Tesla fined for repeatedly failing to help UK police over driving offences
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Re: Tesla fined for repeatedly failing to help UK police over driving offences
#2> The British arm of Elon Musk's electric car giant has faced multiple criminal court proceedings over the past two years linked to alleged road traffic offences.
> Tesla offers its vehicles on long-term leases, and in such a scenario the leasing company is typically the registered keeper of the car.
> Drivers of rented or company cars caught speeding have to be named before they can face prosecution and companies which fail to return paperwork to police can be prosecuted instead.
Re: Tesla fined for repeatedly failing to help UK police over driving offences
#3Given that this is coming out of the UK, I thought it was going to be about some Orwellian request for Tesla to detect speeding and report it to the police. It's actually a much more reasonable situation where Tesla is failing to identify drivers of leased/rented cars and Tesla clearly seems in the wrong.
> Tesla offers its vehicles on long-term leases, and in such a scenario the leasing company is typically the registered keeper of the car.
> Drivers of rented or company cars caught speeding have to be named before they can face prosecution and companies which fail to return paperwork to police can be prosecuted instead.
Re: Tesla fined for repeatedly failing to help UK police over driving offences
#4Seems like some kind of weird quirk that the government doesn't already have this information readily available. Why isn't there a registration process for the person that leased the car?
Re: Tesla fined for repeatedly failing to help UK police over driving offences
#5[flagged]
Re: Tesla fined for repeatedly failing to help UK police over driving offences
#6Seems like some kind of weird quirk that the government doesn't already have this information readily available. Why isn't there a registration process for the person that leased the car?
If you lease a car the owner of the vehicle isn't the driver, but the lease company itself. Tesla was contacted to provide the drivers name (as is their legal obligation) and when they didn't they were fined.
Exactly the same is true if you own the car outright. You as the owner of the vehicle will be contacted and asked to provide the details of the person who was driving at the time.
Re: Tesla fined for repeatedly failing to help UK police over driving offences
#7For context for international readers, the UK has a lot of speed cameras and other automated ways to give out fines.
These get sent by snailmail to the 'owner'[simplification] of the vehicle using a government database. The owner must then, within a deadline, say who was driving the vehicle at that date and time.
If the owner fails to say who was driving, they have committed a criminal offence, and will be fined.
It looks like Tesla has in a bunch of cases not declared the driver on time. I'm willing to bet that's due to them just being slack with records in some cases - for example loaner cars, offences which occurred on the same day as a sale from person A to person B, etc.
18 offences across the whole fleet of >100k cars isn't much really, when you consider ~30% of motorists receive a fine in any given year.
Re: Tesla fined for repeatedly failing to help UK police over driving offences
#8[flagged]
Thank you for offering an objective analysis of the story. Too many people go to it with pre-conceived bias against this particular carmaker. If you replaced it with 'Ford' the article would never have been published.
Re: Tesla fined for repeatedly failing to help UK police over driving offences
#9Convicted 5 times... if this was a natural person it stands to reason their license to operate a motor vehicle would be revoked. However, a "corporate" person faces no such consequences.
What is the equivalent of jail for these "corporate" entities who are more than happy to pay fines.
Re: Tesla fined for repeatedly failing to help UK police over driving offences
#10Seems like some kind of weird quirk that the government doesn't already have this information readily available. Why isn't there a registration process for the person that leased the car?
The answer you seek is right there in the article (emphasis mine):
> Tesla offers its vehicles on long-term leases, and in such a scenario the leasing company is typically the registered keeper of the car.
> Drivers of rented or company cars caught speeding have to be named before they can face prosecution and companies which fail to return paperwork to police can be prosecuted instead.
A company leases the car, and that car may then be available to multiple employees. The police need the company to confirm which employee was driving the vehicle at the time of the office.