Drink Driving Sentencing Guidelines.
The biggest factor in determining the length of a drink driving ban is the level of the reading. There are a number of other factors that the court will take into account.
They will in particular look at the circumstances of the driving, what time of day it was. An offence committed at 5:00pm is going to be considered a lot more seriously than one at 5:00am. The location is also important, driving past a school during the day would be an aggravating feature as would being on a motorway. A country lane would be considered less serious.
If there was an accident this will be more serious as would having passengers in the car, especially young children.
There are factors that would make the case less serious, such as driving a short distance or driving for what you considered an important reason. You have to be careful when crafting a mitigation, it is not a simple case of saying “it wasn’t busy at the time…” This can come across as an excuse and make it seem as if it was a calculated decision to drive because you thought you could get away with it. Trying to persuade the court to be lenient is a minefield, it is so easy to say the wrong thing and to make it worse, that’s why we recommend you speak to an expert drink driving solicitor and let us show you how we are different.
There are so many variables that means every case is different. That’s why we don’t work on a template, we don’t have a one size fits all approach. You are paying for a bespoke service and we will go through your case in some detail, looking at the circumstances of the offence as well as your background.
Check our online Drink Driving sentencing calculator, based on the document that the Court will have in front of them when deciding your fate.
Call us free on 01623 397200 to see how we can get you the best possible result.
