| A-Z Guide To Motoring Law | ||
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by Ross Finlay (26 May 01) As the biographer of such dissimilar characters as Lord Goddard, Georges Simenon and Napoleon III, he knows how to do his research. He has the ability to explain things without needing a double-page spread to make each simple point. He has a highly developed sense of humour. And, judging by some of his remarks on the necessity of having your licence and car documents with you when stopped by the police while driving abroad, it is not outwith the bounds of possibility that he may have done some quite brisk motoring in his time. Based on his "Street Legal" column in the Daily Telegraph, the paperback reviewed here does have a couple of fairly maddening features - the lack of a list of contents at one end and the lack of an index at the other. But it's entertaining as well as informative, not to say thought-provoking, and you have to admire somebody who, in a book arranged alphabetically, on what in other hands might have been a stuffy subject, waits till the last-but-two letter before having a section on Excuses. Actually, there's a World Championship finalist of an excuse in the very first section on Accidents. Bresler recalls the case of the driver in Central London who "successfully claimed that he had not realized he had backed into a parked car because he was listening to a Mozart wind serenade on his car radio. He explained that he might have confused the sound of a burglar alarm, set off on the parked car, with a sustained note on the clarinet." The driver in question, it should be said, was not your average sales rep or supermarket shopper, but the Queen's cousin, Lord Harewood, a noted musical administrator. And any author who can refer to "my old friend Sir Stirling Moss" is OK by me. Especially when explaining how Moss once had a parking summons dismissed by claiming, when nobbled for leaving his car outside a London hospital, that, as he was there to take his wife and newly born daughter home, he was using it as an ambulance. Then there was the Ipswich man who was also acquitted on a parking charge . . . but read the book to find out where the rhinoceros comes in. The foregoing isn't really fair, because the book isn't just a series of anecdotes. It offers a crisp but comprehensive review of motoring law in this country - and, unlike some other commentators, Bresler makes it clear that there are two separate legal systems in Great Britain: one for England and Wales, and another for Scotland. They administer very much the same motoring legislation, but there are some odd differences mentioned here. In England and Wales, for example, local authorities have no legal obligation to salt or grit icy roads. In Scotland, it's their duty. Illustrating almost every point with reference to real people and real cases is very effective. There's a great range of subjects here, from speeding, drink driving, insurance, fixed penalties, warranties and the actions of police vehicles, to car theft, parking meters, white lines, yellow lines, zebra crossings and zero tolerance In amongst the factual reports and legal comments, Bresler offers some straight-from-the-shoulder observations of his own. This is not a man in the mincing-his-words category. But that sense of humour - in fact, of the absurd - keeps showing up. There are references to cases like the one involving the duke's daughter fined for not having proper control of her vehicle because she was "locked in a passionate embrace with her passenger as she sped along the fast lane of the M6". And the judge - the judge! - who was cautioned for driving to Newcastle Crown Court while steering with one hand and shaving with the other: "a very silly thing to do", as he was abashed enough to admit. The Daily Telegraph A-Z Guide to Motoring Law, by Fenton Bresler, will be published, in June, by Macmillan at £6.99. ISBN 0 333 90481 8. |
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