If you are charged with a serious driving offence, then you need some serious advice and we suggest you take advantage of the free first interview with Bill Morris (refer to Bill’s bio page on this website to see his unique combination of professional experiences).
Yes, he does specialise in representing people charged with ‘serious driving offences’.
What are serious driving offences?
Serious driving offences come in many forms under South Australian Law, some examples:
- Driving with more than the prescribed concentration of alcohol or a drug in your blood (commonly called drink driving or drug driving).
- Driving under the influence of alcohol or a drug (DUI).
- Driving at a speed or in a manner that is alleged to be dangerous to the public (driving without due care).
- Aggravated driving without due care causing death or injury of another person (causing death or harm by dangerous driving).
These offences all involve a licence disqualification, some of them are up to 10 years’ minimum disqualification.
Offences 2-4 listed above also give rise to the possibility of imprisonment and offences 3 and 4 have a typical starting point for sentencing of 3-5 years’ imprisonment.
Licence disqualification
If a licence disqualification would have significant financial or other personal consequences for you then it is likely that you will benefit from legal advice. Please take advantage of a free first interview with Bill Morris. He can discuss your situation with you and suggest what the best approach will be for you, and he can advise:
- If the demerit points you will incur from that offence will take you to 12 or more demerit points accumulated within a 3 year period(1), up to and including the most recent date on which you committed an offence which incurred demerit points,
AND - If avoiding a licence disqualification is at all possible…
If you want to enquire about the above, then DON’T PAY THE EXPIATION NOTICE AND DON’T GO TO COURT without first seeing us for a free first interview!
We may be able to help you. We will certainly try.
However, once you have paid the expiation notice fee/fine or gone to court on the matter, it is TOO LATE. You will have lost any opportunity to be found not guilty (and so not incur those extra demerit points) and you will have lost any opportunity to seek a reduction in the number of demerit points you incur if you are found guilty of that offence.
Note the 12 points within 3 years applies to a fully licensed driver. Provisional licence holders face disqualification once they accumulate 4 or more points over any time period and for probationary licence holders it is once they accumulate 2 or more points over any time period.