Choice Insurance Agent

There are several myths floating around, particularly on the Internet, about ways that you can avoid being charged if accused of committing a traffic offence. However the fact is that the vast majority of them are simply not true.

One of the most common theories people have is that if a police officer makes a mistake on a traffic offence ticket then that ticket is invalid and the charge is void, but as with most theories of this nature, there is very little truth to it.

This is because the ticket that he gives to you is not official evidence, it is just a brief overview of the offence and if you question the validity of the ticket due to an error, then all that will happen is that a court summons will be sent to you and the officer will have to draw up an official statement which he is not likely to make any errors on.

The only way that a mistake on the ticket might help you is if you take issue with the actual offence, i.e. you dont believe you went over the speed limit or ran a red light or whatever theyre accusing you of. If the officer has made a mistake on the ticket then you could bring this to light to discredit the rest of his evidence by implying that his approach to this offence is sloppy.

However if you did actually commit the offence and a police officer catches you, you dont really have a leg to stand on.

Human rights violations are something else that people try to cling to when accused of traffic offences. The usual argument is that because they are the registered keeper of the vehicle that they are not obliged to tell the police who was driving at the time in question because of their human rights.

This is simply not true, there has been an amendment to international human rights in this regard meaning that this information has to be provided at the request of the police or you will be liable for a hefty fine and six points on your licence as they claim that the compromise in human rights is proportionate to the need for road safety.

Something else that is fairly common is that when people have insurance policies whereby they can drive other peoples cars with their permission, they will buy a new car and before they are changed to the registered keeper of the vehicle, they drive it around believing that they are insured to do so having kept their insurance on their old car, because officially the new one belongs to someone else.

This is also a false belief. If you have paid money for the car then as far as the law and insurance goes, that car is yours and if you havent switched the insurance over, then you are driving without insurance, which is of course illegal.