Having just paid a £65 fine for a speeding offence, and accepted a trio of points on our licence, we must remember to take a leaf out of Jamie Bryson’s book next time we’re caught by one of the Government’s speed-detecting ice cream vans. (Of course, there won’t be a next time, your honour, we’ve learnt out lesson….).
Jamie, it seems, drove through a red light at the busy Yorkgate junction in Belfast – a fairly dangerous thing to do – but didn’t just accept that he’d done wrong and faced up to the financial penalty. Instead, he made sure the matter came to court, defended himself (as he loves doing) and – wait for it – got off with it.
Jamie claimed that he was living under a death threat at the time and didn’t like the look of a car with tinted windows that had been behing him and then pulled up alongside him at the lights. So he did what anyone does when he suspects that he’s about to be shot. He ran the red light and belted home.
As the judge pointed out, he could have called the police on his hands-free phone and the PSNI, no doubt, would have sent some of its finest out there to see if the tinted window car contained lethal assassins or, perhaps, a spotty youth in a baseball cap with his seat reclined.
Still, we’ll know next time around. This weekly blog means that we have our critics, you know. So why should we take our life in our hands by stopping at red lights?