notice to prosecute....carnet ticket

[WillPS]

This is incorrect. People can be (and have been) convicted for speeding based on oral testimony from a police constable alone - ie no camera records.

Are the Police not (supposed to be) inherently more trustworthy than just a regular citizen/member of railway staff, though?

 

[TonyR]

Are the Police not (supposed to be) inherently more trustworthy than just a regular citizen/member of railway staff, though?

Ask Andrew Mitchell and Baroness Lawrence

 

[WillPS]

Ask Andrew Mitchell and Baroness Lawrence

Yes, that's why I added what I did in brackets. The point is that in a court of law the word of a police officer might count for more than another citizen's? I honestly don't know.

 

[34D]

Are the Police not (supposed to be) inherently more trustworthy than just a regular citizen/member of railway staff, though?

I could turn this round to the level of training/responsibility afforded to an RPI. Not sure that such subjective opinions add to the matter in hand, though

 

[pethadine82]

A biro does write on a ticket. When I travel on EMT,the guard or his assistant sometimes uses a biro to squiggle something on the ticket.
I would have thought they would use a stamper with a date like they do on East coast.

 

[jon0844]

A biro usually writes on a ticket. It's by no means guaranteed and you only have one shot. Try again and your ticket can easily look modified. What's more, I bet most staff scribble on the non Orange bit.

 

[RJ]

I seem to recall reading that carnet tickets had a magnetic strip which was read when a ticket was inserted into a gate and the details are then recorded on a database. You've mentioned that Hitchin has gates so FCC should be able to see whether or not you've used the ticket before by viewing the database.

I've never used these carnet tickets myself so I'm not totally certain but I thought I'd mention anyway.

I have a magnetic strip reader function on the ticket machine at work. Barriers don't always encode tickets put through them and there is still a risk that the ticket will be unreadable if the magentic strip is corrupted. In other words, it's not a reliable system.

Regardless of what was allegedly said by the police officer, he doesn't have the authority to decide whether or not you get a criminal record for fare evasion. He has to defer to the CPS, who then have to defer to whoever is in a position to pass an actual judgement in a courtroom - most likely a magistrate or district judge.

I use FCC Carnets a fair amount and have not yet found a biro that will leave ink on the shiny surface of the boxes. Whenever one has been inspected the RPI has accepted that they can clearly see the date indented into the surface but its not good having boxes that need to be filled in but cannot be written in. If the OP wishes to challenge FCC I am happy to supply them with a batch of indentation dated carnets to demonstrate the point that they are very hard to date with a permanent marker.

If a permanent marker doesn't work what on earth should you use?

FCC keep Sharpies at stations where carnets are available and will give them out to carnet holders on request.

 

[TonyR]

FCC keep Sharpies at stations where carnets are available and will give them out to carnet holders on request.

So does that mean they acknowledge that they are difficult to date with normal pens, biros etc?

Not sure its any use to me though. I use my FCC Carnets from a station not run by FCC.

 

[maniacmartin]

A biro does write on a ticket. When I travel on EMT,the guard or his assistant sometimes uses a biro to squiggle something on the ticket.

Its easy to put a scrawl if you don't care when the ink starts flowing. Much harder to write a tiny date.

 

[Ediswan]

FCC keep Sharpies at stations where carnets are available and will give them out to carnet holders on request.

Which, as noted previously, are not permanent if you are so minded. To prevent fraud, they would be better off giving out 5H pencils. But their own rules don't allow those to be used.

 

[jon0844]

So does that mean they acknowledge that they are difficult to date with normal pens, biros etc?

Yes, but they would never admit that of course. I don't think I've spoken to anyone working for FCC that thinks the carnet is a good idea, at least as is. I would never buy them again. Saving the cost of one ticket in every ten, with the risk of being accused of fraud or having to write a ticket off because you ruined before travel...

Obviously you can reduce the risks with the right pen, but I don't need the hassle.

Hopefully soon they'll be available as m-tickets, which might help, but they'll have other problems.

 

[bb21]

Which, as noted previously, are not permanent if you are so minded. To prevent fraud, they would be better off giving out 5H pencils. But their own rules don't allow those to be used.

You want to make it more difficult to mark the tickets?

Would have been better suggesting using 5B pencils.

 

[Ediswan]

Would have been better suggesting using 5B pencils.

I suggested 5H as in order to make a mark it would have to make impression in the surface of the ticket. A deliberately extreme suggestion.

 

[bb21]

What one needs is a 6H pencil followed by a 6B pencil carefully tracing the indent.

 

[Bijgc]

A few years ago, when FCC were unable to run their services due to weather conditions (snow) for an extended period, they gave affected season ticket holders 10 free tickets. These had a scratch-off date, rather like a lottery scratch card (with J, F, M, A, etc and 1-31 in numbers), a space to write origin/destination and a sticky-back plastic sealing cover. The plastic sealing and the scratch-off nature of the date selection rendered these single use. I thought these were pretty effective and would represent FCC's future carnet offering with out requiring any of this silly pen business - quite why they were never implemented in this format is a mystery to me!

 

[island]

Mystery solved: because that would require issuing special stock to every station that might sell the tickets and require the clerk to write the from/to stations on each ticket when it's sold, rather than issuing them on common stock from the ticket machine.

 

[jon0844]

The scratch cards are/were for season ticket holders and presumably used for other things (promotions etc) but must cost a bit more than a normal ticket.

As said above, they're blank and effectively usable on the whole of FCC. In my experience staff treat them like rovers so you can travel multiple times over the same route in a day.

 

[455driver]

What one needs is a 6H pencil followed by a 6B pencil carefully tracing the indent.

And then varnish it just to be sure!

 

[dcsprior]

My assumption was based on that a single police officers word, without back up is insufficient in court, so highly unlikely an RPI without a back up will be sufficient.
Although were BTP in attendance when said offence occurred,if so this will be the witness

This is incorrect. People can be (and have been) convicted for speeding based on oral testimony from a police constable alone - ie no camera records.

There's been a fair amount of media coverage of the proposal to remove the requirement for corroboration in Scots law, I'm fairly sure that as part of this I've seen it mentioned that a similar requirement doesn't currently exist in England & Wales.

This may of course be entirely wrong, based as it is on my hazy memory of newspaper articles!