Archive for November, 2009

Nottingham Drink Drive Solicitor advises on possible defences

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

As a specialist motoring solicitor I see a lot of cases in Nottingham, London, Birmingham and throughout England. There appears to be a lot of misconceptions about drink driving.

A lot of people confuse what amounts to a defence and what is special reasons, I even see this mistake being made by non specialist motoring solicitors.

There are very few defences to drink driving. Basically they are – either you weren’t driving or you hadn’t been drinking. There are technical defences to drink driving and these relate to the drink driving procedure. To prove a case of drink driving the prosecution have to show you were driving and at the time you were over the legal limit. If you are caught at the scene and the police can show that you were over the legal limit then it is unlikely that you have a defence to drink driving unless they make a mistake on the drink drive intoxiliser procedure.

If you were not caught at the scene then you have a potential defence to drink driving. If you can establish that you drank after you drove then this is a defence, simply put; at the time of driving you were not over the limit.

How would you go about proving this? You are going to need an expert to give evidence of the effect of the post driving drinking. One of the questions you will be asked when giving a breath test is “have you drank since the accident?” If you have then it is essential that you tell the police this. You will probably then be interviewed and a detailed note will be taken of what you had to drink, how much and when. This will form the basis of the experts report who will be able to calculate what your breath reading would have been at the time you were driving by taking away the effect of the post driving drink.

If the experts report shows that you would have been under the limit at the time of driving then this is a valid defence and you should plead not guilty at court.

In terms of technical defences these are rare, the police have a form to fill in to help them through the procedure and generally mistakes are avoided. That is not to say mistakes are not made and a good specialist motoring solicitor will go through the form to ensure it is accurate.

For further advice on a drink driving matter contact us anytime on 07799 383239 or email at info@motoringlawyersonline.com

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Speed ticket loophole for notice of intended prosecutions caught in postal strike

Monday, November 2nd, 2009
A recent court case – Gidden v Chief Constable of Humberside, has effectively changed the law in relation to notice of intended prosecutions.

The law is that for most motoring offences, including speeding, the motorist should be warned that he or she is going to be prosecuted. This warning, called a notice of intended prosecution must arrive within 14 days of the offence.

Until last week provided that the notice was sent in time for it to NORMALLY arrive within 14 days that was enough. So if the police post a notice on 8th June in relation to a speeding offence that happened on 1st June then that would count as good notice, even if it arrived on 16th June.

The recent case, which arose out of the last round of postal strikes has now changed the law. If the motorist can show that the notice arrived after the 14 day period then the police are out of time and cannot prosecute the driver for speeding.

The Judge, Lord Justice Elias said “This case raises an issue of some topicality given the current postal strike and is of no mere small interest,”

“I appreciate that this construction of the legislation may create problems for the police and prosecuting authorities, particularly when the postal service is on strike with the inevitable delays in delivery.

“The authorities must then adopt other means of warning, if they are to avoid the risk of late delivery.”

No doubt specialist motoring solicitors will receive many calls relating to this. The advice is that you will need to return the Notice of intended prosecution saying you were the driver but that it was received out of time. You will then need to be able to convince the court at a later date that it arrived late.

This may make a huge difference to the way the police deal with Notice of intended prosecutions. Only last week I had a case where someone had been asked to tell the police who was driving. the problem was that the first Notice of intended prosecution did not arrive so she was sent a reminder and was then asked to remember who was driving some 6 weeks earlier. A simple recorded delivery would have prevented this problem.

Will the police now be forced to use recorded delivery?

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