Advice please on careless driving conviction

sheep-ali

Husband hit a bridge with HGV & lost job immediately. Has now been convicted of careless driving with a large fine & 5 points on licence.
He now finds that no agency or firm will employ him with the CD on his licence.
He is 63 & has no chance of any other job.
We are now about to lose our house because we cannot afford to pay our debts with no income.
Is there any way that he could get the CD off his licence because by the time it comes off he will be 66 & who will want him then?
I am disabled & do not know how to cope with losing our house so I would be very grateful for any advice.

Berkshiregirl

I would imagine the only way is to go back to court to appeal the decision?

www.pepipoo.com is a fantastic site that may be able to help you - the forums are used to dealing with the more complicated cases.

That said, if he hit the bridge and was guilty of that then I'm not sure how you'll get the conviction removed...

Chippy_Minton_2

Did he plead guilty or did the matter go to trial?

hartcjhart

two matters here,

First you must contact your mortgage company and explain the situation and ask to make an arrangement to make lower payments,

then your husband must sign on straight away and make a claim for the mortgage,

Second,
I am sorry but I do not think it will be possible to get the conviction removed but I may be wrong, had he been banned there would have been a chance to get the ban lifted due to hardship.ask the courts to make an arrangement to pay the fine by installments

xocbc

Whilst I have sympathy with your personal situation, a professional driver should not be hitting a bridge and ultimately this is why he has he a careless driving conviction.

I work in the transport industry and not knowing the width/height of your vehicle leading to a bridge strike is generally classed as negligence and results in instant dismissal.

The agencies probably will not him now due to their insurers having a policy against such things - a hgv striking a bridge can cause tens/hundreds of thousands of pounds of damage, When it comes to buses, it is even worse due to passengers (only last week a bus near here got it's roof ripped clean off on a bridge - luckily there were no passengers on board at the time).

So the bottom line is that it is very unlikely that you will be able to get this removed as there generally isn't much in the way of mitigation for hitting a bridge.

biscuitdunker

Not sure about the conviction, but I will second what someone else has said, the people at https://www.pepipoo.com would be good people to ask about it. As for your financial difficulties, you need to get on top of the situation asap, contact your local CAB for free advice, they may be able to put you in touch with organisations who can help you out.

surreysaver

What if he'd hit the bridge hard enough to mis-align the railway track, and a train went across at 100mph and a couple of dozen passengers got killed? It would be manslaughter then. Think yourself lucky it was only careless driving.

gilbert_and_sullivan

Your husband will have to resign himself to the fact he is unlikely to drive HGV's again, there's such a glut of licence holders now that employers and agencies can pick and choose those with clean(ish) licences, not as that means a great deal these days but the insurance situation demands it.

Of course few in modern transport admin (they used to be called transport managers, few of the new breed could be called that) would know a proper lorry driver if they met one and we see the results every day of the week, but thats by the by and irrelevent in this situation.

He'll have to find some other form of employement, bridge stiking is pretty drastic, as said this could have resulted in terrible casualties...not knocking him you understand the time to hang up our truck driving gloves comes to us all...i'm fed up to the back teeth with it meself and am looking to get out too.

Good luck for the future.

Paradigm

gilbert_and_sullivan wrote: »

...i'm fed up to the back teeth with it meself and am looking to get out too.

I'm with you there, pretty much had enough myself.

The trouble is the publics perception is that we're all uneducated gorillas who can't possibly do any other job...

To the OP, I think your other half is going to struggle to get another driving job. There are too many licence holders out there looking for work, most a lot younger than your OH. I wish him the best of luck though

Premier_2

sheep-ali wrote: »

...He is 63 & has no chance of any other job...

If you mean as a professional driver, I would probably agree with you.

But there are loads of other jobs out there. Employers are not allowed to discriminate on the grounds of age.

Yorkie1

sheep-ali wrote: »

Is there any way that he could get the CD off his licence because by the time it comes off he will be 66 & who will want him then?

I am very sorry to hear of your predicament and hope that you get the financial advice you are advised to seek.

Although 3 years is the relevant period when penalty points are counted, I think it's 4 years before you can apply for your licence to have the endorsement removed, and job application forms may set an even longer period when asking for details of any convictions etc. So I'd reluctantly agree with other posters who have said your husband will probably have to reconcile himself to not working again as a professional lorry driver.

Regarding appealing against the conviction, if he pleaded guilty then there's no realistic prospect of doing so. If he was convicted after trial he can speak to his solicitor about the prospect and cost of appealing his conviction to the Crown Court - hence another poster's query about how his conviction came about.

Good luck.