Speeding

Speeding may not feel like the most serious criminal offence – indeed it will often result in little more than a small fine and three-penalty points – but where the speed passes a certain threshold the police will send you to court and the court may consider imposing an immediate driving ban. The threshold depends on the speed limit in force, so for a 30MPH limit the court will consider a ban for speeds over 40MPH. For a 70MPH limit the threshold is speeds above 90MPH.

If the court does not order an immediate driving ban, they can impose penalty points – 6 points is common. This is will result in a driving ban of at least six-months if the new points take you to 12 or more.

Speeding charges can be disputed, although how you do that depends on the evidence against you, e.g. whether you have been caught by a police officer using the VASCAR or two police officers corroborating each other’s account of your speed, you might have triggered a mobile speed camera in which case you would look at how the camera operator has used their device. If the evidence is from a fixed speed camera than you will want to look at how that device records speed, e.g. does it use lasers, radar, cables in the ground, etc. You would also want to look at whether anything else in the area could have provided a false reading or been the trigger for the image capture rather than your vehicle. You can read more about how we challenge the different types of speed detection equipment on our blog. 

In some cases, there will be a feature of your vehicle that undermines the evidence against you. For example, we represented a gentleman who was accused of travelling at more than 90MPH despite his vehicle being limited to 65MPH by the manufacturer.