Over here they've also taken to using the 'in car' ones so they can just clock your speed while they're driving past. You never know where the buggas are. Can't even just watch out for the vans anymore. Been a couple of c*ck ups though. I remember it hit the news when they clocked some old guy for speeding in Wellington. He was quite demonstrably in hospital at the time & his car had been gathering spider webs in his garage for years. If I recall, the car in the piccy wasn't even the same make as his.
Also a few years ago they clocked John for doing an illegal turn while towing a trailer in invercargill. He didn't even own a trailer & hadn't been anywhere near Invercargill in about 10 years. Him & his Daughter were living in my upstairs flat in town back then & he quite definitely hadn't been out of town on the day involved. Unfortunately, however, he couldn't prove this & when it comes to traffic offences you are ALWAYS guilty until proven innocent.
When we had our car accident even the ambulance driver said that it was only by some quite spectacular driving that John had kept us alive. However, because my back was broken, the copper who handled it charged John with reckless driving causing injury or some such.
They came & took my statement at the hospital about 6 weeks later. When i saw it written up later I was furious. They took what I said & twisted it. Even our local copper was appalled by it, called it a 'hang the b*stard' statement. He told us that the copper laying the carges had been given the hard word by his bosses to get more convictions & that was the main reason why John was charged.
The Judge at the preliminary hearing was also angry, he told the cop off for wasting court time & putting us through all this additional stress. He then told us that, because of the nature of the charge (it carried a minimum 2 years imprisonment) that it couldn't be simply dropped & that for John to prove his innocence It would have to go to a full court hearing. His & our lawyer's recomendation was that John plead guilty under clause something or other & He would then be able to 'let him off' with a token fine which we could give to the charity of our choice (we chose the spinal unit) & he apologised saying that we should never have been charged in the first place. We did this, we were struggling to pay the lawyer just for the plelim hearing, We'd've had to re-mortgage the house or something to pay for any more, but John was furious that it still says on record that my injuries were his fault. That he is guilty.
This weekend (Easter) Is the first biennial "Warbirds over Wanaka" air display since the accident. It's stupid but my gut feels sick at the thought of going to it.
We'll be driving a different route (we've been through the "pig route" & visited the accident site since, but we'll be going the main highway route for this trip) & I know it's quite irrational. But still.
I hate being afraid of anything like that, of letting fear controll me like that, so I'll go. But I can't help wishing I wasn't so bloody subborn. Or that they'd cancelled the damn thing indefinitely
.
I hate the flashbacks.
