KNOW YOUR RIGHTS
By pleading guilty at the earliest opportunity, you would maintain maximum credit - you’ll receive a fine of 150% of your weekly income minus 1/3 for pleading guilty, a victim surcharge of 40% of the fine and costs of £110. The court will also consider a community order, such as unpaid work or a tag/curfew, and by pleading guilty you’ll also get 1/3 off that. If the injuries were more serious, for example if he had lost a limb or had pins inserted, you could easily be looking at a short prison sentence.
The most important thing to do now is to start preparing mitigation. Discuss your good character, get references together, start preparing arguments about the layout of the road and explanations as to why you didn’t see him, then when the court papers arrive, we can get the evidence and consider your plea.
have access to the keys and it could have been any of us. What am I supposed to do in this situation? If I show the police that all of us are insured to drive it and if they have no evidence surely they can’t take it any further?
Q A
they’ll prosecute for ‘failing to
If you don’t nominate the driver, they are likely going to take it further. They won’t charge you with going through a red light, but instead provide driver
information’ which carries 6 points and up to a £1000 fine at Court.
If you are the day-to-day keeper of the car, then your legal duty is to nominate the driver. If it’s not immed- iately obvious who would have been the driver you will be required to exercise ‘reasonable diligence’ to try to work out who it was. To give you some ideas on what you should be doing now:
•Work out on what journey it was. If it was miles and miles away from home, you may be able to identify the driver as it was an unusual journey. Similarly, look at the time of day – you’re more likely to work out who was driving at 3am rather than 3pm.
• Sit down with all potential drivers and ask them what they remember, where they were and if they remember taking the car that day.
• Check things like text messages and phone records to see if there’s anything in there that might identify who had taken the car.
PHTM AUGUST 2024
I’ve received a notice of intended prosecution for going through a red light but I don’t know who was driving. There are four people who
• Check bank records – if anyone was on the way to a shop or had stopped at the petrol station, that might show on a statement
• Check diaries and work schedules. •Write to the police to ask for photographic evidence.
If you have done all of that and you still cannot identify the driver, then the next step is to write to the police to explain the above, and to give details of all other potential drivers including names, dates of birth and addresses.
After that, there’s one of two things that will happen: either the police will write to the other drivers with a similar letter, or they will come after you directly and charge you with failing to provide driver information and summons you to court.
At court, we can potentially defend the charge. Even though you did fail to nominate the driver, it’s a defence if the keeper can show that they did not know who was driving and has exercised reasonable diligence to try to find out. And this is where all the hard work has paid off, as we can then evidence the above at court.
When the court papers come in, we plead not guilty (we can do the plea bit online) and we will be given a trial date to attend the Magistrates’ Court. And then at the trial, we can get the other potential drivers to give evidence to explain your interviewing them, we can show all the messages, diaries and statements we checked, we can show that you asked for photographic evidence and that you had nothing to hide as you gave all details of all other potential drivers.
if you’re found not guilty, you walk free. There’s no points, fines or costs. You won’t get points for the red- light offence as they cannot identify the driver. But if you’re found guilty, you’d get 6 points, and fines/costs of closer to £2,000. Because of that risk, and because it’s a trial, I would always advise getting a lawyer to represent you.
For advice on motoring matters, email
advice@pattersonlaw.co.uk For updates on road traffic law follow us on
facebook.com/PattersonLawMotoringSolicitors or
twitter.com/Patterson_law_
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