Two Speeding Offences at Dumfries

In this case we had to draw on our advocacy skills and proper understanding of the law to persuade a judge to dispose of two offences in a particular manner.  Our client had been caught speeding twice in quick succession on a journey up the A74(M), once at 107mph by a LTI 20.20 Ultralyte 100 in a ‘camera van’ and 10 minutes later at 104mph by means of police officers utilising a Unipar SL700 laser gun.

The Crown, as is their prerogative, chose to prosecute these incidents as separate speeding charges on two individual complaints, both as contraventions of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984, section 17(4).  They also made it perfectly clear that they were unwilling to conjoin the offences into one charge, notwithstanding the fact they were committed in very close proximity.

To make our task slightly easier, at least our client had a clean driving licence!

As instructed, pleas of guilty were tendered to the charges.  With specific reference to the provisions of the Road Traffic Offenders At 1988, we were able to persuade the presiding Justice that a ‘principal of aggregation’ could be applied whereby sentence is only imposed in respect of the most serious of the two offences (which, of course, is the one with the higher speed) with the second simply being endorsed on the driving licence but attracting no penalty points.  In doing so, only 6 points were added to our client’s driver record and the period of disqualification that would have followed had it not been for our involvement avoided.