If you have been accused of a motoring offence, then you will need to quickly prepare a defence before you get charged. Many areas of the law are almost open to interpretation and so the accusing side must complete every stage of the process correctly or it is likely that you will have grounds to contest the claim.
If you believe that the particular circumstances under which you committed the driving offence should exempt you from some or all of the punishment, then you can make a Special Reasons argument. These are most commonly used to avoid bans in drink driving cases, however they are sometimes used to avoid penalty points for other offences as well or driving through a red light.
When arguing a Special Reason, you are required to give evidence (under oath of course) that in the given circumstances it wouldn’t be fair to administer the penalty points. The most common case for people to argue Special Reasons is that it was an emergency, i.e. they were taking a badly injured passenger to A & E or were taking a woman who is having a baby to hospital and went a bit above the speed limit or ran a red light.
If your case is found to have a Special Reason, then you will not be given any penalty points. There are however no strict guidelines as to what constitutes a Special Reason, but it must fall under one of the following:
1. A mitigating or extenuating circumstance
2. It must not be a legal / law based defence claim
3. It must be directly connected to the offence in question
4. It must be something appropriate that the Court ought to take into consideration when deciding what punishment to impose.
Section 34 of the Road Traffic Offenders Act of 1988 is where you will find mention of the Special Reasons argument.
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