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From “Times Online” yesterday – now i dont know about you but if this is not about revenue raising then i dont know what is! – every car that passed will have slowed down, i’d give the guy a medal!
June 03, 2004
Pedestrian protest earns driving ban
By A CorrespondentA PENSIONER has received a driving ban for standing on a roadside warning motorists of a speed camera ahead.
Stuart Harding, 71, was holding a placard on the A325 at Farnborough in Hampshire announcing “Speed Trap — 300 yards”.
He was cautioned and then charged with wilfully obstructing a constable in the execution of her duty by Sergeant Sarah Cashman, who had been sitting in the back of a police van farther up the road with a laser device to catch motorists exceeding the 30mph limit.
Harding, a retired instrument maker, appeared before Aldershot magistrates yesterday, where he pleaded not guilty. He was convicted, disqualified from driving for a month and ordered to pay £364 costs.
Robert Manley, for the prosecution, said: “It is the Crown’s case that in displaying this sign the defendant was giving motorists advanced warning of a road safety camera being operated by the police some 300 yards along the road.”
Sergeant Cashman told the court that when she cautioned Mr Harding and confiscated the sign, he told her: “I stop people speeding down here. I am only doing what I think is right.” Asked if he knew there was a speed camera ahead he said: “Yes, that is why I am doing it.”
The court confiscated Harding’s sign again and ordered it to be destroyed.
Sergeant Cashman said: “When I asked him if he knew the reason they were there was for road safety he replied ‘I was doing more for road safety than they were’.”
Mr Harding told the court that he had been at the same spot with his sign the previous three Sundays and police had waved and given him the thumbs up. He said his intention had been to slow the traffic. He said: “I don’t see how I was breaking the law by stopping other people breaking the law. I do think that speed cameras are excessive, although that was not why I did it.”
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