12 Penalty Points On Driving Licence

12 Penalty Points

The penalty points system was introduced in an attempt to provide the Courts with another method of punishing motorists apart from the original fine and driving ban option. In this way, the Court could endorse a person’s driving licence with the number of points it felt appropriate up to 12 penalty points, given the severity of the offence.

It also allowed the introduction of a system that was able to monitor the effect the punishments were having, resulting in the potential to ban motorists who continued to commit driving offences on a regular basis or reached 12  penalty points.

If you’re convicted of a motoring offence, the courts can fine you and ‘endorse’ your driving licence with up to 12 penalty points.

Endorsements must stay on your driving licence for 4 to 11 years depending on the offence.

The endorsement (and 12 penalty points) is put on your driver record and is written on the counterpart document of your photo card driving licence or on your paper driving licence.

If you build up 12 penalty points or more within a period of 3 years, you can be disqualified from driving.

More than 10,000 motorists in Great Britain are still driving despite having amassed 12 or more penalty points on their driving licences after convincing courts they would suffer “exceptional hardship” if banned from driving. With getting on for half of those facing a ban getting around it in this way, the definition of “exceptional” appears rather loose to say the least. The figures, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, show that seven people are still allowed to drive despite having racked up more than 30 points.

The data, secured by the Independent on Sunday from the DVLA, show that 13,449 of the country’s motorists are currently banned from driving by a court after collecting 12 or more penalty points, with a six-month disqualification typically imposed in cases where those points have been amassed over a period of three years or less.

However, some 10,072 drivers are still allowed to drive despite having accrued a dozen or more points, with many of them persuading the courts that losing their licence would result in undue hardship.

For more information about 12 Penalty Points On Driving Licence especially if you need to prepare an exceptional hardship argument, talk to www.pattersonlaw.co.uk and get legal advice from one of the leading motoring law experts in the UK.