Offence Guides

As a specialist in motorbike offences and accidents of all kind, we have produced a series of Offence Guides geared at helping motorcycle drivers and their pillion passengers understand common road traffic offences and the issues facing them should they be stopped by the police.

The following pages contain our Offence Guides for scenarios involving penalty points, drink driving, number plate offences, exhaust pipes and document offences.

Penalty Points

Although bans may be issued for almost any road traffic offence, the Court tends to give penalty points if offences committed are considered to be minor.

Disqualification occurs if an individual has received 12 or more penalty points over a three year period. This is for a minimum period of six months but disqualification will be for twelve months if someone has previously been banned from motor cycling or driving under the totting up provisions once in the previous three years and two years if that has happened twice in the previous three years.

In order not to be banned when 12 points are accumulated, mitigating circumstances must be proven if the court is to exercise its discretion.

If several offences have been committed at the same time, a licence will only be endorsed for the most serious of the offences. However points for offences committed at or around the same time, can be accumulated by the Court. This would apply for instance if a motorbike was caught on several speed cameras on the same road.

If you should accumulate six or more penalty points within the first two years of passing your test, you would automatically revert to a provisional licence holder. The court had no room for manoeuvre on a matter of this nature. In order to get a licence back, all parts of the test must be re-passed.

If you would like more information regarding any aspect of our Offence Guides, or advice on dealing with the police or the Courts, please contact us now.

It is difficult to always know where you stand with your licence and how “at risk” you are of being disqualified. At Motorbike Solicitor we have tried to make it as easy as possible for you.

Many road traffic offences carry endorsement on you driving licence. Any offence which carries an endorsement (endorseable offences) requires a court to endorse you licence with either penalty points or a disqualification.

If an offence carries endorsement with penalty points then it gives the court the discretion to disqualify you from driving. Some offences carry a mandatory disqualification for a minimum period of time. If you are disqualified for an offence then you do not have points placed on your licence.

Points must remain on you counterpart driving licence for 4 years from the date of the offence which they were placed on your licence for. However, they only remain relevant to any offences which are committed within 3 years of the original offence.

After 4 years you can send your licence to the DVLA who will remove the points from the counterpart of your licence.

When you get 12 points on your licence the court must disqualify you from driving for a minimum period (usually 6 months) unless you can persuade them that you have grounds for mitigating the normal consequences of that, such as that you or someone else will suffer exceptional hardship as a result of your disqualification. To decide how many points you have on your licence the court will add up all points on your licence for offences committed 3 years before the current offence. Any other penalty points will be “ignored” for that purpose.