Careless Driving - Need Help

Ionic11

Does anyone know if Motor Legal Protection covers you if get charged with careless driving that's going to court?

a.turner

Don't think it covers you for criminal offences unless you've had an accident.

Ionic11

This is what happened. My 19 year old student son was driving in Nov 2018 and smashed into the back of a parked car. It's an odd street as at time you don't expect to see cars parked there. It was a black car and it was getting dark. My son admitted fault to the police.
Son says he wasn't formally charged like they do in |TV but said 'you're getting charged with careless driving. It'll go to procurator fiscal who'll decide if to go ahead or not. Most you'll get is 3 points and a fine. There's a very small chance you'll get called to court.
The 6 months within which he needs to get summoned to court would have expired in 6 days - he got served with papers today!
Can the person he smashed into force this into court or has the fiscal office just been really nasty by waiting at the last moment?

a.turner

Ionic11 wrote: »

This is what happened. My 19 year old student son was driving in Nov 2018 and smashed into the back of a parked car. It's an odd street as at time you don't expect to see cars parked there. It was a black car and it was getting dark. My son admitted fault to the police.
Son says he wasn't formally charged like they do in |TV but said 'you're getting charged with careless driving. It'll go to procurator fiscal who'll decide if to go ahead or not. Most you'll get is 3 points and a fine. There's a very small chance you'll get called to court.
The 6 months within which he needs to get summoned to court would have expired in 6 days - he got served with papers today!
Can the person he smashed into force this into court or has the fiscal office just been really nasty by waiting at the last moment?

Stick to one thread.

Black cars have rear reflectors same as any colour car, his lights would help in the dark so no excuse.

Johno100

South of the border you'd likely get a driver improvement course for something like that rather than a court appearance. Anyway I should think any court fine will be dwarfed by the excess he's probably already had to pay out and increased premiums going forward.

Ionic11

Sorry for 2 threads, I'm new here. I know it's no excuse etc. Q- can the other driver insist he gets charged or is it solely a fiscal decision? I'm asking because they left it so late before doing this. Just wondering if other driver's been on their backs (recently).

a.turner

Ionic11 wrote: »

That's not my question - can the other driver insist he gets charged or is it solely a fiscal decision?

What difference does it make?

Manxman_in_exile

Up to the fiscal surely?

Aretnap

Ionic11 wrote: »

Can the person he smashed into force this into court

No

or has the fiscal office just been really nasty by waiting at the last moment?

It's not at all uncommon for proceedings to be issued close to the deadline - more to do with backlogs than nastiness.

Aretnap

Ionic11 wrote: »

Does anyone know if Motor Legal Protection covers you if get charged with careless driving that's going to court?

Generally no. Mainly it covers your costs if you need a solicitor to claim for uninsured losses (eg personal injury) after an accident which wasn't your fault. A few top notch MLP policies may also cover defence costs if you're charged with a crime, but they are in the minority.

The insurer MAY offer to cover defence costs in some scenarios, irrespective of whether he has MLP - but generally only after a serious accident where liability is in dispute, and they don't want a conviction for careless driving (or worse) making it harder for them to defend a civil liability claim. They''re unlikely to do this if your son hit a parked car as you say in your other thread because (a) it won't be a big claim in the grand scheme of things if there's no personal injury element and (b) there's no serious dispute about liability if you hit a parked car anyway.

Tokk

Aretnap wrote: »

It's not at all uncommon for proceedings to be issued close to the deadline - more to do with backlogs than nastiness.

Exactly - the deadline being legally binding basically means that they've got to make a decision and then move it forward in a short space of time...

As mentioned above, backlogs - as you might logically expect, if there's lots of backlogged potential cases then those closest to their deadline get dealt with and those with longer deadlines are lower down the pile - until their deadlines loom and they become priorities.

It's unfortunate that this may've got hopes up but the odds of malice on anyone's part are pretty small.