The Daily Telegraph has published a good article on the problems associated with enforcement of the ULEZ scheme. It particularly affects foreign drivers. To quote from the article:
“It isn’t just Londoners or even British people who are being stung by the new scheme. Many European motorists have been handed extortionately high fines – some as high as £11,000 – due to errors in their paperwork. These drivers (usually of compliant vehicles) neglected to add their information to a data portal run by the enforcement agency Euro Parking Collection, an omission that TfL seems to think merits a five-figure financial penalty”.
All ULEZ and CAZ schemes suffer from the same problems. They rely on technology working and drivers being aware of the regulations, neither of which is often true. And enforcement raises more money than the legal charges so there is no incentive on operators to ensure they are working properly.
The ULEZ system and all the associated charging and fine structure should be removed, along with Sadiq Khan and the senior management of TfL who have enabled this money-making scheme to be imposed.
See Telegraph article here: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/29/ulez-sadiq-khan-london-ultra-low-emission-zone/
Roger Lawson
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A bigger problem is the how we allowed the erosion of our civil liberties over the last 30 years i.e. the concept of innocence till proven guilty, not being forced to be witness against oneself (having to given the identify of the driver when speed cameras should have being set up to take a photo of the driver) and as the poor sub postmaster found your accuser should be required to prove the reliability of evidence against you not the other way around which would have exposed the bizarre pattern of prosecutions to a jury and forced the prosecution to explain good questions like where all the money these sub postmaster supposedly stole went. In the context of traffic matters it should be a requirement if a large number seem to commit the same offence e.g. speeding on the same stretch of road to investigate the signage and if the restriction serves any rational safety purpose & is consistent (think a dual carriageway with different speed limits in different directions – you would think flooding would be an issue in both direction and a variable speed limit would address the issue), like wise for bus lanes, LTN & yellow box cameras if a council can plan future budget on them something is seriously wrong and I suspect thing will change with a 3 strikes policy before a fine.
We need to do something so that motorist don’t have to prove their innocence at a minimum a limit to the fines and cost councils can charge
and the if people kept to the spirit of the law e.g. the people who clearly attempt to pay the charge but got caught out by errors with payment systems e.g the new autopay provider with dart charge, Tfl refunding payment https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/aug/25/congestion-charge-pay-fines-scam-websites (it amazing what gets fixed when you go to the press) and of course database errors with compliant vehicles.
Then the practice of fines being cheaper if you pay them in 14 days and escalating in cost is an affront to justice as many especially for things without penalty points will just pay to avoid the hassle & the fear of it costing even more.
Also a UK ombudsman like wide system need to be put in place to allow people to raise technical concerns/ faults about road charging system e.g. Number plate cloning, faulty payment systems or even misread number plates (a system to alert drivers of unpaid charges before a fine would be a good idea.)
These are all good points. The English justice system is now corrupt.
Yet again another level of unnecessary beauracy instigated by TfL to catch the motorist and in this case a group of people who don’t even have the chance to show their disapproval by having a vote for Mayor and the London Assembly. I did read that Khan claims one of the excessive current spending budgets is being used to bring all these “services” in house.