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My wife has received an offer of three points and £60 fine for a red light offence. Can the police force us to say who was driving? I thought in the UK you couldn't be forced to provide information.
My wife has received a provisional offer for three points and a £60 fine for going through a red light camera. Both she and myself drive the car and I wanted to know if in UK law the police can force us to say who was driving? I always thought in the UK you couldn't be forced to provide information and that the police would need to prove this themselves.
The European Courts have determined that the doctrine against self incrimination doesn't apply where the police ask for the name of the driver who has alleged to have committed a road traffic offence.
You should tell the truth when you respond to a NIP. If you don’t know who was driving then you should say so in your response. Anything else could be viewed as perverting the course of justice, which is a serious allegation.
If the police don’t accept this and issue a summons for failing to provide the information then you can defend the allegation by showing the Court that you used all due diligence to find out who was driving. If the Court accept this then you will be found not guilty. If the Court doesn’t accept this then you will be convicted and 6 points will be imposed plus a fine, plus Court costs.
Have you got points on your licence already? If so how many?
Over the last 14 months we have achieved a 100% success rate in defending allegations of failing to provide information as to the identity of the driver. All the clients that we represented on the basis of a fixed fee recovered 100% of their legal expenses back from the Court in the form of a defendant's costs order. This means that our services were effectively for free.
Only one of the cases where we acted went as far as trial and we won that! All the other cases were withdrawn pre-trial by the Crown Prosecution Service who were persuaded by us (on our client's behalf) that they wouldn't win at trial.
To win you need to persuade the Court that you used all due diligence to figure out who was driving and that it was reasonable in your case that you were unable to do so.
These are dangerous allegations in that since 24 September 2007 the points if convicted were increased from 3 to 6.
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