Fined for not stopping at stop sign uphill

[Bob_Hornsby]

2) What the RMS is doing is Unlawful.

What is the exact reason ?

3) You may be able to take it up with the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, but he wasn't sure, as this is just the RMS not following an already existing law. You shouldn't need someone telling the Authority to comply with the law.

Would love to contact them, but it seems they have nothing to do with traffic related issues.

http://www.aat.gov.au/about-the-aat/what-we-do

[queequeg]

2) What the RMS is doing is Unlawful.

What is the exact reason ?

It is in contravention of the Roads Traffic Act 2013 Sect 32, which restricts the demerit points scheme to motor vehicle offences only.

http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw ... 7/s32.html

[human909]

So it is time to stop dealing with drones at the RMS and ask to speak to a manager and their manger etc. Open a complaint with the RMS if that is possible, that hopefully will get their attention. Be clear and concise.

You believe the applications demerit points against you to be unlawful. According to the Road Transport Act Sections {...}. The RMS has been unwilling or unable to address the complaint on the grounds mentioned and thus a complaint is necessary.


If complaints with the RMS isn't possible. Go above their heads and make complaints elsewhere. These are bound to get the attention of those above who can hopefully intelligently review your claims.

https://www.service.nsw.gov.au/customer-complaints

Chief Executive Officer, Service NSW
GPO Box 7057
Sydney NSW 2001

NSW Ombudsman*
Level 24
580 George Street
Sydney NSW 2000

Use the system that is in place. Do everything in writing. CC the appropriate complaints department. Forget the telephone.

I've dealt with insurance companies and utility companies in this way when very simple matters start going in circles and I get no traction from talking to them directly. In both cases I let the issue go on far too long. In both cases they were remarkably solved very quickly once I made formal complaints. (AKA I learnt the hard way. In the future I'll quickly escalate things when incompetent administrators are not addressing legitimate issues.)

[Bob_Hornsby]

Drafting this generic letter, heavily based on your suggestions to email to RTA, Police minister, service complaints, etc (it will be slightly adjusted towards each addressee).
Comments are welcome.

Dear XXX,
Following the payment of the penalty I noticed that I have been listed as having lost demerit points for the offence under Rule 67 from XX-OCT-2017.
The Road Transport Act 2013 limits the demerit point scheme to offences relating to the driving or use of motor vehicles.
https://www.legislation.nsw.gov.au/#/vi ... p3/part3.2

The Road Transport Act 2013 is current. I provided the link to the Goverment Legislation, which shows it as the current version of the Act with All Amendments.

32 Offences for which demerit points are incurred
(cf DL Act, s 15)

(1) The statutory rules may prescribe:
(a) the offences (relating to the driving or use of motor vehicles), and the number of demerit points incurred for each offence, that comprise the national schedule of demerit points, and
(b) additional offences (relating to the driving or use of motor vehicles) created under a law of this jurisdiction for which demerit points may be incurred and the number of demerit points incurred for each offence.

Since at the time of offence I was riding a bicycle, I would appreciate if the error is corrected as per Section 31 (5).

[baabaa]

Comments are welcome.
Mate, stop trying to be a hero to all bike riders and just walk into a police station and ask them to fix it. You failed to fully stop at a stop sign not start a coup d'état....

[queequeg]

Comments are welcome.
Mate, stop trying to be a hero to all bike riders and just walk into a police station and ask them to fix it. You failed to fully stop at a stop sign not start a coup d'état....

They can't fix it. The only organisation that can fix it now is the Authority that manages the demerit points scheme, which is the RMS. As far as the Police and SDRO are concerned, since the fine has been paid, the case is closed.

I spoke to my contact in NSW Police, and he said as much. It's an RMS issue that can now only be solved by the RMS.

[trailgumby]

Comments are welcome.
Do it in writing as you are proposing. You will continue to go around in circles at high velocity otherwise. Because public service. No-one will step outside their little box to help you. Escalation is the only option. Your addressee list looks fine.

I'd suggest joining BNSW and getting their input before sending.

[human909]

Comments:
Overall it looks good. Though I would bring forward the fact that your were riding a bicycle very early on. And state clearly that demerit points do not apply to bicycle riders. On then would I quote the law and the particulars of the offence.

Also I would point out that you have previously tried speaking to XXX on YYY and they have not been receptive of the problems raised.

Finally I would also ask that if they believe you are mistaken, and that demerit points do apply to cyclists, ask them to provide the legislation that allows for this.

Comments are welcome.
Mate, stop trying to be a hero to all bike riders and just walk into a police station and ask them to fix it. You failed to fully stop at a stop sign not start a coup d'état....

Wow. Not only rude but wrong. Well done sir. The is no longer a police matter your suggestions and rudeness are not helpful.

[fat and old]

Why is it that cyclists get green lights at road intersections yet there is no law allowing cyclists to proceed on green light?

Please explain

[human909]

Why is it that cyclists get green {cycle} lights at road intersections yet there is no law allowing cyclists to proceed on {cycle} green light?

Please explain

Sorry I was too brief. I amended the brief statement above. I'll keep my explanation brief, as this has been discussed many times. A red traffic light at a road intersection means bicycles must stop and not proceed. This law is not negated in the presence of a green cycle light and a road intersection. A green cycle light at road intersections, as opposed to cycle crossings, is not mentioned in the road rules. (VIC anyway). Yet such lights are in operation at major intersections. They largely work as intended but there are no road rules applicable and in some cases cyclists could be deemed to be running red lights.

All well and good 99.9% of the time. Until something goes wrong and somebody gets injured or killed.

Likewise with bicycle crossings parallel to roads. Turning road users aren't required to give way to cyclists. All well and good 99.9% of the time, until it aint.

[baabaa]

Who cares about being rude? What do you even know about the North Sydney Highway Patrol?
This lot are hard, very hard as they cover quite a roads in a large northern Sydney area. They as a group are a proud tight unit and value being seen as hard but fair. What they do not like is any mistakes which originates from the unit as this may hurt this reputation. I say this as a good friend was a long time motor bike copper working with this NSHP unit and they own and would do what they can to fix up any errors. As they have heard every excuse under the sun to avoid a fine they have very good bs radars.
They also see a heap of horrible road fatality stuff that would make most of us weep so yes they can make mistakes.
This is now 7 pages of one bloke who should stop wasting everyone’s time about a simple three points that can fixed by looking someone in the eye and asking why is it so. Ok maybe the police or Service NSW if he was to walk into an office someone will own this event and it will end.

[Scott_C]

Why is it that cyclists get green lights at road intersections yet there is no law allowing cyclists to proceed on green light?

Please explain

To follow up human909's explanation. If you see this arrangement of lights at an intersection:


If the bicycle light is green but the circular symbol is red you are technically breaking the road rules to proceed as there is no road rule that authorises a cyclist to proceed against the circular red symbol which requires all vehicles to stop. The equivalent 'B' lights for busses do have a road rule that ensures they override the circular red symbol. The Road Traffic Authorities have adopted a solution used for busses and applied it to cyclists without respect to what the road rules authorise.

[human909]

Thanks scott_C.

We have theses in dozens of locations I can name in Melbourne. Some will go green while the main lights stay red. (Encouraging cyclists to break the law.) Others go red before the main lights go red. None of this is covered in the road rules. I presume there are plenty of other locations in other states too. And to my knowledge the road rules are all roughly similar in this regard. (Happy to be proven wrong here.)


My favourite though is this one. Though, perversely it could be argued that it is following the letter of the law. Either way it is absurd.

[cogs19]

Why is it that cyclists get green lights at road intersections yet there is no law allowing cyclists to proceed on green light?

Please explain

If the bicycle light is green but the circular symbol is red you are technically breaking the road rules to proceed as there is no road rule that authorises a cyclist to proceed against the circular red symbol which requires all vehicles to stop.

Might be different in other states but Vic Road Rules seem clear enough:

Rule 262
(5) To avoid doubt, under subrule (2), if the bicycle
crossing lights show a green bicycle crossing
light, the rider may cross even though the traffic
lights show a red traffic light or yellow traffic
light.

http://www.legislation.vic.gov.au/Domin ... orised.pdf

[Scott_C]

Might be different in other states but Vic Road Rules seem clear enough:

Rule 262
(5) To avoid doubt, under subrule (2), if the bicycle
crossing lights show a green bicycle crossing
light, the rider may cross even though the traffic
lights show a red traffic light or yellow traffic
light.

http://www.legislation.vic.gov.au/Domin ... orised.pdf

You are correct for Victoria that they seem to have addressed the problem. Edit: Looking into past versions of legislation it appears that they added 262(5) in July 2017, so it was fixed 7 months ago after having the problematic signals in place for years.

The equivalent road rule in WA lacks this clarification.

The template Australian Road Rules also lacks the clarification.

[human909]

I stand 100% corrected. They have got their act together. Including:

62 Giving way when turning at an intersection with
traffic lights
(1) A driver turning at an intersection with traffic lights must give way to—
(a) any pedestrian at or near the intersection who is crossing the road the driver is entering;
and
(b) any rider of a bicycle at or near the intersection with bicycle crossing lights who is crossing the road the driver is entering;


Which mostly covers cyclists. Though it is a bit disturbing that motorists only have to give way to bicycles if there are bicycle crossing lights. What about cyclists under 12? Why should a driver be checking whether there are bicycle crossing lights present or not, why is there a precondition on turning motorists giving way to cyclists?

Yep I am now being nit picky. But yep this is the law, it needs to be precise and shouldn't just ignore young cyclists using footpaths. Odd that they decided to introduce rules where a driver needs to check for bicycle crossing lights to decide if he should run over a crossing cyclist or not. If they don't exist then hey, go for it!

[fat and old]

Why is it that cyclists get green {cycle} lights at road intersections yet there is no law allowing cyclists to proceed on {cycle} green light?

Please explain

Sorry I was too brief. I amended the brief statement above. I'll keep my explanation brief, as this has been discussed many times. A red traffic light at a road intersection means bicycles must stop and not proceed. This law is not negated in the presence of a green cycle light and a road intersection. A green cycle light at road intersections, as opposed to cycle crossings, is not mentioned in the road rules. (VIC anyway). Yet such lights are in operation at major intersections. They largely work as intended but there are no road rules applicable and in some cases cyclists could be deemed to be running red lights.

All well and good 99.9% of the time. Until something goes wrong and somebody gets injured or killed.

Likewise with bicycle crossings parallel to roads. Turning road users aren't required to give way to cyclists. All well and good 99.9% of the time, until it aint.

Thnx

[fat and old]

I stand 100% corrected.

I don't know whether to just keep quoting this ad nauseum or adopt it as my sig

Three things learned (for me) today. It's a good one

[Bob_Hornsby]

Ok, phoned the police station in Gordon.
They said the demerit points do not apply to a push bike but is down to SDRO. I explained them all my correspondence they said they might talk to the person who issued the fine (I suppose it could be that some code is not right).
I told them that we may all look stupid if I would go to court for this, she replied yes .

However, I have no high hopes that this Kafkian situation will be sorted out before I go to the court.

[queequeg]

Ok, phoned the police station in Gordon.
They said the demerit points do not apply to a push bike but is down to SDRO. I explained them all my correspondence they said they might talk to the person who issued the fine (I suppose it could be that some code is not right).
I told them that we may all look stupid if I would go to court for this, she replied yes .

However, I have no high hopes that this Kafkian situation will be sorted out before I go to the court.

Neither the Police nor the SDRO can help you unfortunately, even if they wanted to, though it would be helpful if you get written advice from them that demerit points to not apply for the offence that you paid the fine for. At least then you can walk into RMS with the letter and ask why they applied demerit points when it's clear they shouldn't have. Have fun

[mikesbytes]

This thread has unearthed a lot of interesting point, I'll summarise some of them.
- Points on your license mean more cost [at least in NSW] as your green slips are more expense and possibly your motor vehicle insurance
- Traffic infringements do not incur points on you license
- The system that records points on your license does so by the code that is applied to the offense
- Offenses that are incurred on a bicycle are suppose to have a different code to those incurred on a motor vehicle
- It appears that there might be an error in the coding that some offenses don't have a separate code to apply to a cyclist
- It is very difficult to get a points error corrected and despite the info in this thread, it is still not clear as to how to do that. It appears to me that it might be a problem between departments, as one department can't make the change without approval from other department(s)
- Contesting a ticket in court could be very expense

Not discussed is the ability to get a ticket nullified. In NSW if you haven't had a ticket in the last 10 years you can apply to have the ticket nullified, you can only do this once in your lifetime. What is the definition of no ticket for the last 10 years? Is it only tickets where points have been applied?

[queequeg]

This thread has unearthed a lot of interesting point, I'll summarise some of them.
- Points on your license mean more cost [at least in NSW] as your green slips are more expense and possibly your motor vehicle insurance
- Traffic infringements do not incur points on you license
- The system that records points on your license does so by the code that is applied to the offense
- Offenses that are incurred on a bicycle are suppose to have a different code to those incurred on a motor vehicle
- It appears that there might be an error in the coding that some offenses don't have a separate code to apply to a cyclist
- It is very difficult to get a points error corrected and despite the info in this thread, it is still not clear as to how to do that. It appears to me that it might be a problem between departments, as one department can't make the change without approval from other department(s)
- Contesting a ticket in court could be very expense

Not discussed is the ability to get a ticket nullified. In NSW if you haven't had a ticket in the last 10 years you can apply to have the ticket nullified, you can only do this once in your lifetime. What is the definition of no ticket for the last 10 years? Is it only tickets where points have been applied?

As an extra piece of information. If you are a Data Mining Guru, you can download the Full Fixed Penalty Dataset from Revenue NSW.

http://www.revenue.nsw.gov.au/info/statistics

The specific file you want is the one titled "Penalty Notice Dataset", currently located at http://www.revenue.nsw.gov.au/node/2593 ... a_set.xlsx

Among other things, this dataaset includes the Offence Codes for every offence that police have issued Penalty Notices for the previous 5 years.

There is a second file called "Notes to Penalty Notice data set" which gives you a description of all the fields in the other file (which is pretty large).

Revenue NSW also produces some summarised files from this dataset and puts them in Pivot Tables

The one of most interest to bicycle riders is this one:-

http://www.revenue.nsw.gov.au/node/697/ ... sf014.xlsx

It includes how many motorists have been issued with Unsafe Passing Infringements. You can then compare that to the number of fines issued to bicycle riders without a bell (for example)

[cogs19]

The one of most interest to bicycle riders is this one:-

http://www.revenue.nsw.gov.au/node/697/ ... sf014.xlsx

It includes how many motorists have been issued with Unsafe Passing Infringements. You can then compare that to the number of fines issued to bicycle riders without a bell (for example)

"Ride bicycle furiously"

[Bob_Hornsby]

Is it possible that this is the reason why (why SDR) thinks) the points are applicable ?
https://www.legislation.nsw.gov.au/#/vi ... art9/sec71

If you see later on Schedule 1 (rule 67).

But again starts with: " For the purposes of section 32 (1) (a) of the Act" which again excludes non-mortised vehicles.

[human909]

Is it possible that this is the reason why (why SDR) thinks) the points are applicable ?
https://www.legislation.nsw.gov.au/#/vi ... art9/sec71

If you see later on Schedule 1 (rule 67).

But again starts with: " For the purposes of section 32 (1) (a) of the Act" which again excludes non-mortised vehicles.

No. From what I can see see the sec71 is just housekeeping around the issue and getting into the specifics of the demerit points. Section 32 of the Act is pretty clear.


In most/all states it is not normal for cyclists to get demerit points. I got a decent fine from the cops on my bike, one that would usually carry demerit points. None were given. (VIC)