Pay attention at the back! Here's a Biglorryblog public service information blog. Drivers who fail to produce their driver identification face a penalty point hike from 3 to 6 points when new laws come in to force from this Monday (24th September). And for those already ‘on-the-edge’ when it comes to points on the old licence that will be bad news indeed.
It seems that the purpose of the change is to prevent drivers who committed serious driving offences which would have collected in excess of 3 points, but remained silent and received only a statutory 3 point penalty for failing to produce driver identification, from doing so in the future. Got that?
According to Derek Millard-Smith, specialist in regulatory law at Manchester solicitors Pannone LLP, “On the face of it this looks like a sensible move---but it will raise difficulties for drivers who were not driving at the time of the offence and are genuinely unable to identify who was. This could be for a variety of reasons ranging from the car being insured for anyone to drive, to illegal activity involving owners of a similar car falsely using another car’s registration number.”
BLB's legal eagle goes on to say: “The changes may encourage situations where a registered keeper unable to identify the driver will accept 3 points rather than risk 6 even though he or she didn’t commit the offence. Previously, registered keepers were encouraged to present their explanation to the court at a fair hearing of the issues due to the points risk being minimal.”
Meanwhile, it appears that the authorities have made this move despite them accepting that there are a growing number of vehicles subject to “Identity theft”---the simplest form being the registration number of an identical make and colour of vehicle being used by another vehicle to avoid being served with statutory notices or to evade congestion charges in places like London and in other major Cities in the future.
Don't say you haven't been warned.
Ends….
I've had this comment from Robert Dickie passed on to me by Gerald Woodgate, editor of ww.tnn.co.uk which co-hosts BLB.
Identifying drivers
Posted by Robert Dickie at 24/09/2007 01:51 PM
During a spell I had as Transport Manager with a large fleet comprising 600 cars, 700 vans, 230 HGV and around 5,000 items of road going plant, we had several Notices of Impending Prosecution (NIPs) arriving daily, requiring us to identify the driver. I introduced a system whereby every depot was required to keep a log of who drove what, with the depot manager carrying the can if they could not identify the culprit. The amount of work involved was considerable but there were some amusing incidents which helped to compensate.
I had a request from one of the London boroughs to identify the driver of a car, identified by them as a black Volskwagen Polo which had attracted a number of parking violations in London. On investigation I discovered that the registration number actually was allocated to a Toyota fork lift truck which was on hire at Llanwern steel works in Wales and had been for the last two years. I had to produce proof via DVLA that this was the case before the jobsworth at the borough concerned would back off. It was obvious that the Polo was running around with false plates, but I had a mental image of this little fork lift chuntering around a steel works carrying out extremely mundane jobs, deciding to become a Transformer and shooting up the M4 into London for a weekend of fun and frolics.