KNOW YOUR RIGHTS OUTCOME
This one was a little more complicated. When a vehicle is recorded speeding, the police write to the registered keeper and ask them to nominate the driver. The law is clear that you must not pass that letter to anybody else to complete. In this case, it said in big, bold letters on the front of the letter: “DO NOT PASS THIS TO ANYONE ELSE TO COMPLETE”. He hadn’t read it because his house was chaotic at the time.
If the case proceeds to court, you may have a defence to failing to stop on the basis that nobody actually asked you for your details. But you will struggle to defend the other two, and the court will take a dim view of the fact that you put the wrong mobile number on his windscreen. If the cases do proceed to court you would be looking at 5-10 penalty points, so it’s important we get this nipped in the bud quickly if we can. I suggest we contact the police urgently with your insurance details and offer payment, and try to persuade them to leave it at that.
OUTCOME
We did just that. We contacted the police early and we asked them to leave it to the insurance companies to deal with. Our client apologised for the damage caused and provided his policy details with a promise to pay for the damage. The police agreed.
However he was lucky, and had the police not been willing to exercise such discretion, he would have gone to court and received a minimum of 5 points.
Q
Can you represent me in the Magistrates’ Court? I have been accused of failing to give driver details twice. The in-laws were down over Christmas with my wife’s sister and her
two kids. I let them use my car and her dad got two speeding tickets. When we got the letters on the 27th I gave them to him to fill out before he went back home. I don’t think he ever did because they’re saying they never got a response. But I never got a reminder letter. If I’d got a reminder letter saying he’d not responded I would have done it. Aren’t they obliged to send a reminder? I pleaded not guilty because it was her dad who failed to give the driver details, not me, and I wasn’t even driving the car.
PHTM DECEMBER 2022
In law, there is no requirement on the police to send a reminder letter. They do in most cases, but the absence of one here was no bar to prosecution. So even though it was actually his father-in-law that had failed to provide the details, the police prosecuted him because he was under a duty to respond nominating his father-in-law as the driver, and he didn’t.
So he was guilty of two counts of failing to provide driver information. And what’s worse was that each of the offences carried six penalty points, putting him at risk of a six-month totting ban for accumulating 12 or more points within three years. He had already entered a not guilty plea and the case was listed for trial.
Our advice was to change his plea quickly and so we maintained some credit in the sentence, giving us the best chance to avoid a disqualification. We then focused our efforts in presenting mitigation instead, preparing as much supporting evidence and documents as we could. His job required a licence and the loss of it meant he couldn’t pay for his mortgage or look after his ill parents.
At court he received 12 penalty points, but the court agreed that a totting disqualification of six months would cause exceptional hardship and they did not disqualify.
If you need any advice on motoring matters, email
advice@pattersonlaw.co.uk or for regular updates on road traffic law follow us on
facebook.com/PattersonLawMotoringSolicitors or
twitter.com/Patterson_law_. We regularly share advice and tips to stay safe and to keep your licence clean of penalty points.
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