Car seized by police- odd one

Car_54

molerat said:

You cannot honestly say she has needed the provisional for ID for the whole of the past year so at what stage will she decide she doesn't need it and it is time to send it off ?  Leave it until 2 weeks before the 2 years is up and when it gets lost in the post it will be too late to do anything about it ?  Sending it off now, after making a copy of some sort of both the licence and pass cert, will at least afford her the time to sort it out if anything goes wrong.  Just because you can legally do something it does not necessarily follow it is the sensible thing to do.

All of that may be true, but it is utterly irrelevant. The OP's daughter's course of action, sensible or not, is no business of the police.

On the day she was acting perfectly legally, and the police were plain wrong. And even less "sensible" than their victim.

BTW it's years since I last saw a pass certificate, but I'm pretty confident that the entitlement to drive, and the two year limit, are set out explicitly thereon.

MX5huggy

I think some one once said:- 
“Why do today what you can put off till tomorrow” 
what percentage of tax returns are submitted in January the last week of January and even the last hour of January? 

Car_54

MX5huggy said:

I think some one once said:- 
“Why do today what you can put off till tomorrow” 
what percentage of tax returns are submitted in January the last week of January and even the last hour of January? 

And someone else said "Why put off till tomorrow what you can put off till next week?"”

MX5huggy

Car_54 said:

MX5huggy said:

I think some one once said:- 
“Why do today what you can put off till tomorrow” 
what percentage of tax returns are submitted in January the last week of January and even the last hour of January? 

And someone else said "Why put off till tomorrow what you can put off till next week?"”

Luckily tomorrow never comes. 

TooManyPoints

I don't actually think that part even matters…

No, neither do I. I was addressing the (unfounded) idea that the police may have doubted the veracity of the pass certificate. The proposal was they could seize the car until it was proved to be valid which you have demonstrated they could not.

All of that may be true, but it is utterly irrelevant.

^^^This.

I find it astonishing that some answers here suggest that the OP’s daughter was to blame for this. She was not. She was driving perfectly legally and produced the documents she needed to prove that when asked. This resulted in her having her car seized.

Two things are evident from this:

1. The DVLA needs to devise a method of recording driving test results against provisional driving licences. 

2. Since (1) is very unlikely to happen in the short term, or indeed at all, police officers need to be trained that they cannot rely on DVLA records in these circumstances. They must instead depend on what pieces of paper they are presented with. They should also understand that to seize somebody’s vehicle is not something to be undertaken lightly and that they will face consequences if they act unlawfully.

….what percentage of tax returns are submitted in January the last week of January and even the last hour of January?

No idea. What has that to do with this question? Or are you also suggesting this unlawful action was the fault of the driver?

Aretnap

TooManyPoints said:

….what percentage of tax returns are submitted in January the last week of January and even the last hour of January?

No idea. What has that to do with this question? Or are you also suggesting this unlawful action was the fault of the driver?

I thought he meant the opposite - anyone who has ever waited until the 31st of January to fill in their tax return, or for that matter sat up all night as a student writing an essay to hand in the next morning, is hardly in a position to throw stones at the OP's daughter for not updating her driving licence the moment she passed her test.

TooManyPoints

I thought he meant the opposite -

Reading again you may be right, If so, it will teach me not to jump to conclusions!

Baldytyke88

Aretnap said:

If the OP's daughter produced a valid licence (a provisional one, made valid by the pass certificate) then what the officer believed, reasonably or otherwise, doesn't come into it - the seizure was unlawful.

Does the law say that a provisional license with a pass certificate is acceptable when the computer says it's provisional?

I would be surprised if that is written into the law.

Baldytyke88

Aretnap said:

TooManyPoints said:

….what percentage of tax returns are submitted in January the last week of January and even the last hour of January?

No idea. What has that to do with this question? Or are you also suggesting this unlawful action was the fault of the driver?

I thought he meant the opposite - anyone who has ever waited until the 31st of January to fill in their tax return, or for that matter sat up all night as a student writing an essay to hand in the next morning, is hardly in a position to throw stones at the OP's daughter for not updating her driving licence the moment she passed her test.

Maybe all this was caused by driving into the ditch

Aretnap

Baldytyke88 said:

Aretnap said:

If the OP's daughter produced a valid licence (a provisional one, made valid by the pass certificate) then what the officer believed, reasonably or otherwise, doesn't come into it - the seizure was unlawful.

Does the law say that a provisional license with a pass certificate is acceptable when the computer says it's provisional?

I would be surprised if that is written into the law.

Yes, as far as the law is concerned a driving licence is still a physical document. What the DVLA's computer says does not override what the physical documents say.

Arguably that's anachronistic but it's hardly the only example of the law not keeping up with technology... and anyway this thread demonstrates why treating the DVLA's computer system as the last word on who can and can't drive might be a bad idea.