Have you been denied the opportunity to do a speed awareness course / driver improvement course / drink driver rehabilitation course as a result of the Coronavirus?
We are receiving multiple emails / phone calls every day in relation to people who would have been offered the opportunity to do a speed awareness course or a driver improvement course as an alternative to penalty points.
Also people who have been convicted of drink driving and were expecting to be able to do a drink driver rehabilitation course to reduce the disqualification by 25% are having problems getting on the course which will mean that your disqualification, unless we make an application to the court, could be 25% longer than you expected.
In relation to the speed awareness and driver improvement courses, if you’ve been offered the opportunity of a course because the speed is within the tolerance and you have not done a course in the last three years, then the offer is retracted, you may have an abuse of process argument at court, or an argument that the case should be adjourned to allow you to do the course and then the court proceedings withdrawn.
Totting Up Risk
This is especially relevant to those where the penalty points put them at risk of disqualification under the totting up rules or revocation under the new drivers act.
Please contact us urgently if you are in this category. If the penalty points would not cause you to be at risk of revocation / totting up we will advise on the risk of taking the matter to court.
If the magistrates did not agree with this argument (we are in uncharted territory) then you could put yourself at risk of more penalty points and higher fines.
Sometimes it will be simply a risk of higher fines, but we think the court will be sympathetic to the argument. Therefore we want to give people advice on a case by case basis and are happy to do that in the form of a free advice call.
Please watch this space for further information as things progress and also follow us on our Patterson Law Facebook page. We will be disseminating advice via social media whenever there is a new development as well as on our website.