Drink Driving V (Low Range)

Overview:

Police were conducting roadside breath tests when our client was directed into the roadside breath testing site for a random breath test. There was nothing about our client’s driving that brought him to police’s attention.

Once intercepted, our client was very cooperative with police and made full admissions to police that he had consumed 2 full strength beers within a period of one hour, before driving.  As a result, our client was charged with low range drink driving being 0.054% which is at the lower end of the scale for a low range drink driving offence.

Unfortunately, this low range drink driving offence was our client’s third drink driving offence on his traffic history. However two of the three drink driving offences occurred at least 18 years ago.

As a result of being charged with a low drink driving offence, our client was facing a mandatory licence disqualification for a minimum of one month and a maximum disqualification of nine months. He decided to engage an expert drink driving lawyer at Potts Lawyers to ensure he had the best representation in court.

Outcome:

Ms Sinead Garland, a drink driving lawyer, traffic lawyer and criminal lawyer at Potts Lawyers, made oral submissions to the court which emphasised our client’s remorse. This was shown through our client’s completion of the Queensland Traffic Offenders Program (QTOP) and his early plea of guilty. Ms Garland also emphasized our client’s humiliation to be back before the court for another drink driving offence.

During Ms Garland’s submission, she advised the court of the significant impact a disqualification would have on her client’s business as well as his employees. When determining the penalty, Ms Garland asked the court to not place too much weight on her client’s previous history, given that his previous drink driving offences were dated. Subsequently Ms Garland asked the court to use its discretion to keep the drink driving disqualification period to a minimum, being a one month disqualification.

Ms Garland also highlighted to the court the impacts a recorded drink driving conviction would have on her client’s business, which had opportunities to expand overseas, and therefore asked the Magistrate to use her discretion in not recording a conviction for the offence.

The Magistrate agreed with Ms Garland’s submission and disqualified our client from holding or obtaining a drivers licence for a period of one month, fined a sum $350.00 and ordered that no conviction be recorded.

WARNING:

This is a summary of an actual case. Details have been omitted to protect the privacy of our client. We select cases which are informative and no guarantee is provided that similar results are achievable in all cases. Every case is different and you should obtain legal advice specific to your matter and circumstances.