A Day in the Traffic Court

As I might have previously mentioned, I don't generally deal with traffic work.

At the more serious end of the spectrum your drink drive and drive whilst disqualified cases, both of which are prosecuted by the CPS, routinely appear before the remand or GAP (guilty anticipated plea) courts. I do see a fair few of those.

Conversely the majority of non-imprisonable, summary-only traffic matters - those that would usually begin their life in the SJP (Single Justice Procedure) - are prosecuted by the police. I do not see many of those, as the work tends to be dealt with at a single court venue that I do not usually visit.

A few weeks ago I got the call "we're struggling to get anyone in traffic, can you help?" Ever the willing volunteer, I decided it would be the ideal opportunity to hone my traffic skills.

Background information:

Cases appearing before the traffic court are police led prosecutions. Legislation allows the police to prosecute certain lower level offences in its own right. This means that the police alone, without the input of the CPS, decides which cases are put forward for prosecution and which are dealt with via out of court disposals (e.g. speed awareness courses, driver improvement courses, fixed penalty notices).

The overwhelming majority of these cases are dealt with via the SJP (see my SJP explainer), but a full hearing will take place for:

• Any case that the SJP Magistrate refers for a full hearing. This will usually happen if the defendant makes an equivocal plea on their SJP Notice or the Magistrate picks up any irregularities on the SJP Notice.
• Any case where the defendant has returned an SJP Notice indicating that they wish to have a full hearing.
• Any offence the police deem too serious to be dealt with via the SJP. In this case the defendant will receive a summons instead of an SJP Notice.

An equivocal plea is where the defendant ticks the "guilty" box on the SJP Notice and then includes additional information that suggests they might not be. You'd be surprised how many people tick the "guilty" box and add comments along the lines of "I can't remember who was driving, but I'll accept the blame to get this dealt with".

Defendants appearing before the traffic court tend to be unrepresented. This is because low level, non-imprisonable traffic offences are not usually eligible for Legal Aid funding, so anyone employing a solicitor or barrister will need to do so using their own funds.

The court will always try to accommodate unrepresented defendants as best as it can. The Legal Advisor will endeavour to explain matters in a way the defendant understands, but difficulties can arise if there is a language barrier or the defendant's understanding of the law is at odds with the actual law.

A police staff member takes the role of prosecutor in the traffic court. Often this is someone without formal legal qualification, who is authorised by the Chief Constable and will need to seek rights of audience at the start of the hearing.

For this particular court the police prosecutor was very good. She was very fair and pragmatic. She didn't try to argue trivial little points and was happy to concede when the police's case wasn't good enough. There is little worse, in my view, than a prosecutor who is so dogged in their determination for a conviction that they cannot accept weaknesses in their case.

Cases before the court:

• Mr Green:

Mr Green, a taxi driver, appeared unrepresented accused of parking on the zigzag markings of a pedestrian crossing.

Just a few weeks earlier, astonishingly, he had accepted a fixed penalty (£100 fine and 3 points) for exactly the same offence at a different location. This time he decided he wasn't going to accept a fixed penalty and would have his day in court.

The Legal Advisor read the charge to Mr Green and asked him to indicate a plea. As is often the case in the traffic court, Mr Green wanted to ask a few questions before committing to the words "guilty" or "not guilty".

Mr Green said that he had stopped only momentarily to allow his fare to exit the vehicle. He'd explained that the officer at the time, who told him it was still an offence and if he wanted to argue it he could go to court.

Having heard Mr Green's comments, the Legal Advisor told him that even stopping momentarily would constitute an offence, just as the officer had said. With that Mr Green begrudgingly entered a guilty plea. He received a Band A fine and 3 penalty points. He was also ordered to pay the surcharge and £120 towards prosecution costs.

Of more concern to Mr Green is that the council's taxi licensing people would now be breathing down his neck for having clocked up 6 points on his licence.

• Mr Pink:

Mr Pink, a sales executive, appeared unrepresented accused of failing to identify the driver of a vehicle. A vehicle registered in his name had been observed passing rather too closely to a cyclist, so the police wished to consider whether or not to prosecute the driver for careless driving. As is increasingly the case, the cyclist had sent video footage of the close pass to the police.

It was a family vehicle that both Mr Pink and his wife were insured to drive and did so on a daily basis. The incident also took place very close to the Pink family home, so the stretch of road was one that both Mr and Mrs Pink could have been travelling on. That being the case Mr Pink had the genuine predicament that he simply did not know who was driving at the time of the alleged offence.

Mr Pink contacted the officer in the case and explained the situation. He asked for any images that might assist in ascertaining who was driving at the time. The officer returned a selection of stills from the cyclist's video, but none of them were clear enough to identify the driver. Mr Pink got back in touch with the officer to inform him of that fact. The days ticked by and a couple of months later Mr Pink received a summons to court.

Standing before the court Mr Pink was again unsure whether to enter a guilty or not guilty plea. He explained the situation, presenting copies of the emails he had sent to the officer. The police prosecutor, who was very fair and pragmatic as I said earlier, read the emails and immediately withdrew the case.

• Mr Red:

Mr Red was next before the court. Mr Red, who was now retired, was a foreign national now living in the UK. He told that court he had been a professional driver in his homeland and had never been in trouble with the law. He had a clean driving licence.

Mr Red was accused of driving without valid third party insurance. Again he was asked to enter a plea; again he wanted to ask a few questions before he did so.

Mr Red had been stopped by the police when his vehicle flagged up as uninsured. Mr Red told the court that he did not know that his vehicle was uninsured, as in his experience the policy always auto-renewed on its date of expiry. On this occasion, however, the policy did not auto-renew. This meant that Mr Red had been driving an uninsured vehicle, albeit unwittingly.

The Legal Advisor duly told Mr Red that driving a vehicle without valid third party insurance was a strict liability offence, so it did not matter that he did so unknowingly. Based on what he had told the court, he was guilty of the offence. Mr Red was very aggrieved at this - he didn't see how he could be guilty when it was a genuine oversight that he had no knowledge of.

The Legal Advisor told Mr Red that as a driver it was his responsibility to ensure that the vehicle was correctly insured, not to just assume it was. She reiterated that in terms of the law, the fact that he did not realise he was uninsured was not a defence. She warned Mr Red that should he be convicted after trial then he would face significant prosecution costs in the region of £600.

In by far the most cringeworthy moment of the day Mr Red persisted in his argument and entered a not guilty plea. If he gives the same argument at trial there is no doubt that he will be convicted and face a very hefty bill.

• Mr White:

Mr White appeared before the court accused of speeding. He was clocked at 36 mph in a 30 mph zone, which would ordinarily result in a Band A fine and 3 points on his licence. Mr White's case had been referred to a full hearing because he had failed to enter a plea on the SJP Notice.

Mr White was not local to the area. He had just been passing through when he was clocked by a speed camera. He had travelled some distance to get to the court hearing. He had brought his mother along for moral support.

On checking Mr White's driver record it transpired that he already had 18 points on his licence. That being the case he was liable to a minimum of 6 months' disqualification under the totting up rule. He was also prepared to accept the speeding offence, which would have taken his total to 21 points.

Mr White was seemingly oblivious to the fact he already had 18 points on his licence. You might question how that is possible, but a lot of drivers are convicted of driving offences in their absence and if their details are wrong on the DVLA database then news of the conviction sometimes never reaches them.

In ideal circumstances the court would have disqualified Mr White there and then. However, as he had driven such a long distance to court, with his entirely innocent (non-driving) mother as a passenger, then it was not practical to disqualify him on this occasion. Had we done so it would have left his mother stranded in an unfamiliar city, with little prospect of getting home, through no fault of her own.

Mr White's case was adjourned for a fortnight, when he was told to return to court using public transport and expect to be disqualified.

Further reading:

Traffic Law in England, Wales and Scotland (aff. link), by K. M. Hughes.