These sanctions removed any ceremony or pomp in the criminal justice system and instead appeared as, in the words of another noted Australian academic (Pat O'Malley) little more than another bill. No moral condemnation was attached to the punishment and instead justice imposed prices rather than punishments.
The description of such penalties as prices certainly strikes a familiar note to anyone who has owned a vehicle. To run a vehicle requires money and in motoring there are endless costs to be paid: insurance, MOT, Road Duty, petrol / diesel and maintenance prices. Added to this it seems quite fair to state that penalties for illegal parking, speeding, driving through a red light also can seem like just another cost of being a motorist.
As a society in 2013 we traveled over 303 billion miles in Great Britain, 37.8 million of us were entitled to drive a vehicle and in total we had at our disposal over 25 million private vehicles. The combined length of the road network was estimated to be 245,700 miles. Clearly if we all decided to drive at the same time it would be chaotic and available space would be soon cease to be available.
Societies then need to manage the flow of vehicles and vehicle ownership in order to maximize the efficiency of an incredibly complex and diverse system, meeting the needs of pedestrians, drivers (commercial and non commercial), organisations, cyclists and many other interests groups. How society decides to regulate driving behavior is certainly not uncontroversial. From the earliest transport acts, which could only conceive of the car as specialised form of locomotive, a "light locomotive" to the current mass of road transport regulations, the law has sought to control and regulate vehicle ownership and vehicle use. The primary means through which it has done this in both policy and practice is through the use of money.
Money, and in particular monetised penalties, have become the primary means of controlling both the supply and demand for the use of available road space.
We have certainly paid a lot, and will continue to do so, for the privilege of driving. Also as a society we are certainly no angels when it comes to complying with the regulations of the road, anywhere up-to 9.7 million of us were caught illegally parked or driving through areas we shouldn't have in 2013.
When it comes to general driving regulation a little over 3 million of us have points on our driving licence, with one interesting 43 year old in 2012/13 GB having 45 points on their licence
This amount of problematic behaviour would certainly be challenging for the traditional system of criminal justice to handle. Whether the current system gets the balance right is certainly an interesting question and one I hope to have piqued your interest in, and hopefully as this blog fills out some interesting facets of road traffic and parking regulation will be presented for your interest.
Please do keep coming back, or get in touch through the comments if you wish to discuss or share.
Adam
Societies then need to manage the flow of vehicles and vehicle ownership in order to maximize the efficiency of an incredibly complex and diverse system, meeting the needs of pedestrians, drivers (commercial and non commercial), organisations, cyclists and many other interests groups. How society decides to regulate driving behavior is certainly not uncontroversial. From the earliest transport acts, which could only conceive of the car as specialised form of locomotive, a "light locomotive" to the current mass of road transport regulations, the law has sought to control and regulate vehicle ownership and vehicle use. The primary means through which it has done this in both policy and practice is through the use of money.
Money, and in particular monetised penalties, have become the primary means of controlling both the supply and demand for the use of available road space.
We have certainly paid a lot, and will continue to do so, for the privilege of driving. Also as a society we are certainly no angels when it comes to complying with the regulations of the road, anywhere up-to 9.7 million of us were caught illegally parked or driving through areas we shouldn't have in 2013.
When it comes to general driving regulation a little over 3 million of us have points on our driving licence, with one interesting 43 year old in 2012/13 GB having 45 points on their licence
This amount of problematic behaviour would certainly be challenging for the traditional system of criminal justice to handle. Whether the current system gets the balance right is certainly an interesting question and one I hope to have piqued your interest in, and hopefully as this blog fills out some interesting facets of road traffic and parking regulation will be presented for your interest.
Please do keep coming back, or get in touch through the comments if you wish to discuss or share.
Adam
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