{"id":600068,"date":"2026-05-23T16:42:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T16:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/600068\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T16:42:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T16:42:10","slug":"writtle-van-driver-prosecuted-for-tooting-horn-at-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/600068\/","title":{"rendered":"Writtle van driver prosecuted for tooting horn at friend"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A van driver has been given a criminal conviction and told to pay \u00a3266 for tooting his horn to attract the attention of a friend.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Jamie Spence, 52, from Writtle, near Chelmsford, was spotted by a police officer while sounding his horn outside Braintree station on 4 December last year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The officer then reported Spence for &#8220;sounding an unauthorised audible warning instrument on a vehicle&#8221;, which led to the criminal prosecution.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;When outside the station, [the] subject vehicle hooted [its] horn a number of times to try and get the attention of a friend, not for the purpose of warning other road users,&#8221; PC Asa Smith wrote in a statement to Colchester Magistrates&#8217; Court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A van driver has been given a criminal conviction and told to pay \u00a3266 for tooting his horn&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":600069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-600068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=600068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/600069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}