The ban is the minimum allowed, but the fine (and costs) are very high.
I suspect there must be a reason we are not informed about. Sounds like its worse than normal, and the mag has traded a longer ban for higher fine.
--
RF - currently 1 Renault short of a family
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I should just like to add that whilst £1600 sounds steep, I might have had some sympathy had you not tried to invoke sympathy as a result of your dying mother.
To be stupid is one thing. To be stupid and to make up ridiculous excuses is quite another.
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It wasn't his mother, it was the mother of the lad who was prosecuted.
Blue
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>It wasn't his mother, it was the mother of the lad who was prosecuted.
Oh well, that negates my argument then.
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>It wasn't his mother, it was the mother of the lad who was prosecuted. Oh well, that negates my argument then.
And you accuse me of not reading posts properly!
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No, I accused you of not writing them properly! ;)
I was perfectly aware that the OP referred to 'somebody's' mother, but assumed that it might in fact be his own.
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If you know people who habitually drink and drive do you not think that you should report them to the police - otherwise what will it take to stop them - killing someone? After all - in the wrong hands a car is a very lethal weapon....
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I have made certain that I no longer know people who drink and drive.
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As has been said here, we don't know all the facts.
How much was he over the limit by?
Did he receive a higher fine in leu of a shorter ban?
What were the exact circumstances - was he caught driving though a crowded town centre, past a primary school or along a country road - exactly who and how many were put at risk?
Personally I would take this as a kick up the backside, revisit my drinking habits and spend the next 12 months reflecting on what could have been a manslaughter conviction and loss of life on my hands.
Even if I had to spend the next 5 years paying the fine and costs I know that this will unfortunately pale into insignificance compared to the high costs of insurance when the bad expires. He may just have to consider the next 10 years of life without a car.
Personally I would hope that I'd think myself lucky in getting caught before I did any damage.
Sorry to be so harsh, and some may say sanctimonious, but I do feel he needs to invest his time to face up to the problems he'll have in the future, rather than try to chisel a few quid off his fine.
However, if he is successful - good luck to him.
Hugo
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Put yourself in his shoes. You're at home having a glass of wine or two (enough to put you over the limit ) and you get the dreaded phone call. Can you honestly say, hand on heart, your first instinct wouldn't be to get in the car and go over there? Would you really call a taxi (assuming you could afford the fare and they agreed to take you however far you needed to go) or would you let your loved one snuff it with you at home, safe in the knowledge you didn't drive while over the limit? Would you be thinking clearly enough to find a friend to take you there that was under the drink drive limit too? What if the phone call was in the wee small hours? If this were a friday or saturday night would you have any friends that were fit to drive? Looks like Hobson's choice - you possibly either get done for drink driving when there are few traffic pols or you get the possibility of a loved one snuffing it on their own and you didn't get a chance to say goodbye. Not a great choice is it?
teabelly
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IMO the fine should be means tested, after all £800 might be nothing to this lad or it might be totally beyond his means. On the other hand it is correct that costs are apportioned to the guilty party.
However I am in two minds as to whether mitigating circumstances should be allowed in such a case. I.e rushing to hospital after a call to advise that a relative is seriously ill or perhaps being pulled over at midday driving home after a party the night before in comparison to someone who gets tanked up and drives home at midnight.
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SFAIK they tried means tested fines sometime ago. Sounded like a good idea, fining people so many day's pay, but the bureaucracy couldn't make it work and it was dropped.
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Interesting point Teabelly, but you're assuming a LOT there. I think if that was the situation, the OP would have mentioned it, rather than just 'his mum was seriously ill at the time'.
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Allow it is sad that the mother died and I have every sympathy for him. I cannot think of any circumstances that would justify drink driving. What if he had killed someone on the way to see his mother or killed himself. He could have taken a taxi if he could afford it. If not then in this day and age I am sure that
a relation or friend would have driven him there.
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I'm not assuming much, just asking questions :-) There are lots of shades of grey in this. We don't know the facts. It may just be he got ratted and got in the car and his ill mother was a convenient excuse. On the other hand it could have been entirely a hobsons choice given the options he had at the time. If he got a big fine and the usual ban then it is more likely to be closer to the 'got ratted' rather than mercy dash to ill mother's death bed scenario...butyou never know. With punters getting points for crossing red lights to allow ambulances through then nothing would surprise me.
teabelly
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There's no indication in the OP that him driving was related to his mother's illness, it's just one of the background things that was going on in his life.
I guess in the circumstances we would all try to plead some mitigating circumstances (wouldn't we?) but really and truly I would think that justice has been done here.
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I have to agree with smokie and others that it does appear that justice has been done to this young man.
I have been trying to think of any way in which the illness of his mother could persuade me to reduce the punishment, if I was a magistrate hearing this case. (Don't worry, not much chance of it happening!)
It seems to me that there are a few possibilities:
a) that the whole thing about mum being sick is a try-on. I doubt it, but I'd want some evidence that her illness was actually a critical issue at the time of the incident, requiring the young man to travel immediately to see her.
b) did the guy try to obtain any other form of transport? Call a taxi, ask a friend for a lift, enquire about buses, or whatever? In other words, was this a desperate last-resort action or a bit of sod-the-drink-driving-rules-in-a-crisis bravado?
The most favourable circumstance seems to me to be that he found he was urgently needed at his mum's bedside, tried other forms of transport, and when nothing was available he reluctantly used his own car.
The problem is that even that situation wouldn't add up to much mitigation in my eyes, because I know plenty of stone-cold sober people who have had crashes in similar circumstances.
For example, one very careful driver taking his mum to a grandparent's funeral went straight through a stop sign at a junction without looking, and the car was hit from the side and overturned (miraculously, nobody had anything worse than bruises, but the car was a write-off). Having seen so many people come unstuck, I would now try to discourage anyone from driving at such times of crisis, even if they had no drink taken.
So someone under that much emotional stress and over-the-limit-too is unlikely to be driving particularly well. The alcohol is merely adding to the risks in a situation that is already dangerous.
Now, if the ytoung man had tried to use his mum's illness as an excuse for the drink-driving, I'd have been tempted to increase the punishment, because I'd conclifde taht he realy didn't understand what an unacceptable risk he had taken.
However, if he had pleaded guilty, acknowledged a serious lapse in judgement and asked for a little mercy from the court, I'd have given him the standard punishmemnt and then my condolences and sympathy and finally knocked 20% off the fine in acknowledgment that he was having a hard time.
But from what we've ben told, that's the only set of further facts which would have led me to any leniency.
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As has been said before, we don't know what reasons he had to be out in his car whilst over the limit, so it's a little difficult to speculate that he may have been on his way to see his dying mother when he was stopped.
Thinking of this brings two fairly recent situations I was involved with to mind. The first was when my own mother fall ill last year. OK I was sober at the time and had about an hour to get to her bedside. I didn't make it, however I had spoken to her on the phone half an hour before I was told she'd taken a turn for the worse. Would I have driven if I thought I was over the limit? No I can honestly say I wouldn't have. If I'd had a couple of glasses of wine then I might have called on a friend.
I did drive because I knew I had not been drinking at all, but I was aware that trying to get there at dangerous speeds was probably not going to help. The last thing my mother would have wanted was for me to injure myself or someone else in the pursuit of a final goodbye. I was about half an hour into the journey when I received a call from my wife to tell me the bad news. Oddly enough I was actually concerned about getting back home before the news hit me, disabling my concentration. I did manage that.
The other incident was when our friends' 17 year old daughter had to go to casualty after a car accident. She was having a bbq with some friends and went out in the car to help someone else who had broken down. When the incident happened her boyfriend felt fustrated because he had had a few drinks by this time so was unable to drive her to hospital. However to his credit he realised that the young girl was best served by him not driving at all. The friend that took her was me.
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