Mr Loophole

[thirdcrank]

One way of closing loopholes is by amending legislation in the light of experience.

eg The removal of four words from the totting up legislation, ie "other than exceptional hardship" so that it would say, in effect, "no account is to be taken of hardship" would close a gaping breach.

There's a more detailed explanation here.
viewtopic.php?p=1163795#p1163795
I'm by no means convinced that disqualification from driving is as effective as some well-behaved people believe, but I think it's most likely to be effective against people whose livelihood depends on a driving licence, just so long as it's believed to be inevitable.

It would also need to be reinforced in sentencing guidelines and the Craven Prosecution Setup would have to be rigorous with appeals. I'm unfamiliar with the current procedure for summary trials but I believe that many uncontested hearings take place in the absence of a representative of the prosecution. If this applies to totting-up applications, then it would need some effective system to prevent magistrates circumventing the legislation.

[Bonefishblues]

Or amend the guidelines such that exceptional is defined as exceptional as the ordinary man would understand it. I don't like the idea of simply closing something because it is being poorly interpreted.

[Pastychomper]

I wonder if an auto-breathalyser could tell the difference between breath from the driver and breath from a warm balloon swiped from the party the driver just left.

I also wonder how often such a device would malfunction, leaving the cold-sober driver stranded. I once borrowed an old car to respond to a call from work and spent some embarrassing minutes at a petrol station trying to get round an intermittent problem with its factory-fitted immobiliser. This in a rural area where large parts of the population never bothered to lock their cars.

Make the test quick, overcome these two problems and I'd think the idea might be worth a try.

[[XAP]Bob]

Or amend the guidelines such that exceptional is defined as exceptional as the ordinary man would understand it. I don't like the idea of simply closing something because it is being poorly interpreted.

Exceptional hardship would make you sit up and pay attention in order to *not* get the extra points.

The *only* exception for totting upnoffences should be if you get multiple points offences before you are notified of the first of them.

So if you are on 6 points and get two 3 pointers on the same day (ie before you are notified of the first) then th final point isn’t applied (so you only go to 11 with one of your oldest points being expired early).
If you hit a single 6 point offence you still hit 12 and get banned.

[thirdcrank]

There's ssome interesting stuff online for anybody with the energy to wade through all the ads from learned friends touting for business.

Scroll down this page of Hansard past the stuff about Serco's prison (mis)management to "Driving offences." There's a series of questions from Mr. Paterson (I've no idea of his party or constituency) about driving licence endorsement and totting up.

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/c ... 5w0012.htm

He seems a tenacious sort of a chap, but he's met by the junior minister Mr Sutcliffe playing a dead bat which might have been Slasher Mackay on a slow day. Mantra =

Not me, Guv. It's down to the Sentencing Council.

The Sentencing Council restricts its advice to repeating the law almost verbatim followed by

Consult your legal adviser for further guidance on minimum periods and exceptional hardship applications.

https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/ex ... ification/


It's not unknown for legislation to be amended once a gap has grown sufficiently wide to drive a coach and four - or in this case a huge digger - through it. "Motor vehicle" was replaced with "mechanically-propelled vehicle" for just this reason.
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PS For anybody who is thinking that there ought to be waggle room for cases such as the dad-to-be rushing the mum-to-be to hospital who activates a speed camera, the above is about "totting-up" or repeated conviction for offences serious enough to attract an endorsement + points. Apart from all the chances represented by things like speed awareness courses, if a court considers that there are special reasons for not endorsing on conviction, they can decide not to endorse.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/53/section/44

What we are discussing in "exceptional hardship" is a repeat offender who hasn't been deterred by other penalties.

[Bonefishblues]

Or amend the guidelines such that exceptional is defined as exceptional as the ordinary man would understand it. I don't like the idea of simply closing something because it is being poorly interpreted.

Exceptional hardship would make you sit up and pay attention in order to *not* get the extra points.

The *only* exception for totting upnoffences should be if you get multiple points offences before you are notified of the first of them.

So if you are on 6 points and get two 3 pointers on the same day (ie before you are notified of the first) then th final point isn’t applied (so you only go to 11 with one of your oldest points being expired early).
If you hit a single 6 point offence you still hit 12 and get banned.

Surely one should know not to drive in excess of the speed limit, by your logic, never mind do multiple times it in quick succession? I'm surprised at the leniency in your proposal.

[Cyril Haearn]

Or amend the guidelines such that exceptional is defined as exceptional as the ordinary man would understand it. I don't like the idea of simply closing something because it is being poorly interpreted.

Exceptional hardship would make you sit up and pay attention in order to *not* get the extra points.

The *only* exception for totting upnoffences should be if you get multiple points offences before you are notified of the first of them.

So if you are on 6 points and get two 3 pointers on the same day (ie before you are notified of the first) then th final point isn’t applied (so you only go to 11 with one of your oldest points being expired early).
If you hit a single 6 point offence you still hit 12 and get banned.

No need for such an exception, just think of the detection rate for motor crimes

[Cunobelin]

Who are these drink-drivers? People who are usually responsible but have an isolated lapse? People who occasionally drink and drive but hope to luck that they are below the limit and/or won't get caught? Regular hardcore boozers who drink and drive as a matter of course?

The first two types can be influenced by advertising and social pressure. The last type, sadly, are probably only influenced by life-threatening injury or jail.

One of the more common is the "morning after" where you think the alcohol from the previous night has gone from the system, but it hasn't

[[XAP]Bob]

Or amend the guidelines such that exceptional is defined as exceptional as the ordinary man would understand it. I don't like the idea of simply closing something because it is being poorly interpreted.

Exceptional hardship would make you sit up and pay attention in order to *not* get the extra points.

The *only* exception for totting upnoffences should be if you get multiple points offences before you are notified of the first of them.

So if you are on 6 points and get two 3 pointers on the same day (ie before you are notified of the first) then th final point isn’t applied (so you only go to 11 with one of your oldest points being expired early).
If you hit a single 6 point offence you still hit 12 and get banned.

Surely one should know not to drive in excess of the speed limit, by your logic, never mind do multiple times it in quick succession? I'm surprised at the leniency in your proposal.

Yes - I'm being lenient.. But given that it is perfectly possible to commit one offence (exceeding the speed limit on a single occasion) and trigger a number of static cameras whilst committing the single offence...
I do think that there is some place for leniency. I have no idea how many cases this has the possibility of affecting. But the leniency ends at that point for a couple of years (or however long points stay on a license nowadays.

[thirdcrank]

Yes - I'm being lenient.. But given that it is perfectly possible to commit one offence (exceeding the speed limit on a single occasion) and trigger a number of static cameras whilst committing the single offence...
I do think that there is some place for leniency. I have no idea how many cases this has the possibility of affecting. But the leniency ends at that point for a couple of years (or however long points stay on a license nowadays.

This seems to be the formula for a sort of "all you can eat for three points" offer. As an extreme example, I linked recently to somebody claiming to have set a driving End-to-End record at a huge speed. Are you saying that if there had been evidence to convict him of a series of speeding offences en route the whole lot should have attracted three points in total?

[[XAP]Bob]

Yes - I'm being lenient.. But given that it is perfectly possible to commit one offence (exceeding the speed limit on a single occasion) and trigger a number of static cameras whilst committing the single offence...
I do think that there is some place for leniency. I have no idea how many cases this has the possibility of affecting. But the leniency ends at that point for a couple of years (or however long points stay on a license nowadays.

This seems to be the formula for a sort of "all you can eat for three points" offer. As an extreme example, I linked recently to somebody claiming to have set a driving End-to-End record at a huge speed. Are you saying that if there had been evidence to convict him of a series of speeding offences en route the whole lot should have attracted three points in total?

He almost certainly didn’t only commit one offence - but if you drive along the motorway from Dover to the M25 with your speed limiter still set to the French limits, then one offence has been committed.

If you go through two red lights then you’ve committed two offences, if you go through one but cross both the first and second stop lines then one offence. If you speed past a camera, one offence. If you speed past two cameras that are 1 mile apart on a clear, straight empty road? I’d argue that was one offence detected twice.

If you have to come within the speed limit (for a roundabout or other junction) then accelerate again - then I’d say it was a second offence.


The ‘all you can eat’ is only in terms of notification. If you trigger two speed camera on the M1, and you were 6!points off a ban then the leniency is only in the ban being ‘suspended’ for an additional offence (which is likely to be fairly soon? Far less lenient than the current system.

[thirdcrank]

I'm not totally clear - to put it mildly - about some of what you are saying, but I think a lot of it is already covered by the difference between an offence attracting an endorsement+ points, and how the points are totted up. I think also that if there were to be evidence that somebody had committed a series of offences on one occasion, perhaps amounting together to a more serious offence then that should be the single charge, with the circumstances of the individual lesser offences being treated as parts of the whole.

Far less lenient than the current system.

This was the bit that made me realise that I didn't know what you were getting at. The concept of "notification" makes me wary since it sounds like just another layer of NIP-like technicality. Is the flash of a speed camera notification or what?