8 ms·

Tesla fined for repeatedly failing to help UK police over driving offences

cjs_ac 9mo ago
> The British arm of Elon Musk's electric car giant has faced multiple criminal court proceedings over the past two years linked to alleged road traffic offences. > Tesla offers its vehicles on long-term leases, and in such a scenario the leasing company is typically the registered keeper of the car. > Drivers of rented or company cars caught speeding have to be named before they can face prosecution and companies which fail to return paperwork to police can be prosecuted instead.
AlexandrB 9mo ago
Given that this is coming out of the UK, I thought it was going to be about some Orwellian request for Tesla to detect speeding and report it to the police. It's actually a much more reasonable situation where Tesla is failing to identify drivers of leased/rented cars and Tesla clearly seems in the wrong. > Tesla offers its vehicles on long-term leases, and in such a scenario the leasing company is typically the registered keeper of the car. > Drivers of rented or company cars caught speeding have to be named before they can face prosecution and companies which fail to return paperwork to police can be prosecuted instead.
- dmix 9mo ago
  More specifically Tesla basically just paid a small set of automated speeding camera fines on behalf of their leasing customers, which include some glorified late charges because they didn't reply promptly.
  - EmptyCoffeeCup 9mo ago
    Very happy - the £100 fine isn't the problem, it's the points/day-wasted-on-useless-course that is the real deterrent to speeding. And before people say "think of the children" and "I learned something I should have already known on the course" - Speed limits are increasingly being changed for political reasons: Safety has nothing to do with it, therefore, these arguments no longer stand (my local authority is determined to make cars as slow as buses, and is more than happy to "set aside" any suggestions that they do not do this).
    - cbeach 9mo ago
      Yes, anti-motorist policy is thinly veiled. Local councils are willing to admit they are directly harming the interests of people peacefully going about their legitimate business, in order to try to manipulate their behaviour. It's all such zero sum thinking. Rather than reducing congestion (and thus pollution) by making the roads more efficient, they prefer to make them LESS efficient (with LTNs, modal filters, speed bumps, chicanes, one-way etc) in the hope that this will discourage traffic. All it does is move the congestion from one place to another, and make the situation worse overall.
    - youngtaff 9mo ago
      What speed limits are being changed for political reasons? Reducing the speed limit to 20mph in large parts of Wales reduced injuries and accidents so much so that insurers have reduced premiums
yakz 9mo ago
Seems like some kind of weird quirk that the government doesn't already have this information readily available. Why isn't there a registration process for the person that leased the car?
- oakesm9 9mo ago
  If you lease a car the owner of the vehicle isn't the driver, but the lease company itself. Tesla was contacted to provide the drivers name (as is their legal obligation) and when they didn't they were fined. Exactly the same is true if you own the car outright. You as the owner of the vehicle will be contacted and asked to provide the details of the person who was driving at the time.
  - short_sells_poo 9mo ago
    I just realized something: doesn't this allow the actual drivers to escape the non-monetary penalties? In the UK, if a driver is caught speeding, they'll (generally) also get points on their license and after accumulating 12 points, they'll (generally) lose their license for a while. Points decay on some frequency which I forget. Anyway, what's to stop someone from driving a company car and then just paying the fines via the company and refusing the name the driver?
    - mschuster91 9mo ago
      > Anyway, what's to stop someone from driving a company car and then just paying the fines via the company and refusing the name the driver? In Germany when that happens and the company cannot (or does not want to) name the driver... they may get ordered by the authority to keep a logbook. And such an order shows up at any police checkpoint - and if the cops run the plate, they will ask for the logbook. And check the logbook. And if the logbook isn't up to speed... that means some hefty fines.
      - Y-bar 9mo ago
        Germany isn’t required to keep a log book? In Netherlands we had to keep details on clock, distance, driver, and reason for all use of the company vehicles.
cbeach 9mo ago
[flagged]
- arrozconcosas 9mo ago
  Thank you for offering an objective analysis of the story. Too many people go to it with pre-conceived bias against this particular carmaker. If you replaced it with 'Ford' the article would never have been published.
  - Angostura 9mo ago
    If Ford offered loaners and wasn’t cooperating with police to identify the speeding drivers it absolutely would.
  - jen20 9mo ago
    It wouldn't be necessary to publish, because Ford (presumably) comply with the law.
- watwut 9mo ago
  Reality check: the issue with Donald Trump video manipulation is that media are consistently showing him more coherent and saner then he actually is.
  - cbeach 9mo ago
    If you'd seen the before/after video clips you'd understand that this is a pretty big deal. The BBC spliced two separate video clips nearly 1hr apart to make out that Trump was an insurrectionist. Original quote: "We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women" Manipulated BBC version of quote: "We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, and I'll be there with you, and we fight. We fight like hell" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjPlfUt4S9U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjPlfUt4S9U If you dislike Trump, you should be angry at the BBC for lending legitimacy to Trump's "fake news" narrative.
    - 9mo ago
londons_explore 9mo ago
For context for international readers, the UK has a lot of speed cameras and other automated ways to give out fines. These get sent by snailmail to the 'owner'[simplification] of the vehicle using a government database. The owner must then, within a deadline, say who was driving the vehicle at that date and time. If the owner fails to say who was driving, they have committed a criminal offence, and will be fined. It looks like Tesla has in a bunch of cases not declared the driver on time. I'm willing to bet that's due to them just being slack with records in some cases - for example loaner cars, offences which occurred on the same day as a sale from person A to person B, etc. 18 offences across the whole fleet of >100k cars isn't much really, when you consider ~30% of motorists receive a fine in any given year.
- philwelch 9mo ago
  That’s a horrible system. Britain used to be famous for the professionalism of their police and now they can’t be bothered to make a traffic stop and give people speeding tickets face to face.
  - faefox 9mo ago
    They're sort of damned if they do and damned if they don't, aren't they? If they make traffic stops for speeding people will moan about how they're just trying to meet quotas or ask why they aren't going after "real criminals." People just want to drive irresponsibly and they will invent any reason to justify why they're the victim, actually.
    - josephcsible 9mo ago
      You've inadvertently completed both parts of a proof by cases. We don't want speeding laws enforced at all right now, because most speed limits are way too low, because they're set for reasons other than actual traffic safety. Let's raise all speed limits to the 85th percentile speed first and only then talk about stepping up enforcement.
      - 9mo ago
SomaticPirate 9mo ago
Convicted 5 times... if this was a natural person it stands to reason their license to operate a motor vehicle would be revoked. However, a "corporate" person faces no such consequences. What is the equivalent of jail for these "corporate" entities who are more than happy to pay fines.
Stevvo 9mo ago
"Almost 4,000 defendants have been convicted in courts in England and Wales in the last two weeks for failing to identify the driver of a vehicle under police investigation, leading to fines ranging from £1 to £1,000." "Tesla has been convicted at least 18 times" So, Tesla are 1 of 4000. I feel the article is missing a bigger story here to make it about Tesla.
- jen20 9mo ago
  The difference is (presumably) that they are the only auto finance company doing this and therefore should have a more rigorous standard applied than the individuals who make up the remaining 3982 cases.
lingrush4 9mo ago
[flagged]
- BigTTYGothGF 9mo ago
  You switched accounts before reposting. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46733330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46733330)
  - drcongo 9mo ago
    And then switched again to reply to themselves. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46733370 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46733370
  - cbeach 9mo ago
    lingrush4 and me (chrisbeach, the OP of that comment) are unconnected. Likewise mjparrott. And I didn't realise my original comment was flagged (!). Thanks to whoever vouched for it. Quite sinister how people misuse the flagging tool on this site, to try to hide any opinions they find personally inconvenient
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
axel479343 9mo ago
your car is a talking-to-the-fascist-cops machine now. truly dystopian shit
killingtime74 9mo ago
20k in fines, so just over half of cost of 1 Model 3

> The British arm of Elon Musk's electric car giant has faced multiple criminal court proceedings over the past two years linked to alleged road traffic offences. > Tesla offers its vehicles on long-term leases, and in such a scenario the leasing company is typically the registered keeper of the car. > Drivers of rented or company cars caught speeding have to be named before they can face prosecution and companies which fail to return paperwork to police can be prosecuted instead.

AlexandrB 9mo ago

Given that this is coming out of the UK, I thought it was going to be about some Orwellian request for Tesla to detect speeding and report it to the police. It's actually a much more reasonable situation where Tesla is failing to identify drivers of leased/rented cars and Tesla clearly seems in the wrong. > Tesla offers its vehicles on long-term leases, and in such a scenario the leasing company is typically the registered keeper of the car. > Drivers of rented or company cars caught speeding have to be named before they can face prosecution and companies which fail to return paperwork to police can be prosecuted instead.

dmix 9mo ago
More specifically Tesla basically just paid a small set of automated speeding camera fines on behalf of their leasing customers, which include some glorified late charges because they didn't reply promptly.
- EmptyCoffeeCup 9mo ago
  Very happy - the £100 fine isn't the problem, it's the points/day-wasted-on-useless-course that is the real deterrent to speeding. And before people say "think of the children" and "I learned something I should have already known on the course" - Speed limits are increasingly being changed for political reasons: Safety has nothing to do with it, therefore, these arguments no longer stand (my local authority is determined to make cars as slow as buses, and is more than happy to "set aside" any suggestions that they do not do this).
  - cbeach 9mo ago
    Yes, anti-motorist policy is thinly veiled. Local councils are willing to admit they are directly harming the interests of people peacefully going about their legitimate business, in order to try to manipulate their behaviour. It's all such zero sum thinking. Rather than reducing congestion (and thus pollution) by making the roads more efficient, they prefer to make them LESS efficient (with LTNs, modal filters, speed bumps, chicanes, one-way etc) in the hope that this will discourage traffic. All it does is move the congestion from one place to another, and make the situation worse overall.
  - youngtaff 9mo ago
    What speed limits are being changed for political reasons? Reducing the speed limit to 20mph in large parts of Wales reduced injuries and accidents so much so that insurers have reduced premiums

yakz 9mo ago

Seems like some kind of weird quirk that the government doesn't already have this information readily available. Why isn't there a registration process for the person that leased the car?

oakesm9 9mo ago
If you lease a car the owner of the vehicle isn't the driver, but the lease company itself. Tesla was contacted to provide the drivers name (as is their legal obligation) and when they didn't they were fined. Exactly the same is true if you own the car outright. You as the owner of the vehicle will be contacted and asked to provide the details of the person who was driving at the time.
- short_sells_poo 9mo ago
  I just realized something: doesn't this allow the actual drivers to escape the non-monetary penalties? In the UK, if a driver is caught speeding, they'll (generally) also get points on their license and after accumulating 12 points, they'll (generally) lose their license for a while. Points decay on some frequency which I forget. Anyway, what's to stop someone from driving a company car and then just paying the fines via the company and refusing the name the driver?
  - mschuster91 9mo ago
    > Anyway, what's to stop someone from driving a company car and then just paying the fines via the company and refusing the name the driver? In Germany when that happens and the company cannot (or does not want to) name the driver... they may get ordered by the authority to keep a logbook. And such an order shows up at any police checkpoint - and if the cops run the plate, they will ask for the logbook. And check the logbook. And if the logbook isn't up to speed... that means some hefty fines.
    - Y-bar 9mo ago
      Germany isn’t required to keep a log book? In Netherlands we had to keep details on clock, distance, driver, and reason for all use of the company vehicles.

cbeach 9mo ago

[flagged]

arrozconcosas 9mo ago
Thank you for offering an objective analysis of the story. Too many people go to it with pre-conceived bias against this particular carmaker. If you replaced it with 'Ford' the article would never have been published.
- Angostura 9mo ago
  If Ford offered loaners and wasn’t cooperating with police to identify the speeding drivers it absolutely would.
- jen20 9mo ago
  It wouldn't be necessary to publish, because Ford (presumably) comply with the law.
watwut 9mo ago
Reality check: the issue with Donald Trump video manipulation is that media are consistently showing him more coherent and saner then he actually is.
- cbeach 9mo ago
  If you'd seen the before/after video clips you'd understand that this is a pretty big deal. The BBC spliced two separate video clips nearly 1hr apart to make out that Trump was an insurrectionist. Original quote: "We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women" Manipulated BBC version of quote: "We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, and I'll be there with you, and we fight. We fight like hell" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjPlfUt4S9U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjPlfUt4S9U If you dislike Trump, you should be angry at the BBC for lending legitimacy to Trump's "fake news" narrative.
  - 9mo ago

londons_explore 9mo ago

For context for international readers, the UK has a lot of speed cameras and other automated ways to give out fines. These get sent by snailmail to the 'owner'[simplification] of the vehicle using a government database. The owner must then, within a deadline, say who was driving the vehicle at that date and time. If the owner fails to say who was driving, they have committed a criminal offence, and will be fined. It looks like Tesla has in a bunch of cases not declared the driver on time. I'm willing to bet that's due to them just being slack with records in some cases - for example loaner cars, offences which occurred on the same day as a sale from person A to person B, etc. 18 offences across the whole fleet of >100k cars isn't much really, when you consider ~30% of motorists receive a fine in any given year.

philwelch 9mo ago
That’s a horrible system. Britain used to be famous for the professionalism of their police and now they can’t be bothered to make a traffic stop and give people speeding tickets face to face.
- faefox 9mo ago
  They're sort of damned if they do and damned if they don't, aren't they? If they make traffic stops for speeding people will moan about how they're just trying to meet quotas or ask why they aren't going after "real criminals." People just want to drive irresponsibly and they will invent any reason to justify why they're the victim, actually.
  - josephcsible 9mo ago
    You've inadvertently completed both parts of a proof by cases. We don't want speeding laws enforced at all right now, because most speed limits are way too low, because they're set for reasons other than actual traffic safety. Let's raise all speed limits to the 85th percentile speed first and only then talk about stepping up enforcement.
    - 9mo ago

SomaticPirate 9mo ago

Convicted 5 times... if this was a natural person it stands to reason their license to operate a motor vehicle would be revoked. However, a "corporate" person faces no such consequences. What is the equivalent of jail for these "corporate" entities who are more than happy to pay fines.

Stevvo 9mo ago

"Almost 4,000 defendants have been convicted in courts in England and Wales in the last two weeks for failing to identify the driver of a vehicle under police investigation, leading to fines ranging from £1 to £1,000." "Tesla has been convicted at least 18 times" So, Tesla are 1 of 4000. I feel the article is missing a bigger story here to make it about Tesla.

jen20 9mo ago
The difference is (presumably) that they are the only auto finance company doing this and therefore should have a more rigorous standard applied than the individuals who make up the remaining 3982 cases.

lingrush4 9mo ago

[flagged]

BigTTYGothGF 9mo ago
You switched accounts before reposting. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46733330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46733330)
- drcongo 9mo ago
  And then switched again to reply to themselves. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46733370 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46733370
- cbeach 9mo ago
  lingrush4 and me (chrisbeach, the OP of that comment) are unconnected. Likewise mjparrott. And I didn't realise my original comment was flagged (!). Thanks to whoever vouched for it. Quite sinister how people misuse the flagging tool on this site, to try to hide any opinions they find personally inconvenient

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

axel479343 9mo ago

your car is a talking-to-the-fascist-cops machine now. truly dystopian shit

killingtime74 9mo ago

20k in fines, so just over half of cost of 1 Model 3