You’re not going to believe what this formerly respectable couple did to try and avoid a £60 ($88 US) ticket and three points. And it’s not like it would have put the wife over the top – her driving record was spotless. So Mrs. Diane Rodger, a lecturer [professor] was doing 40 mph in a 30mph zone when she was nailed by a speeding camera. Instead of just paying the fine, what did she and her husband Michael (a magistrate!) do? As reported in the Mail Online:
After consulting an internet website for tips on challenging speeding tickets, they altered the car’s appearance.
They changed the style of the Skoda’s number plate and removed stickers from its windscreen in a bizarre attempt to persuade police it had been ‘cloned’ and that she was not the driver…
Then they tried to weasel out of it.
Over the next three months Nottinghamshire Central Ticket Office, which deals with speeding fines, received five letters contesting the ticket, all signed by ‘Mr Rodger JP’.
They variously claimed he had no knowledge of the offence, that the car was regularly used by others, that the car may have been ‘cloned’, that the car was parked in Nottingham city centre at the time of the offence and that the captured image was not clear enough to identify the driver.
The letters also claimed that the middle letter on the number plate was indistinct and that his vehicle did not have stickers in the windscreen, unlike the images of the speeding car.
So the cops went to their house to ask them about the letters. What did they say?
Mrs Rodger stated she had, while Mr Rodger claimed he had signed them without reading them. Thomas Elmer, defending Mr Rodger, said: ‘It was his wife who wished to evade the penalty but it was their joint idea how to go about it.”
Partners in an asinine crime. The Judge agreed.
The couple wept as Judge David Brunning told them they had been ‘staggeringly stupid’ and that he had ‘just been persuaded’ not to send them to prison. Instead, they were each given six-month jail sentences, suspended for two years.
They were also ordered to carry out 300 hours of unpaid work each and to pay £5,000 costs between them after admitting intending to pervert the course of justice.
Here’s the source.