Graham wrote:
Finally they closed off any escape by changing the law to say that in the event of a genuine inability to determine who the driver was, the registered keeper (which is distinct from the legal owner) bears strict liability and gets the penalty.
There are still loopholes – there was a case a few years ago where a driver deliberately hit a cyclist in an act of road rage. The car was a hire car, two drivers had been registered with the hire car company as authorised drivers, and neither would say who was driving at the time. There had been CCTV video of the incident, but you couldn’t make out who was driving. The case apparently got dropped, no action taken, much to the anger of the cyclist who had been deliberately run over and badly injured. Clearly they aren’t going to prosecute the hire car firm in this case.
Yes, clearly they could not follow that process in that case. But for technical offences (i.e. offences not against the person) it holds.
While we are talking fines, a bit of humour 
MedEwok wrote:
It goes without question that this policy contradicts everything we know about “safety culture”, where operators (in this case pilots) are encouraged to report problems and complications for the benefit of the entire system,
It is important for safety culture that problems are reported that no-one else has detected before instead of being kept as a secret. That is an important clarification!
It comes from a time where only the pilot, the copilot and the flight engineer (yes, they had those these days) could ever know what happened in the cockpit and if they don’t tell the truth there would be now way to find out that anything actually happened.
As far as I remember, even the old NASA-system worked that way: It only served as “get out of jail card” for the cases you reported before an actual FAA examination started. The led to kind of a rat race to report transgressions as quickly as possible.
With all the new technology there are much less cases where we need such a system: In commercial ops FDRs and CVRs in many cases create an even better picture of what went wrong, than the patchy memories of the flight crew could ever have. The automated ATC systems will identify an airspace infringement and start an CAA action even before you might realize (and clearly before you might have access to a self reporting system).
As Ibra has introduced the topic; I suffered dearly from ‘automatic’ camera based fines when I moved to the UK. I bought my first car in London. The next morning I drove down to the local printshop to print copies of my insurance papers (I didn’t have a printer at home). Then I went to the local council office to pay for my annual parking permit. I of course, didn’t know about the congestion zone.
In the post sometime later:
1. I received a parking ticket based on a camera outside the printshop. Apparently it changed from parking allowed to parking not allowed at a certain time and I overstayed my welcome by a minute or two.
2. A second parking ticket from beside the council office (I didn’t see that sign ).
3. A congestion charging zone ticket…
Nonetheless, it was an expensive short journey! In retrospect I find it funny, but at the time, the only one laughing was my wife!
I guess in comparison to the alternative GASCO course/license suspension, I wouldn’t be opposed to a £50 fine for an airspace bust instead of license action… but come on, can’t we just ignore the trivial busts and deal with serious infringements on a case by case basis?
Canuck wrote:
I wouldn’t be opposed to a £50 fine for an airspace bust instead of license action
A 50EUR fine for anything in aviation is completely pointless – as would be a 5 EUR parking ticket in a city where cost for legal parking is 5 EUR/hr…
Best comparison I have seen so far is to measure fines in “Operating cost hours” (OCH). Operating cost for a normal car is about 15 EUR/hr. Therefore a 50 EUR fine for road traffic equals about 3 OCH. In aviation terms that would convert into about 600EUR for a minor airspace bust w/o any safety implication (a normal parking offense also does not influence road safety).
Traffic fines in Germany for not keeping adequate distance to traffic ahead can be as high as 450 EUR. That’s 150 OCH or 30k EUR in aviation money.
In Norway the picture taken has to include an identifiable face, or it is dismissed there and then.
Presumably drivers have become very fond of face masks, and helmet wearing motorcyclists are effectively exempt?
flybymike wrote:
Presumably drivers have become very fond of face masks, and helmet wearing motorcyclists are effectively exempt?
Motorcycles are definitely exempt, yes. There is no way to take a picture of the license plate either, since pictures are taken from the front. I would guess there is one or two “taking advantage” of this, but so what?
This topic has finally been permitted on the main UK chat site where the usual NATS/CAA/ATC people are busy rubbishing the posts from people asking pointed questions about it.
I had a look on the Gasco website and to my amazement they are still running their £200+expenses “punishment” courses
If you look at the locations above, you can see that practically nobody will not be staying the night before, so it is a £300+ job, plus a lot of petrol. No wonder they don’t want to run it over Zoom; the punishment value would be far less.
Contrary to claims, the terms and conditions have not changed for at least a year, but the appalling thing is that the CAA is subjecting mostly not exactly young pilots to the considerable risk of contracting CV19 by sitting in a room with a load of others for a whole day, plus having a lunch in the hotel restaurant.
What if you refuse to go, citing CV19? Per CAP1404, the CAA guy suspends your license.
Looking at the latest CAA data, in August 2020 they sent 9 to gasco
and looking at the previous months it looks like they have reduced the number in the room to something under 10, from the previous 20-25. So no wonder most are getting warning letters… These letters remain on the record for ever and are valid for sentencing for 2 years from the date of the letter (next time you will get gasco).
Meanwhile, classroom speed awareness courses have been suspended.
