Both the police and the traffic authorities are having a hard look at a complaint from a twenty-four year old accountant, working in Australia on a bridging visa - who has had his international driving license cancelled because of an accumulation of demerit infringement points. He denies any knowledge of any of the events that recorded these points against his name.
The vehicles involved are all high end luxury cars registered to a company owned by the deputy mayor of a Sydney council, who was recently suspended for failing to identify properties in which he had a financial interest when these came before council for voting decisions. Mysteriously, when these luxury cars have been caught speeding, running red lights or other traffic offences by traffic control cameras the demerit points earned have all been allocated to the license of this young accountant. It seems to spotlight a law weakness that applies to company owned vehicles.
When a cop pulls a driver over for an offence the vehicle registration and the drivers license to drive are both checked, but when a company car is detected by a safety camera the registered company receives a demand through the post to identify who was driving at the time the offence was committed. Both the fine and the demerit points accrue against the name of whoever the company nominates.
Providing false information is a serious criminal offence. Australia was shocked when Marcus Einfeld, a justice of the Federal Court of Australia was convicted of claiming that the person driving his car when it was caught speeding was a visiting colleague from the United States. Not only was this colleague deceased at the time of the offence, but Einfeld persisted with his attempt to evade justice and eventually served three years in prison for the deception.
This case looks like developing into an interesting can of worms. Most companies employ a number of people and it will be difficult to determine who actually nominated this young accountant as the driver. The company claims that the accountant hired the cars, but it seems unable to provide any form of paperwork to substantiate this claim. It is not possible to send a company to prison and for a prosecution to proceed a culprit will need to be determined. At the same time, the aggrieved accountant will have difficulty proving that he was not driving those cars at the time the offences were committed.
It is highly probable that this identification anomaly is being abused to shield those driving company cars. A person of importance who is at risk of license cancellation because of the demerit points against his name may influence a junior employee to accept the blame, or even persuade his wife or one of his family to front as the errant driver. It is unlikely that the authorities will check further. The office of State Revenue is only concerned that the fine has been paid and once a driver has been nominated - the matter is settled.
Now these individual fines have become a matter of interest, it will be very interesting to see how the investigation evolves. One of the issues will certainly be fine payment - if that has happened ? Back tracking the payment method may cause the payee to explain the reason for that action ?
No comments:
Post a Comment