Re: the whole 'no insurance' thing...

[denny]

My mum and sister have both given anecdotal evidence that penalties might not be as bad as I'd feared. My reasoning ran "Court time is valuable, therefore if they want me there they must be very seriously considering banning me". However, the anecdotal evidence suggests they like to call you into court just to scare the shit out of you and inconvenience you, before then handing down a relatively light sentence along the lines of fines in the low hundreds and a minimal amount of points. My sister says a friend recently got £250 fine and 4 points for the same offence, which confuses me as the minimum points listed for it is 6 points. Still, if they want to give me less, I won't complain.

Obviously none of this is the word of the law, but it sounds a bit more promising than I might otherwise have anticipated...

Comments

[venta.livejournal.com]

I spent Friday in court with a friend who was up for a 12-points-and-there-goes-the-licence offence (9 points already, then got another 3 for parking too near a zebra) - did you know that in mitigation you can plead that losing your licence would cause "exceptional hardship"? In his case, it was that he wouldn't be able to get to work without a car (you have to produce a letter from your employers to this effect), and would thus lose his job. He still has a licence, and is only £80 to the bad.

Apologies if you know all this kind of thing, it just seemed worth mentioning.