KNOW YOUR RIGHTS
With summer well and truly here, and following the recent heatwaves, it got us thinking at Patterson Law about how the hot weather can affect our driving. The heat is different from the cold or the wet. In the snow, we all know not to drive too fast, to thoroughly defrost your windscreen before setting off, and, if the conditions are particularly bad, not to drive at all. In the wet, we know to leave extra space for stopping distances, not to go too quickly around corners, and to make sure our windscreen wipers are working. However, many of us do not really think about how hot weather can affect our driving and what we should be looking out for.
What about driving in flip-flops? Driving with a dusty windscreen? Driving when blinded by the sun? Below are examples of questions we have been asked which examine exactly these points. These are example questions, but they are based on real scenarios.
Question:
I was approaching a zebra crossing and I didn’t see a young girl step out in front of me because the sun was in my eyes. I hit her and she fell to the floor. The police attended, she didn’t seem hurt, and they said I might be offered a course. I then heard nothing until I’ve just received a summons to court for ‘driving without due care and attention’. Is that normal? What will I be looking at?
Advice:
Unfortunately, yes, this is perfectly normal. After a minor incident where there is no significant injury or damage, a traffic file is usually created and passed to a decision-maker within the police collision unit. They will decide whether a case is suitable for an out-of- court disposal, such as a driver improvement course or a fixed penalty of three points. However, if that department decides that the case is too serious for an out-of-court disposal and should proceed straight to court, you would not necessarily be informed of that decision. It is therefore not uncommon for the next thing you hear to be a summons.
At court, you will now have to enter a plea of guilty or not guilty. If you plead guilty, you will receive between 3 and 9 penalty points, depending on how serious the court considers the offence to be. Seriousness depends on culpability, so the court will look at factors such as whether you were working at the time, whether you were distracted or using your phone, whether you
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were under the influence of drink or drugs, or whether you were speeding. The first option would therefore be to plead guilty, maintain maximum credit, and mitigate to try to keep the points down.
The second option is to plead not guilty and have a trial. If we do that, on the face of it this is going to be a difficult case because you hit a pedestrian on a zebra crossing, so automatically any court in the country is likely to assume that you were at fault.
I note, however, that you say the sun was in your eyes, and there is a very specific South African case on that issue called Lombard. This case states that where a driver finds himself unexpectedly blinded by head- lights or the sun, then unless the loss of vision or control immediately ceases, he should stop at once. If, during the literal second or two while he has no proper vision or control, an accident occurs which is due entirely to that loss of vision or control, it is submitted that he is not guilty of careless driving. However, if the accident occurs more than two seconds after the loss of vision or control began and the driver has not done anything to reduce speed or stop, he should generally be found guilty of careless driving at least, for continuing to drive when he could not see or control the car properly. So ultimately, this depends on the length of time between the loss of vision and your collision with the pedestrian.
Outcome:
In this case, the driver decided to enter a guilty plea. There was CCTV footage nearby showing that when the sun was in his eyes, he made no attempt to slow down. It was also a very straight road, so the sun had been in his eyes for a lot longer than a couple of seconds before he hit the pedestrian.
Had he significantly reduced his speed and the collision occurred immediately, he may have been able to defend it, but maintaining a constant speed would have been careless at the very least.
The court did treat the fact that the sun was in his eyes as a mitigating factor, but also considered the case serious enough to prosecute, given that he had hit a pedestrian on a zebra crossing. In the end, the court awarded 6 penalty points.
Question:
I need some advice on an allegation of not being in proper control of a vehicle. My windscreen was dusty, it had not rained, and I just had not got round to taking
JULY 2026 PHTM
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