To be utterly shocked by the penalty charge notices I have received from Waltham Forest?

[libertybonds]

I'm interested to know whether I am just a bad driver. I have received two penalty charge notices from Waltham Forest based on CCTV footage for the following 'offences.' I should mention that I don't know these roads and I was using satnav:

1. I approached a large junction. Painted on the road was an indication that you could go left or straight. I mistakenly thought the bus lane was the left turn lane so I moved there to turn. There were no buses around, and in the footage it's clear that I moved to this lane just as I approached the junction. I'm 100% sure that after I turned left I realised my error and moved to the correct lane. Again, no buses anywhere in sight.

1. I entered into a box junction behind a large vehicle. Traffic suddenly slowed and the tail end of my vehicle was in the junction. In the footage, you can actually see me move my vehicle into a lane that would take me in the wrong direction from where I wanted to go in order to move out of the box junction.

So, who is right? Me or Waltham Forest? Do I deserve to pay a combined £260 for these offences?

[quote libertybonds]@C8H10N4O2 I didn't think I would be caught out by slow moving traffic and end up in the box junction. I didn't do it on purpose.[/quote]
Because you didn't think

Sorry you've had two big fines, but these have been because you haven't been anticipating the traffic and not reading the signs/roads properly.

No-one is saying you did it on purpose, but you are, to all intents and purposes, driving 'without due care and attention'.

People are having a bit of a dig at the OP.
I think folks have been right to say 'them's the breaks, and it's justified'.

The tone feels quite aggressive though, and most of us have erred from time to time, so don't think there's a need for it to be quite so finger pointy (or maybe it's just my misinterpretation of the tone).

Sometimes, councils fail too, and they don't make adequate provision for signage, or allow it to fall into disrepair. Sometimes they do make poor decisions and exacerbate problems rather than reduce them.
Not every instance of a transgression is the lack of due care and attention.

Fines are £65 not £130. They are only £130 if you don't pay them.

The fines are steep and there is no evidence that such enforcement rules actually works. But it makes money for the public sector. It is unfortunate for you OP though but seems difficult to challenge on the face of it.
I once drove onto a bus lane when I was driving my scooter (motorcycle) and I did this as I was being pushed out by the inconsiderate cars around me. It was safer for me to move into the bus late temporarily. The police was there at the same place, stopped me, the first police officer wanted to let me go with a slap on the wrist but his colleague didn't let him and I had to pay 100 euros fine (it was in Paris, 20yrs ago). It wasn't great but I learned from this.

Unfortunatley they're right and its all automated now so the AI will pick up if any part of any car stops in a box junction or enters a bus lane. You really have to avoid those effing hatched box junctions. I got caught by Croydon council once where there was a space clear in the lane in front of me and then some stupid woman pulled out of a junction as her light was turning red and I could either stop on the hatching or smash into the back of her. Welcome to London driving!

Normally I'd say appeal, why not, what have you got to lose - but it's difficult to see on what grounds you could. my footage clearly showed the space I was moving into and the woman on the left come screeching into it as her light had already gone red. They didn't care. I stopped on a box junction. I had to pay.

@VerticalHorizon

People are having a bit of a dig at the OP. I think folks have been right to say 'them's the breaks, and it's justified'.

The tone feels quite aggressive though, and most of us have erred from time to time, so don't think there's a need for it to be quite so finger pointy (or maybe it's just my misinterpretation of the tone).

Sometimes, councils fail too, and they don't make adequate provision for signage, or allow it to fall into disrepair. Sometimes they do make poor decisions and exacerbate problems rather than reduce them.
Not every instance of a transgression is the lack of due care and attention.

That's a fair summary. If I get fined (2 speeding and a couple of parkings in 40 years), I tend to think "silly me" and pay up - not immediately characterise it as some form of State-Sponsored extortion as some on here seem to. All fines are 100% optional.

The fines are steep and there is no evidence that such enforcement rules actually works
Do you have evidence that it doesn't?
Hard to prove either way isn't it?

@oblada

The fines are steep and there is no evidence that such enforcement rules actually works. But it makes money for the public sector. It is unfortunate for you OP though but seems difficult to challenge on the face of it. I once drove onto a bus lane when I was driving my scooter (motorcycle) and I did this as I was being pushed out by the inconsiderate cars around me. It was safer for me to move into the bus late temporarily. The police was there at the same place, stopped me, the first police officer wanted to let me go with a slap on the wrist but his colleague didn't let him and I had to pay 100 euros fine (it was in Paris, 20yrs ago). It wasn't great but I learned from this.

OP is considering giving up her car; I’d say they have absolutely worked in their objective of making London driving difficult and expensive.

Sorry op I think you were unlucky. I used to drive in nose fo nose traffic every morning and I saw people get caught out at a box junction all the time.

actually I have a PS on this. Fines HAVE to shock and hurt. I can remember a time in central London before car clamping when it was cheaper to pay a parking fine than pay to park for a day assuming you could find parking. It became a thing (and i saw the fistfull of tickets on a couple of occasions) for the better off just to just get tickets for the month and then pay them all. Any day you didn't get a ticket was a bonus

The guidelines for enforcement of bus lanes in London (and elsewhere) state that the operator should observe a vehicle travelling along a bus lane for at least 20 metres before he issues a Penalty Charge Notice

I wonder when that came in. My only driving fine ever involved me making a split-second decision to nip into the left-most lane to turn left at the up-coming light, unfortunately a little too early. The bus-lane camera photo shows my front wheels in the lane, my offside rear was still in the second lane. By the time both rear wheels were in the bus lane, my front wheels were out the end of it. I was in the lane for less than the length of my own car, and I still got a fine.

I googled the camera and it was in the newspapers as one of the most profitable cameras in the country, making millions every year for Camden council.

My only other fines were for not paying congestion charge. I had remembered to pay, manually, without fail, every single working day since it was introduced. It was a relief when autopay was introduced after several years, and I no longer had to remember to pay, I could just file my credit card details and be charged automatically. Unfortunately I didn't realise that when my credit card expiry date arrived, instead of contacting me to arrange payment by other means, or prompting me to register my replacement card, they would just start issuing fines. By the time the snail-mail letter with the first fine made me realise there was a problem, I had incurred four in total...

@VerticalHorizon

People are having a bit of a dig at the OP. I think folks have been right to say 'them's the breaks, and it's justified'.

The tone feels quite aggressive though, and most of us have erred from time to time, so don't think there's a need for it to be quite so finger pointy (or maybe it's just my misinterpretation of the tone).

Sometimes, councils fail too, and they don't make adequate provision for signage, or allow it to fall into disrepair. Sometimes they do make poor decisions and exacerbate problems rather than reduce them.
Not every instance of a transgression is the lack of due care and attention.

I would be less finger pointy if the OP wasn't being so "oh poor me this should not happen to me" and self exculpatory

@VerticalHorizon

So you'd issue points for parking infringements as well, presumably - some of those are arguably even worse for safety, if they block emergency vehicles.

Absolutely I would.

Then your local footballer (for example) who doesn't give a toss can't just park where they like because they can afford the fine.

I'm not against a fine in the initial instance/s, but yes, in my opinion repeated offences over a given period should be escalated, and points would be a reasonable escalation I feel.

I work in a "naice" town and the entitlement of some drivers round here is staggering, so I'd agree with points for certain parking offences too.

We have double yellow lines outside my workplace and I glanced out the other day to see a driver in a 4x4, driving on the wrong side of the road to park on the double yellow lines, wearing no seatbelt (was sitting on it as obviously leaving it unplugged makes it make an annoying binging noise) and holding a phone in their hand.

They got out of the car and wandered off to the bank, presumably to do something very important...

It's definitely always expensive car drivers that park on the double yellows. You never see a banger parked there!

(That's not to tarnish all expensive car drivers with the same brush of course - I'm one of them, and would never do it!)

I got an 80 pound fine for what appeared to be my bumper a millimetre over a box junction. I was fuming. So I feel your pain and yes I think these fines are disproportionate - comparatively, I got hit by a car when I was younger and the driver got a hundred pound fine, I don't think what I did was more or less equivalent to causing an RTA and injuring someone!

Where was the bus lane? There are some nightmare ones, for example the one at the Green Man has been missing the sign off the Pole for ages…

I think it's extortionate. I live overseas and the amount for these kinds of charges would be about £30-£40 max

They're not £130 each, @Chocaholic9. They're £65 each. OP hasn't even got that right!

I don’t know why you seem to think this is going to be the regular cost of driving?

I’ve been driving for 30 years and never had a PCN for road position. Speeding yes, parking yes - I’m not being smug. But I certainly don’t see positioning mistakes as inevitable.

You basically could have typed:

1. I drove into a bus lane
2. I entered a box junction that wasn’t clear

I can’t tell whether the bus Lane was badly signed, but the box junction is black and white (well, black and yellow!). You may try to get away with it, you often will. But that wasn’t a mistake - you deliberately drove into a box junction that wasn’t clear.

The fines are high partly because if low, other people would have your rather odd “cost of driving” approach. They’d just break all the position rules knowing that frequency of fine x amount of fine was, say, £50 a month that they could afford. Instead of a fine, they see it as a payment to drive wherever they wanted.

What if your first offence was £30 and your second was £230, because second in a given period suggested lack of attention of deliberate breaking of rules, and it was still £260? Would you feel that was fair?

Pay up, learn from it.

I got a PCN for driving in a bus lane in the centre of Birmingham - first (and last) time there, roadworks and diversions everywhere, it was totally inadvertent and I didn't even know I'd done it until the letter arrived.

Even more gallingly, the letter was to tell me that the charge was being increased by 50% because I hadn't paid within 28 days, but I had never received the original notice. I did email to ask if they would allow me to pay the original amount, never get a response.

I paid up. And now take more care around bus lanes - ESPECIALLY when driving somewhere unfamiliar.

I live in a neighbouring borough and over the years I’ve had one ticket for a bus lane and two parking fines off them, I’ve actually appealed and won all of them. Waltham Forest is a special place for signs and fines, for those of you presuming it’s normal.
For example my DF got a fine for driving down a closed road, no signs on the main road and just a temporary red one a few metres later after turning in! Successfully dropped, they put cameras in before the signs the next day. The clutter of street furniture is awesome, spotting and digesting it can be hard. The layouts can be mad. It’s not even like neighbouring areas.
My bus lane one the bus lane was painted red all the way along then stopped, there was a bus lane end sign about 7 metres after the line on the tarmac and the left turn arrow pointing into the lane. I turned in metres before the sign looking at the rather clear road marking inviting left turning traffic to go left.
I got a parking on the footway ticket when there was no pavement and no road markings.
Honestly, it’s a special place.
I’ve never had another ticket for anything in the last 20 years elsewhere.

[quote libertybonds]@MotionActivatedDog do you think it's fair for someone to be charged £130 every time they make a small error? I think that I may need to sell my car. I can't really afford to pay this every month. I have had a car since December and I haven't had any issues until being slammed with these two fines in one go.[/quote]
That's really expensive. I parked in a bus lane outside a train station at 11pm to pick my daughter up (didn't realise at the time it was a bus lane) and was only fined £30 if I paid straightaway

I should mention that I don't know these roads and I was using satnav

Why not use that as your basis for appeal, I'm sure they'll understand

I'd be pissed off too OP, were you in any way putting anyone in danger by being a tiny bit over or being in the bus lane for a few seconds? I doubt it, it's just a way for the council to make a load of money. I'm so glad I don't live in London, I didn't even know this sort of thing happened.

Please be absolutely clear that the notice has to be issued within 28 days of the offence! I got off a penalty at Cambridge station where they had taken 3 months!

By law the PCN must be issued within 28 days of when the traffic warden saw the parking rule was broken or it was caught on camera. Drivers can challenge the fine or have 28 days to pay: a discount of 50% is available for payment within 14 days (21 days if vehicle is caught on camera and the PCN is posted).

That's really expensive. I parked in a bus lane outside a train station at 11pm to pick my daughter up (didn't realise at the time it was a bus lane) and was only fined £30 if I paid straightaway

OP isn't even right about that @NotTodaySatanNotToday. It's £65 if you pay up on time. From Waltham Forest's website:

For a parking penalty charge notice issued for bus lane violations and moving traffic contraventions:
£130 reduced to £65 if paid within the appropriate discount period from the date the parking penalty charge notice is issued.

It's £65 per violation people, not £130.

www.walthamforest.gov.uk/content/pay-parking-penalty-charge-notice-pcn

Unless you spend weeks whingeing about it and not paying, I guess.