Shropshire Star comment: Put brake on traffic offenders
For Shropshire motorists who have copped six or nine points on their licence, and have the worry that further transgressions will take them off the road, it will beggar belief that some people are still driving with a cricket score of points on their licence.
It will reinforce the impression of one law for some ordinary folk, and another law for others, and if you have a clever lawyer and a good sob story you can get round the law.
Incredibly, according to the road safety charity Brake, there are almost 11,000 drivers across the nation who have kept their driving licences despite racking up 12 points or more, which would normally result in a driving ban of at least six months under the totting up rules.
Even more incredibly, if Brake is right, there are some drivers who have more than 40 or 50 points on their licence.
How can this be so? If you clock up 12 unexpired penalty points you can still avoid a ban if you can prove that losing your licence will cause you, or somebody else, “exceptional hardship.”
Get to magistrates court, pull out your violin, and start playing a mournful tune about how if you cannot drive you will lose your job, won’t be able to support your family, you might have to make your employees redundant and so on.
The magistrates will treat cases on their individual merits, or demerits.
As a bunch, they don’t like having the wool pulled over their eyes.
Without being in court to hear the cases, it is impossible to judge from outside whether they are erring on the side of sympathy and compassion.
Careful motorists may wonder why they are bothering when drivers who are repeatedly committing traffic offences are essentially getting away with it.
Where is the incentive to be a good driver when you can drive a horse and coaches through the traffic rules?
Brake says that the repeat offenders are exploiting a loophole in the law. These figures do make it look as if the “exceptional” is becoming the routine.
