A different sort of worry

Prompted by the disgrace of one of our political eminences, we pondered over breakfast how likely it was that we would have done such a thing.

The offence of lying about who was driving a car when it was caught by a traffic camera is easy enough to commit and one on which the police are unlikely to go to the sort of trouble needed to get a conviction unless provoked. Which is perhaps at least partly why the offence attracts the rather grand title of perverting the course of justice and correspondingly severe penalties: the severity might offset the ease and deter.

BH is clear that she would not do such a thing, but I am not so clear, particularly if we were only to think about the matter some weeks after the event. We commonly share the driving on the sort of trips on which we would be likely to attract the attention of a traffic camera and I am not at all sure that I would be able to remember who was driving on this or that stretch of the trip.

Nor am I sure that the memory would not play tricks if there was something serious at stake, like my needing to be able to drive for work, a need which, as it happens, I never had. But I think that if there were such a need and there were reasonable doubt, my unconscious mind might well tip the balance in favour of a sincere, conscious belief that I was not driving at the time of the alleged offence. Maybe one would end up tossing for it - an activity with which I think a magistrate or even a judge would be OK with - provided that he or she believed that there was indeed reasonable doubt.

On the other hand, I think I would back down quite quickly if confronted by evidence to the contrary, unlike, in this respect anyway, the customer of TB who could maintain an obvious untruth against all comers for hours. Rather entertaining it was too.

And I am fairly sure that I would never try and get off on some technicality. Never hire some smart lawyer who would burrow away and dig up some procedural or technical irregularity. The sort of lawyer who would discover that the street lights in place at the time and place of the alleged offence were 5.2 yards further apart than the 26.4 yards recommended, that, in consequence, I could not reasonably be expected to read the speed limit signs and that, in further consequence, I could not reasonably be charged with speeding. And I am fairly sure that I once read of such a case.