Driving and Roads

The rules in the Highway Code are only legally enforcible if they say "must" or "must not" - any other wording is advice of varying degrees.
 
MikeSh said:
As in "It's only illegal if you get caught" :)
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If you commit a traffic offence and nobody sees you, have you broken the law?
This would be like saying "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?". A nice philosophical thought experiment, but I wouldn't risk it.
 
Do we all always obey the exact letter of the law, even in situations where disobeying the law has no practical consequences and there is little chance of being caught? I know I don't, and where there is nobody to be affected by it (as per the first clause) I can't see that it matters - unlike the buggers who sit in lane 2 alongside an empty lane 1 for mile after mile, creating an artificial bottleneck.

EEPhil said:
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
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The only debate I can see about that one is whether a philosopher can accept that sound is a physical phenomenon rather than just a physiological electrochemical response. The physical acoustic waves will ripple a candle flame whether there's anyone around to hear/see it or not. I don't regard that as a "practical consequence" of me cutting a mini-roundabout!
 
Trev said:
Being too cryptic:eek: Yell it like it is.:)
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No need to yell, this isn't one of the FVP 4000T threads (where I'm ignored). :D
Unless that was dyslexic typing (something I do a lot) and you meant "Tell" not "Yell".
Being too cryptic? Yes, I'll hold my hands up to that.
 
Mike0001 said:
Yes. Next question.

If you kill someone and nobody sees you...?
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Um. In this country you are considered innocent until proven otherwise. So if you are never convicted then you haven't acted illegally - and anyone saying you had would be libellous/slanderous (if so proven in a court).
 
MikeSh said:
Um. In this country you are considered innocent until proven otherwise.
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You seem to have confused committing a crime and being found guilty in a court of law of committing a crime. There is a difference. Dying and being declared dead are also different, even if you are Schrodinger's unfortunate moggy.

Article 11

1. Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.

2. No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

The operative word being charged.
 
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Mike0001 said:
You seem to have confused committing a crime and being found guilty in a court of law of committing a crime. There is a difference.
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Well, yes, that's the obvious way that most people believe, including me up to a few hours ago. But pondering this discussion raised the question in my mind and led to the conclusion ... or conundrum even: If you commit a crime but are not found guilty of it, then legally you didn't commit the crime. Ergo, it's only a crime if you are convicted of it.
Schrodinger's cat is quite a good analomoggy :)
 
Well, the original question was, if X commits an offence but nobody sees X do it, has X broken the law.

Leaving aside that X saw X commit the offence, which makes the premise false, there is still a distinction between breaking the law and being found guilty of breaking the law. A law is like a predicate in logic, returning true if X abided by the law and false otherwise. So l(X) being false means the law has been broken. Being convicted is like a second predicate c(X), again true or false. There are then four possibilities.

X committed a crime and was found guilty
X did not commit a crime and was found not guilty

X committed a crime but was found not guilty
X did not commit a crime but was found guilty

A further complication is that being found not guilty and being proven innocent are again different. The former only implies that there is reasonable doubt.

Have there not been cases where there has been incontrovertible evidence, but that evidence has been declared inadmissible in court? What happens when the media publish details of a case, rendering a trial impossible? There could be an incontestible breaking of the law, and yet the trial folds.

Oh, and the moggy dies or survives even if nobody ever opens the box!
 
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If nobody ever opens the box, the moggie is definitely dead (although possibly not due to radioactive decay triggered poisoning).

Being found guilty is not the same as being actually guilty.
 
To be precise the moggie in the box is either definitely dead or definitely alive. What is uncertain is the information about which of those two states it is actually in.
 
Mike0001 said:
Well, the original question was, if X commits an offence but nobody sees X do it, has X broken the law.
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In the mini-roundabout version X (ie BH) knows he has committed an offence:
Highway Code said:
Rule 188
Mini-roundabouts. Approach these in the same way as normal roundabouts. All vehicles MUST pass round the central markings except large vehicles which are physically incapable of doing so. Remember, there is less space to manoeuvre and less time to signal. Avoid making U-turns at mini-roundabouts. Beware of others doing this.
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Nobody has seen him do it. He has still broken the law. He just won't be convicted of an offence - even though he committed one.
Black Hole said:
Being found guilty is not the same as being actually guilty.
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More often, being found not guilty doesn't mean you didn't commit the offence, just that there was not enough good evidence to prove it, or that the jury was corrupt, or you had a very good lawyer.
 
EEPhil said:
Nobody has seen him do it. He has still broken the law. He just won't be convicted of an offence - even though he committed one.
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But if he isn't convicted then legally he didn't commit the offence and therefore no offence was committed.
This comes back to prpr's point in #349. If a body is found with a knife in the back then it's reasonably certain an offence has been committed, even though no one may be convicted of it. If a traffic regulation is broken and no evidence is left behind then there is no way to know that it was broken. So you can't state it was broken, only allege that it may have been.

Even an admission of guilt can be uncertain - just as people break the rules knowing they are doing so, they also sometimes think they have broken rules when they haven't. (It's only recently I became aware that parking on pavements was barred only in London - I was appalled.)
 
MikeSh said:
If a traffic regulation is broken and no evidence is left behind then there is no way to know that it was broken.
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Only if the offender has amnesia. It all comes down to being a good, law abiding citizen and not a self obsessed b*stard, I guess. Stealing a chocolate bar in a shop might leave no evidence, because the shop keeper has no cctv and does not know how many bars were in the pile, and never does a stocktake. It is still theft, even though you never get caught.
 
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