Drink Driving

Offence of drinking and driving

It is an offence for you to drive – or even attempt to drive – a motor vehicle when you are unfit to do so as a result of consuming drink or drugs. S5 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 specifically provides that you will be guilty of an offence if you either:

• drive or attempts to drive a motor vehicle on a road or other public place, or
• are in charge of a motor vehicle on a road or other public place,

after consuming so much alcohol that the proportion of it in your breath, blood or urine exceeds the prescribed limit.

The current limits are:

• 35 micrograms of alcohol in 100 ml of breath
• 80 milligrammes of alcohol in 100 ml of blood
• 107 milligrammes of alcohol in 100 ml of urine

Providing a specimen of breath

If a police officer reasonably suspects that you are driving with excess alcohol then you can be asked to perform a roadside breath test. If this gives a positive reading, or if you refuse to give a breath specimen, then you will be arrested and taken to a police station where you will be required to take a further test to find out how much alcohol is in your body. Note that you cannot insist upon taking legal advice before you take the test and if you do insist then this in itself may be seen as a refusal to provide a specimen.

The police must follow strict procedures when conducting a breath test and must have two specimens of your breath which, when analysed, exceed 35 micrograms of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath. In the event that both specimens exceed 50 micrograms of alcohol, it is likely that the police will simply go ahead and charge you with the offence and you will be bailed to attend Court at a later date.

However, if both readings do not indicate that you have more than 50 milligrams of alcohol in your breath then a secondary test will need to take place. In this case the sample of blood or urine will need to be sent off for further tests so you will be bailed to return to the police station at a later date.

Indeed, if the result of the test shows that you have between 40 and 50 micrograms in breath, you can ask for a blood or urine specimen to be taken to check the accuracy of the machine and you will probably be better doing this anyway because the delay which this causes may mean that the level of alcohol in your body will have dropped sufficiently.

Penalty for drink driving

In the event that you are found guilty then you face a minimum of 12 months disqualification and a fine of up to £5000. The maximum penalty is an unlimited ban and/or imprisonment for up to 6 months.

It is vital therefore that you contact keepmedrivingat the first opportunity so that we can start to take the necessary action to examine the procedural steps taken by the police and to ascertain whether we can find reasons for the matter to be withdrawn or so that an appropriate defence or mitigation can be mounted.

Special Reasons

Remember, this is a complex area of the law and you may have a defence or be able to argue special reasons as to why you should not be disqualified.

It is possible for you to avoid being disqualified after pleading guilty to an offence of drink driving and that is for you to argue what is known as special reasons.

Special reasons are those which relate directly to the offence that has been committed and not to you as the offender. Thus it is not possible to argue that a loss of your license will cause hardship to you or others.

However, anything which relates to the offence can be used as a special reason. Reasons which have been held to amount to special reasons include:

1. shortness of distance driven;
2. unintentional commission of the offence (i.e. laced drinks);
3. emergencies.

You should be aware, however, that special reasons are notoriously difficult to establish and the burden of proof is always on you to establish them. The specialist solicitors at keepmedriving can guide you through this difficult process and if the magistrates agree that there was a special reason, they may use their discretion to allow you to retain your driving licence as opposed to imposing a disqualification.

Mitigation

Even if there is no defence which we can run, you may still be able to mount a mitigation which could reduce not only the period of disqualification but also the other penalties which could be imposed and keepmedriving can assist you with this.

If you would like to discuss this with one of our solicitors then please contact keepmedriving either by completing the appropriate online information form which you will find in the Getting Help section, requesting a free call-back using the call-back form to the right or phoning us during office hours on 084 4804 4804

Learn more about Drink Driving at:

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driving_under_the_influence)