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If you have been accused of a motoring offence, then you will need to quickly prepare a defence before you get charged. Many areas of the law are almost open to interpretation and so the accusing side must complete every stage of the process correctly or it is likely that you will have grounds to contest the claim.
If you believe that the particular circumstances under which you committed the driving offence should exempt you from some or all of the punishment, then you can make a Special Reasons argument. These are most commonly used to avoid bans in drink driving cases, however they are sometimes used to avoid penalty points for other offences as well or driving through a red light.
When arguing a Special Reason, you are required to give evidence (under oath of course) that in the given circumstances it wouldn’t be fair to administer the penalty points. The most common case for people to argue Special Reasons is that it was an emergency, i.e. they were taking a badly injured passenger to A & E or were taking a woman who is having a baby to hospital and went a bit above the speed limit or ran a red light.
If the court deems that there were indeed Special Reasons in your circumstances, then you will not be issued any licence points. There aren’t any particular definitions of Special Reasons, however you will have to prove that your situation was one of the following:
1. A mitigating or extenuating circumstance
2. It must not be a legal / law based defence claim
3. It must be directly connected to the commission of the offence
4. It must be something that the Court ought to take into consideration when deciding what punishment to impose.
You will find information about the Special Reasons argument and its guidelines in section 34 of the Road Traffic Offenders Act of 1988.
