We have a thread running on high profile cases where a highly upset person has made what in all probability (from the evidence we are given) made a genuine mistake, been mislead, or misunderstood the complex ticketing rules and have been hauled over the coals quite beyond what is reasonable.
The other end of the story, if you like to call it that, is the need for the folks who run the railways to be able to apprehend the people who are repeatedly and
knowingly dodging paying the minimum allowed fare for their journey. From
The Standard - a long article on how the are cracking down. I'm not going to quote the whole thing but
He said: “Some people still think they can get away with ticketless travel and to combat this, c2c has invested in lots of clever ways to catch habitual fare evaders, so it’s really not worth the gamble.
Good news - provided that there is a re-assurance that their net catches and prosecutes the habitual knowing fare evaders, but rarely (ideally never) persecutes those who make a mistake.
