Speeding ticket after 4 months

Car_54

mattcbr wrote: »

I've already sent a letter to the police station saying that I don't know who the driver was at that time as it is too far away for me to remember to to investigate.
I'm up to a point where I will be able to accept the £100 fine but I'm not willing to take the 3 points to be added to my driving licence.

How I can go around this ?

You're not willing to take 3 points. How do you feel anout 6?

The speeding offence has gone, because the police have no evidence that you were the driver. However, you're now almost certain to be charged with failing to furnish driver details. That carries a bigger fine and six points. The only defence is to convince the court that you could not, with reasonable diligence, identify the driver. That could be difficult, since you have already admitted to it in your first post, on a public forum.

The date of the FTF offence is 28 days from service of the notice, and they have six months to take the case to court, so you may hear nothing more until at least September.

TonyMMM

mattcbr wrote: »

Thank you.
I've found it.
On mine it says that the DVLA registered me as a new owner on the 07/12/2017. Is that anything at all that I could use on my defense or that will help not at all?

No - that just suggests that you, or the previous keeper, were slow to notify DVLA. It explains the delay, but doesn't help at all.

wgl2014

mattcbr wrote: »

I've already sent a letter to the police station saying that I don't know who the driver was at that time as it is too far away for me to remember to to investigate.
I'm up to a point where I will be able to accept the £100 fine but I'm not willing to take the 3 points to be added to my driving licence.

How I can go around this ?

Unfortunately you are likely to find it's not as easy as just saying you can't remember, if it was then everyone would go down that path.

Without a driver being named you are likely to be charged with failing to name the driver, this carries 6 points and a larger fine along with a big increase in insurance premiums.

You have a potential defence if with reasonable diligence you cannot figure be out who was driving but the bar is set high. You will be convicted if you just say it was a while ago so I can't remember.

Stylehutz

Yes, 14 days to the registered owner. Not the driver of the vehicle.

AndyMc.....

Stylehutz wrote: »

Yes, 14 days to the registered [STRIKE]owner[/STRIKE] keeper. Not the driver of the vehicle.

Fixed that one for you.

AndyMc.....

mattcbr wrote: »

I've already sent a letter to the police station saying that I don't know who the driver was at that time as it is too far away for me to remember to to investigate.
I'm up to a point where I will be able to accept the £100 fine but I'm not willing to take the 3 points to be added to my driving licence.

How I can go around this ?

So who else could have been driving?

Have you asked everyone who was insured to drive it on that day and do you have a receipt for the garage you don’t remember taking it to?

mattcbr wrote: »

Thank you.
I've found it.
On mine it says that the DVLA registered me as a new owner on the 07/12/2017. Is that anything at all that I could use on my defense or that will help not at all?

No, it was impossible to send you a nip within 14 days as you weren’t the registered keeper.

waamo

The bar for being unable to name a driver is set very high. A simple "can't remember guv" won't be sufficient in court.

They will expect you to jump through hoops of fire in order to find out who was driving. For example have you checked bank statements to see if you spent anything that day, for example fuel? Have you asked other potential drivers if it was them? If it wasn't so they know who it was? Did you use your mobile phone around the time of the journey?

The penalty if found guilty is 6 points, a fine of up to £1000, costs and victim surcharge. That could hurt.

When you come to renew your insurance you could be in for another shock. Many companies don't mind 3 points for speeding too much. Failure to name the driver, on the other hand, often carries a hefty weighting.

If I were you I would work out who was driving pretty sharpish and send it in writing to the address on the form.

Car_54

waamo wrote: »

The bar for being unable to name a driver is set very high. A simple "can't remember guv" won't be sufficient in court.

They will expect you to jump through hoops of fire in order to find out who was driving. For example have you checked bank statements to see if you spent anything that day, for example fuel? Have you asked other potential drivers if it was them? If it wasn't so they know who it was? Did you use your mobile phone around the time of the journey?

The penalty if found guilty is 6 points, a fine of up to £1000, costs and victim surcharge. That could hurt.

When you come to renew your insurance you could be in for another shock. Many companies don't mind 3 points for speeding too much. Failure to name the driver, on the other hand, often carries a hefty weighting.

If I were you I would work out who was driving pretty sharpish and send it in writing to the address on the form.

I'd be very surprised if that were accepted, since (1) he has already responded and (2) the 28 days have expired in any case. I suspect the file is already in the court process.

waamo

Car_54 wrote: »

I'd be very surprised if that were accepted, since (1) he has already responded and (2) the 28 days have expired in any case. I suspect the file is already in the court process.

True but a late nomination may be better than no nomination. It may be reasonable to argue that due to the delay in receiving the NIP it took longer than usual to work out who was driving.

The CPS prefer to prosecute for the underlying offence rather than a secondary offence so a late nomination may well save the op's bacon.

Edit to say isn't the 28 days up today? If so an email followed up by a letter may be sufficient to stave off a FtF prosecution.

IamNotAllowedToUseMyName

You need to get over to Pepipoo.com and get the details of this worked out because as it stands you have put yourself into a corner and you are likely to get a worse position because you are miffed.

1) If you were driving, the best option is to admit to driving and try and get the speeding offence of 3 points and £100 fine. Get in quick before you get the prosecution for failure to furnish. It may be too late.

2) If you were not driving, you need to prove that you cannot identify who else it was. It is normally a short list - who ever is insured to drive the car. If that is a list of one, then you are going nowhere. Typically it is a partner discussion, and normally the courts expect you to be able to reason things out, so if it is on the commute to your work, then in all probability it is you and so on. Normally, most people can work it out, even a long time ago because people don't use their own cars randomly.

3) If you know it was someone else, you may still get prosecuted for failure to furnish, because there is so little time left before the police have to put the case before the court.

4) No chance of missing any points unless you name another driver (who really was driving, don't be tempted to lie it gets jail time for some) - a speed awareness course needs to be completed in good time before the 6 month period.

Pepipoo have good experience of this, but miss out the unfairness of it all. As far as I can see, it is totally fair, and there are two problems, someone didn't take enough care to make sure that the DVLA were updated in a timely fashion, and someone else didn't reply in a timely fashion and then the OP is assuming that as it seems unfair that they should be able to walk away as it is a minor matter from ages ago, but by now the police are seeing it as a major matter where they are being messed around by someone hoping to avoid prosecution.

So OP, reset your thinking cap. Assume that you are heading for large fine, 6 points and a hike in insurance as your starting point. Do not assume it will go away by magic. Start thinking in terms of what to do to minimise the chance of the outcome.

If you were driving, I would go for an apologetic phone call where you say simply that having had the consequences of your actions so far explained to you, you went away and dug through diaries, looked at receipts and established that you were driving so you would like to withdraw your previous response.