Driving without a valid driving licence is one of the worst offences you can commit on the road. From a reasonably young age it is built into our mind...
Driving without a valid driving licence is one of the worst offences you can commit on the road. From a reasonably young age it is built into our minds that before we drive, we must hold a driving licence, yet there are thousands of people every year who are caught driving without a licence.
With the offence of driving without a licence, there are different levels of severity, the most minor of which being when the driver does have a licence, but just doesn’t have it on them at the time they get pulled over. The best thing to do in this situation is to be truthful and allow the police to take your car away if they wish to. You can then go home, get your licence, show it to them, apologise for not carrying it, and drive your car home.
The real problem is when there is no license issued and we are caught on the roads. There are hundreds of violators who got away scot-free (and have put up their stories on various legal forums and even on YouTube), but the truth is that there is no real getting out of that!
There is a bigger problem if your vehicle is in an accident and you are driving without a license. In a case like that, God save you! Depending on what the laws are in that particular state or county, there can be penalties ranging from imprisonment to an impounding of your vehicle and a ban on getting a driving license for life time so that you can never even apply!
There could be a temporary suspension of the license, and if caught while driving during that period, there are tougher penalties than with just driving without a license. The worst of the lot is when there is a permanent ban of the drivers license and still the person is caught while driving. That is a real short cut to get into federal prison!
Driving without license is a simple attitude problem. An understanding that the rules are there for our convenience will put an end to that attitude.
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Where driving without due care and attention used to be something of a defence, it is now far more of an offence. Momentary lapses of concentration are no longer an excuse in a court of law, in fact, in some instances; it can be enough to land you in jail.
Powerful associations like MADD ” Mothers against drunk driving, and other such associations have been lobbying for such changes in the law for quite some time now, and several states have statutes which vary in degrees depending on the severity of the outcome of careless driving.
But what is so surprising is that people dont take driving without due care and attention so seriously. They sympathize with the offender and offer advice as to how they can get away from it all! On a legal forum, we came across a question put by a member who apparently was charged for spinning tires on a gravel road by virtue of going very fast. There was a petrol pump next to where he was fined and the officer mentioned in his report that the offender was driving without due care and attention, and that since the petrol pump was open and there were people in the area, he could have injured someone. Now, the question in the forum was whether proving if the petrol pump was closed will be beneficial to his case, and to our surprise, dozens of people gave advice as to how he could prove that something in the cops report was wrong! What citizenship!!
Every year there are thousands of deaths or serious injuries on the roads as a result of negligent driving and we dont really take notice. Tens of thousands of people lose their licences every year because of careless driving, at least temporarily and many of them just turn up back behind the wheel without a valid licence! Even though the people in the surrounding neighbourhood may well know about it, most people will not pull them up on it, and this is what causes most of the motoring offences on our roads.
Driving without due care and attention is not as serious as drunk driving or cell-phone-driving in the eyes of most people, and in some cases even the police, however it is one of the leading causes of accidents on out roads and so it should be addressed with more seriousness and authority.
For more information about and for , visit pattersonlaw.co.uk
