KNOW YOUR RIGHTS
In this month’s edition we feature more road traffic issues relevant to the trade supplied by Patterson Law. These questions are based on real enquiries that we have received from professional drivers.
If you need advice on motoring matters please email
e.patterson@
pattersonlaw.co.uk or call us on 01626 359800 for free legal advice.
Q
I moved house and told the DVLA to change my address on the licence. I wasn’t aware that I also needed to change the V5. One month later I was advised there was mail for me at my previous
address - I’d received the following speeding letters: • Speed 85 mph on MXX on 26/05/23 at 7:52am • Speed 85 mph on MXX on 26/05/23 at 7:54am • Speed 82 mph on MXX on 29/05/23 at 7:36am • Speed 86 mph on MXX on 19/06/23 at 5:31pm
I telephoned the Safety Camera Partnership (SCP) to explain my situation and the call taker advised me that she had updated my records to acknowledge my call and concerns. I of course acknowledged the speeding tickets but said I wasn’t aware at the time that I was speeding, as you can see from my tickets, they are all from the same 2 cameras and I was driving at nearly the same speed every time. She said that I should take them to court to explain my mitigation.
I appreciate that rules are in place for safety reasons (no speeding tickets previously being given to me) and I have booked to go onto a speed awareness course for the first offence. But I feel that due to the above circumstances it would be unfair to lose my licence and incur further charges. I can whole- heartedly say that if I had received the first speeding notice that I would not have received the additional three. Please can you advise if i should pay the penalty for any of the tickets or take them to court?
A You were correct to accept the speed
awareness course for the first one. That will be instead of penalty points. On the third and fourth matters, I wouldn’t take them to court to
mitigate as you were advised. If you take the cases to court, all the court can determine is whether you are guilty of speeding. So if the camera was accurate, you are guilty and you will just end up with higher fines and costs. I appreciate you didn’t have the opportunity to correct your offending behaviour because the letters
72
went to your old address, but that is not a defence in law. So on those I would advise accepting the fixed penalties of three points and a £100 fine.
But the second matter I would take to court. You have an argument that the first two are not two separate offences, but one continuous offence and so should be treated as such – basically that it was the same speeding offence recorded twice. It looks like the offences were committed only two minutes apart, at the same speed on the same road in the same direction. Because you completed the speed aware- ness course on the first, that is a suitable punishment.
If we are successful it means in total you would end up with a speed awareness course for one of them, and a total of six points and a £200 fine for the rest. That is the best way to limit the damage.
Q A
My insurance expired by ten days and I didn’t realise. Police stopped me on the street I live on. I was going to go to court and plead guilty but I’m not sure if that’s the right thing to do.
It very much depends on the circumstances. Driving without insurance is a strict liability offence, meaning that if you didn’t have insurance then yes, a guilty plea would be
correct. But whether you should take it to court depends on whether you have a ‘special reasons’ argument. A special reason is where somebody is guilty but there are special reasons for not giving points, for example speeding when you are speeding for an emergency, or drink driving where somebody has spiked your drink without your knowledge.
For driving without insurance, a case called Rennison v Knowler states that to amount to a special reason you must show two things; that you genuinely thought you were insured and that it was reasonable for you to think you were insured. If the insurance had only expired by ten days then you may well have genuinely believed that you were insured. The question is whether this would be reasonable. The court will expect you to familiarise themselves with policy documents and expiry dates, so if it has simply lapsed then the court might not find that to be reasonable. But on the other hand if you were expecting it to run for another month, but it was cancelled without your knowledge, then it may be reasonable for you to think the policy was in place. We need to examine this in more detail.
AUGUST 2023 PHTM
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84
