DRIVEN TO DESPAIR

It never fails to amaze how many people feel that if they ignore official communications somehow they will go away and the tidings within will be forever unable to come back and hit them where it hurts.  So it is with much of the process at motoring courts.  We had five s.172s.  One defendant managed to convince us that he had indeed returned the form with the errant driver named only for the recipient police department to deny receipt.  One might consider that the boot was well and truly on the other foot. One other had sufficient evidence that he was not in a position to have received the notice to nominate.  The remaining defendants had, for a variety of reasons, failed to persuade us that they had not received their s.172 forms and were duly convicted one of whom with six penalty points already on her license was immediately made subject to six months disqualification her legal advisor assisted plea of exceptional hardship falling far short of any reasonable hurdle.   We also had an ambulance driver before us for driving the wrong way in a "one way" street.  This is virtually a strict liability offence and although he was on an emergency run to a hospital we had to convict him after persuading him that his defence was not tenable.  I blogged on this topic last year. After explaining the situation to him we gave him an absolute discharge and no costs but the atrocious so called "victims` surcharge" had to be paid.   Being in an area where there are large numbers of immigrants from the E.U. the problem imposed on our courts a year or two ago by a European Directive  that such license holders did not have to convert to a U.K. license is a regular occurrence.  We just do not know their driving history.  I suppose it could be worse; if we don`t know they could be  convicted murderers when they arrive here what difference in reality would a conviction or two for careless or dangerous driving make?