KNOW YOUR RIGHTS


In this month’s edition we feature more road traffic issues relevant to the trade supplied by Patterson Law.We’ve replicated some cases from drivers over the previous few months where dash cam evidence has been vital. As more and more of us get dash cams, they’re becoming an ever- increasing presence in Magistrates’ Courts and Crown Courts, whether used by the prosecution or by the defence.


If you don’t have a dash cam, we recommend getting one. You never know when you are going to find yourself on the wrong end of an accusation and the dash cam may well come to your rescue.


Case 1


Question: My son is due in court for failing to give breath. I’m not denying that he was being a bit silly, he was with a group of friends and they had all been drinking, and one of them crashed the car. It’s my son’s car and he’s going to have to pay for it. But he wasn’t the one driving. He let one of his friends drive.


When the police turned up they initially asked my son for breath because they suspected he was driving, but he refused so they arrested him. I understand that later on his friend admitted being the driver, so he was also arrested.


They were both taken to the police station, the driver gave a breath specimen above the limit and he has already been to court and been disqualified for 18 months. But my son refused to provide breath because he wasn’t driving, and now he’s in court next week. Surely the police can’t prosecute when he wasn’t even driving?


Outcome: The law for failing to provide a specimen of breath is complicated. If you are arrested under suspicion of drink or drug driving and asked to provide a specimen of breath blood or urine, you must provide one if you are physically capable of doing so. Even if you were not the driver, that is not a lawful excuse for refusing to provide a specimen. You should still provide a specimen and then defend whatever it is they are charging you with.


In this case, our client’s father wanted to argue that the police had no right to request a specimen because he wasn’t driving. However, the police were perfectly entitled to ask our client for breath. When they


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originally arrested him, they suspected he was the driver. They turned up at the scene and they found our client’s car had been crashed. Our client had the keys on him, and he was insured to drive it, so the police suspected he was driving and they were perfectly entitled to arrest him and ask him for a specimen of breath. So when he refused, they were entitled to charge him with failing to provide breath.


The reason we won the case was because of our client’s dash cam. His dash cam continued to record even after he was arrested and taken to the police station. Another officer remained at the scene with his friends, and it could be heard on the footage that five minutes later, his friend admitted being the driver.


So we argued that just five minutes after they had arrested him, they found out that he was not the driver so they should have de-arrested him and let him go. The prosecution agreed and discontinued the case.


However, this may have been very different had he not had dash cam footage. If we could not prove that their suspicion of our client being the driver had expired five minutes after they arrested him, they could have argued that they still suspected he was the driver, and they could therefore have argued that the request for breath at the station was lawful. He may have had a special reasons argument to avoid a disqualification on the basis the only reason he’d refused was because he had done nothing wrong, but it still could have ended up with penalty points, fines and a criminal conviction.


Case 2


Question: I’ve got a speeding ticket for going at 68mph in a 50mph limit through road works on the M4, but there were definitely no signs and I have the dash cam to prove it. It was during the storms and the signs had blown over, so I thought it was a 70mph limit. I’ve already taken the case to court and I asked the police to throw it out but they have refused because they say that all of the other signs were there! Can you help me with this?


Outcome: The reason the prosecution refused to drop the case was because they had a witness statement from an officer who said that they had completed a site check on that road earlier that day, and all the signs were in place.


Our client’s dash cam evidence proved that on a MARCH 2025 PHTM


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