KNOW YOUR RIGHTS
We hope you all had an enjoyable holiday and are looking forward to the year ahead.
The weeks after Christmas are an interesting time for us at Patterson Law, as we often get asked questions from people who have been involved in work party incidents or stopped for drink driving having had one too many on Christmas Day. However, we also get asked a lot of questions about shiny new toys and gadgets people have been given as presents, and we thought we would share some of those with you to help you keep safe and on the right side of the law. These are all based on real questions that we have received from drivers over the past few years in the days and weeks after Christmas.
Please don’t forget, if you’ve been given any presents for your car and you’re worried about how it could affect you, don’t hesitate to get in touch. You can call us on 01626 359800 or e-mail us at
enquiries@pattersonlaw.co.uk for free advice.
I bought my son an electric scooter for Christmas, is he legally allowed to ride it?
It’s very unlikely he is going to be able to ride it in any public place. Electric scooters are considered ‘motor vehicles’ under the Road Traffic Act and therefore need to have licence plates, insurance, passed various safety tests and he would need a licence to ride it.
If he rides the scooter on a road or other public place, he is risking being prosecuted by the police and the scooter would almost certainly be seized. He could end up with penalty points, fines and even being disqualified from driving.
My wife bought me a breathalyser kit as a Christmas present, how accurate are they?
It depends on the manufacturer, but our advice is never to rely on them as being spot on and accurate. It’s very difficult to tell exactly how much alcohol someone is going to have in their system as it depends on what they had to drink, how quickly they drank it, what they have eaten, whether they have taken any medication, their height, their weight and their sex, amongst other things.
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Homemade home breathalyser kits can be useful but just be wary that it’s no defence in law to drink driving that your home breathalyser kit said you were under the limit. Our advice is that it’s always better safe than sorry and if you are going to drive, then do not drink.
Have been given a dash cam, if I record somebody and report it to the police, does that mean I might end up having to attend court? Also, can the police seize my dash cam and use it against me?
Yes, and yes. If you submit dash cam footage you are effectively a witness to a crime. A lot of the time when footage is submitted the matter is resolved outside of court by way of fines and penalty points. However if the person you have reported is disputing committing an offence, then the matter may end up at a Magistrates’ Court and you may be required to attend court as the key witness.
Likewise, if you are ever being investigated for an offence, the police can, and in many cases do, seize your dash cam to have a look at your driving, not just on the day of an alleged offence but your historical driving behaviour as well. And that may well be used against you.
However, don’t forget that dash cam evidence can be very useful. We’ve used dash cam evidence from our clients on many occasions to exonerate them of an offence and to prove they’ve done nothing wrong when they’ve been wrongly accused.
I got myself a new phone cradle, is it illegal to use a phone even if it’s in a cradle?
It’s only an offence to use a handheld mobile telephone whilst driving. So if it’s not held in your hand then you are not committing an offence. Just make sure it is always in the cradle because even if you pick it up for a split second whilst the screen is illuminated you could end up with six points.
Word of warning, though, just because the phone is in a cradle it doesn’t mean you have free range to use it. If you are watching videos or are completely distracted by the phone, they could accuse you of not being in
JANUARY 2025 PHTM
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