]

Not everybody wants to be American, thankfully.