Avoiding Driving Bans

Accumulating penalty points or being convicted of certain motoring offences can result in a driving disqualification and compromise your employment and family life. By arguing exceptional hardship, challenging evidence and negotiating charges, Newtons’ driving disqualification solicitors can use their legal expertise to help you avoid a driving ban.

What Is a Totting Up Ban?

Under Section 35 of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988, a totting up ban is a mandatory driving disqualification given to motorists who accumulate 12 or more penalty points on their licence within 3 years. A totting up ban typically lasts 6 months, but increases to 1–2 years when you have been disqualified before. Disqualification can threaten your livelihood if you use personal transport to travel to work, as well as raise car or van insurance costs.

What Is Exceptional Hardship?

An exceptional hardship argument may allow you to avoid a driving ban. Your totting up ban solicitor can ask the court to exercise discretion if disqualification would cause severe consequences that extend beyond mere inconvenience. Since no legislation defines these circumstances, courts must decide on a case-by-case basis and successfully avoiding a driving ban this way requires an exceptional hardship solicitor’s legal expertise.

Examples of exceptional hardship include:

Loss of employment

For many people, loss of employment is an inevitable consequence of a driving ban. For the court to view this as exceptional hardship, you must provide evidence that losing your job will have a direct detrimental impact on innocent third parties, such as dependents.

Dependants

You may be responsible for transporting children to school or taking sick or elderly relatives to hospital. In these situations, totting up exceptional hardship solicitors would be able to argue that imposing a ban would negatively affect other people.

Impact on business

If you run a business that entirely depends on your ability to drive, or your employees would lose their jobs due to your disqualification, the court may deem these exceptional hardships and decide not to impose a driving ban.

Medical needs

You may have a medical condition or disability and need frequent treatment that you cannot reach without driving. If you cannot receive treatment at home or find alternative modes of transport, the court may consider this an example of exceptional hardship.

Poor transport alternatives

Disqualified drivers are often forced to rely on taxis or public transport, such as buses and trains. Depending on where you live and work, you may have very limited access to these transport alternatives, or face cycling unreasonable distances to get around.

How to Appeal a Driving Ban

After you have been banned from driving, you can ask the court to reduce your disqualification period. This involves writing to the court to assert that a legal mistake has been made or that certain reasons for your offence were not considered. If the court decides to reduce or revoke your ban, it will tell the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) and you will need to apply for a new licence.

How Totting Up Ban Solicitors Can Help

If you have accumulated 12 or more points on your driving licence, you need an experienced totting up ban solicitor to protect your legal rights and represent you in court. They can employ numerous methods to help you avoid a driving ban, including:

Argue Exceptional Hardship

With sufficient evidence, an exceptional hardship solicitor may be able to establish grounds for mitigating the normal consequences of the conviction and persuade the court to order a shorter period of disqualification or even forgo a totting up ban altogether. While ‘exceptional hardship’ is open to the court’s interpretation, applicable circumstances typically include losing your ability to care for dependents, to continue employing people, to receive important medical treatment or to travel via reasonable means.

Present Special Reasons

While disqualification may not impose exceptional hardship, you may have special reasons for accumulating some or all the points on your licence. These apply when you plead guilty, but can prove highly unusual circumstances led to your actions. Mitigating circumstances for speeding, drink driving, driving without insurance or driving through a red light can include:

• Attending to medical or health emergencies, such as rushing someone to hospital or responding to a life-threatening situation
• Fleeing domestic violence to ensure your immediate safety, even while under the influence of alcohol or drugs
• Unknowingly consuming a spiked drink when the alcohol you knowingly consumed would have kept you under the legal limit

In all cases, you must provide evidence that the situation was genuine and unavoidable, and that your only option was to drive.

Negotiate Charges

In court, your driving disqualification solicitor will also present other mitigating factors to try to convince the magistrates to exercise leniency. They may consider that you have never been banned before, you show genuine remorse and you agree to attend a rehabilitation course.

Challenge Evidence

To help you avoid a driving disqualification, a solicitor may challenge the prosecution’s evidence. This could involve arguing that you consumed alcohol after driving but before taking a breathalyser test, if you have been charged with drink driving. Alternatively, they may show that the police used incorrectly calibrated equipment or failed to follow procedure to determine speeding or drink driving.

Support from Specialist Driving Disqualification Solicitors

When you are facing motoring offence penalties, Newtons’ totting up ban solicitors work hard to provide clear legal advice and achieve your best outcome. We understand that when you are at risk of losing your licence, your livelihood and dependents’ needs may be on the line; as compassionate experts, we do everything possible to help you avoid a driving ban. Please contact us for a consultation at your nearest office today.

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