£60 for Blowing His Nose: The Absurd Fines Police Have Handed British Motorists

• In 2009, a Motorist in Ayr was handed a £60 fixed penalty for blowing his nose in a traffic jam — with his handbrake on.
• There is no specific offence of driving with snow on your car — yet Drivers can still collect 3 points and a £100 fine for it.
• Both stories point to the same uncomfortable truth about how much discretion sits behind every ticket.

On 26 October 2009, Michael Mancini was stuck in standing traffic on Ayr High Street, suffering from a heavy cold.

He put his handbrake on, took out a tissue, and blew his nose.

For that, he was waved over and handed a £60 fixed penalty notice for not being in proper control of his vehicle — a van that was, at the time, stationary in a queue with the handbrake applied.

Mr Mancini said he was stunned, and assumed at first it was a wind-up. It wasn’t. The ticket was real, and the prosecutor initially insisted that if he didn’t pay, the case would go to Court.

The Ticket That “Beggars Belief”

Here’s where the story turns — because Mr Mancini did something most Drivers never do.

He refused to pay.

His solicitor wrote to the prosecutor arguing it “beggars belief” that a ticket had been issued in those circumstances. And in 2010, faced with defending the indefensible in open Court, the authorities dropped the case entirely.

No fine, no points, no conviction — all because one Motorist with a cold declined to accept that a piece of paper from an officer automatically made him guilty.

Hold that thought — because the second story in this article shows the same machinery working from the other direction.

Fined for the Weather

Back in the harsh winter of 2010, worried messages started reaching us from Members: police in parts of Yorkshire, they’d heard, were stopping Drivers and issuing £60 fines with 3 penalty points for having snow on their cars.

Members wanted to know the obvious thing — since when was snow an offence?

The honest legal answer is: it isn’t, and it is. There is no offence in the statute book called “driving with snow on your vehicle”. But Rule 229 of the Highway Code requires you to clear your windows and remove any snow that might fall into the path of other road users, and section 41D of the Road Traffic Act 1988 requires a full view of the road ahead.

So a Driver peering through a letterbox-sized gap in an iced windscreen can perfectly lawfully be given 3 points and a £100 fixed penalty for failing to have a clear view. And if an officer decides the vehicle amounts to a dangerous condition — a slab of frozen snow on the roof, say, ready to slide onto someone’s windscreen — the fine can reach £2,500.

A rule most Motorists have never heard of, enforced entirely at an officer’s discretion, in weather that arrives once a year. What could possibly go wrong?

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What Both Stories Are Really About

Strip away the comedy and these two tales are about the same thing: the enormous discretion that sits behind offences like “not in proper control”, due care, and dangerous condition.

These are catch-all charges. Elastic by design, they can stretch to cover a genuinely reckless Driver — or a man with a tissue in a traffic jam, depending entirely on the judgement of the officer standing at your window.

Which is why the Mancini case matters far beyond its punchline. A ticket is an accusation, not a verdict. It can be questioned, challenged, and — as he proved — withdrawn entirely when someone who knows the law pushes back on your behalf.

Most Drivers never push back, on anything: not the absurd tickets, and not the serious ones with points and bans attached. They pay, they accept, and they carry the consequences for years.

DriveProtect™ Members don’t have to make that choice alone. Whenever a ticket, NIP or summons arrives, Members get direct access to a specialist Speeding Solicitor who reviews the case and advises them exactly what to respond, for a fraction of the normal cost of legal help.

Got a NIP or points on your licence right now? See how DriveProtect Membership works — a specialist Speeding Solicitor in your corner from £25/month.