Criminal Conviction fair...

Convicted Driver Insurance

SillySausage123

Well Known Member
Hi,

I've recently made the silly mistake of having a drink or two and felt I was adequate to get home okay by car, well not according to the constructs of the law.

I 'only' blew 49, which I feel is relatively low. I completely agree with banning as a form of punishment and with an additional fine, but to tar everyone with the same brush and define everyone as a criminal is something which I really find difficult to take.

Had I blown +2x over I'd feel I've completely gone overboard (apologise to those that have), but to be simply 0.4 over the limit, as my first ever offence and still be considered a criminal is really painful, particularly with the impact it can have on our lives.

I think there should be a two level threshold, whereby first, the number of offences a person has committed (in a period?) Is taken into account, and two, the level at which you have blown also taken into account.

But, I guess the whole purpose is to act as a deterrent, but I'm sure we have a higher proportion of the population speeding during high levels of traffic than we do those who drink drive in the early hours of the morning, where traffic is relatively low to non existent...

Further to this, the difficulty would be that any politician who champions de-criminalising aspects of drink driving now, would be heading for political suicide...

What are other people's thoughts on this?
 
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Hi there,
The point is, we broke the law. Therefore there is a criminal conviction. When I lost my license last year I 'only' blew 47 - but the legal limit is 35, so that's it.
I understand how you are feeling though, I still occasionally cringe with shame at what happened and that I now have a criminal record. I had to sell my, change my job and even made it in the local paper in the courts section. It really pi**ed me off for a while.
Doing the DD course opened my eyes to how naive I was about drink and driving. I will be able to drive in a month and because of what I learnt on the course and during this whole hideous process I know I will not make the same mistake again.
It does get easier, but you just have to accept it. You would probably be surprised how many people have been caught DD if everyone was open about it
 
I hear you,
Hi there,
The point is, we broke the law. Therefore there is a criminal conviction. When I lost my license last year I 'only' blew 47 - but the legal limit is 35, so that's it.
I understand how you are feeling though, I still occasionally cringe with shame at what happened and that I now have a criminal record. I had to sell my, change my job and even made it in the local paper in the courts section. It really pi**ed me off for a while.
Doing the DD course opened my eyes to how naive I was about drink and driving. I will be able to drive in a month and because of what I learnt on the course and during this whole hideous process I know I will not make the same mistake again.
It does get easier, but you just have to accept it. You would probably be surprised how many people have been caught DD if everyone was open about it

I hear you, however I still feel 47, for a first time offender shouldn't be a CRIMINAL record which (technically) stays with you for ever.
 
Why? It's set out in the law that over 35 is a criminal offence, you can't punch someone only once and argue that it was only sort of an assault. By holding a licence we accepted the legal UK drink driving limit and we broke that limit.

There is a 2 tier system in effect, if you blow over 87.5 you are classed as a high risk offender. Your reading was closer to the limit, but still over the limit and a criminal reading. It doesn't matter if you blow 36 or 130 you have commited a criminal offence.

We just have to accept that this is the reality for us now, with our criminal record we may not have the same opportunities as normal people but eventually employers will consider the conviction spent. After all you can become a police officer after 10 years has passed since a DD conviction. I had to leave my position due to the conviction, I don't feel bad about this anymore, I knew the risk of picking up the keys when I had drank. I think after a while you'll come to accept that we are all in this position by our own doing.
 
Hi,

I've recently made the silly mistake of having a drink or two and felt I was adequate to get home okay by car, well not according to the constructs of the law.

I 'only' blew 49, which I feel is relatively low. I completely agree with banning as a form of punishment and with an additional fine, but to tar everyone with the same brush and define everyone as a criminal is something which I really find difficult to take.

Had I blown +2x over I'd feel I've completely gone overboard (apologise to those that have), but to be simply 0.4 over the limit, as my first ever offence and still be considered a criminal is really painful, particularly with the impact it can have on our lives.

I think there should be a two level threshold, whereby first, the number of offences a person has committed (in a period?) Is taken into account, and two, the level at which you have blown also taken into account.

But, I guess the whole purpose is to act as a deterrent, but I'm sure we have a higher proportion of the population speeding during high levels of traffic than we do those who drink drive in the early hours of the morning, where traffic is relatively low to non existent...

Further to this, the difficulty would be that any politician who champions de-criminalising aspects of drink driving now, would be heading for political suicide...

What are other people's thoughts on this?

You say you only blew 49. This is 40% over the legal limit of 35. Charges are not brought if someone blows up to 40 so you can still be 14% over the legal limit and not prosecuted. More than enough leniency in my opinion given the huge level of exposure drink drive limits receive. Alcohol units are also printed on containers so it's a very simple calculation to determine the number of units eliminated over a period of time and to eliminate the metabolic differences and consequent uncertainty, I always add 25% of time to when I 'think' my number of units has dropped to zero before driving.

In any event, England and Wales has one of the highest drink drive limits in the world.

You could kill or seriously injure someone on your 1st drink driving excursion or your 101st. The idea of taking into account the number of prior offences over a period of time is frankly ridiculous.

I have no doubt that a ban has a huge impact on drink drive offenders but as you rightly point out, it is as much as a deterrent as a punishment.
Considering the impact of killing or paralysing someone by drink driving may put into perspective the 'inconvenience' of a ban of any length of time.
 
Agree with you completely Alan but would like to say that there is no grace that I know of here in NI. A young man on the drink driving awareness course that I was on last year blew 39, if a police officers arrest numbers are low enough you could find yourself charged between 35-40.

The sooner the limit is moved to 0 the better, even 1 drink increases your risk of crashing and our limit should be 0 to remove all the guess work of thinking you're okay after a pint or 2.

I would have risked driving after a pint or 2 before my ban, but after being on the awareness course I'm firmly behind the lower the limit to 0 movement. The ban, the criminal offence, the shame of the offence and the insurance reprocussions of the offence is a great deterrent. If you don't want to be considered a criminal then don't commit a crime.
 
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Agree with you completely Alan but would like to say that there is no grace that I know of here in NI. A young man on the drink driving awareness course that I was on last year blew 39, if a police officers arrest numbers are low enough you could find yourself charged between 35-40.

The sooner the limit is moved to 0 the better, even 1 drink increases your risk of crashing and our limit should be 0 to remove all the guess work of thinking you're okay after a pint or 2.

I would have risked driving after a pint or 2 before my ban, but after being on the awareness course I'm firmly behind the lower the limit to 0 movement. The ban, the criminal offence, the shame of the offence and the insurance reprocussions of the offence is a great deterrent. If you don't want to be considered a criminal then don't commit a crime.
My exposure to drink drive offenders is only in England and I have never been involved with a Northern Ireland case.
Although, I would be surprised if there is, in reality, the ability to make an arbitrary decision based upon something such as arrest numbers.
Such an approach would not stand up in court.

Lowering the limit to 0 is an ideal aspiration but unrealistic. Medication and alcohol based mouth washes could potentially provide a positive reading based upon such a limit. Personally, I believe that Scotland has adopted the correct approach with a 22 limit.

Having said that, I'm yet to see any statistics that indicate if the number of drink driving offences (and more importantly, the number of drink drive related accidents) has dropped since Scotland inrtroduced a lower limit in December 2014.
 
They explained alcohol based mouthwash at the TTC drink driving course, it only stays on a breath reading within 20 minutes after use, after this you would would be back to 0. The only run in I have had with such a low limit was the young lad on the awareness course with a reading of 39, but the man running our course had said that he had seen readings as low as this on the course before.
But as you said things may work different in regards to a grace on the limit in England.

The young lads reading held up in court here, but again I don't know wether or not it would have held in England. Arrest numbers is probably an ignorant way of looking at things, I shouldn't have put it down to something so trivial but I don't know what factors go into the decision for laying a charge so my apologies if my view came off a bit stupid.

Much of eastern Europe and Russia has adopted the 0 limit, although not ideal for those on medications that could possibly give a false positive it is a good way of doing things as it removes guess work. Scotland is certainly on the right track with their limit of 22.
 
My point was that you can't have arbitrary decisions made by police officers. Someone who was charged for a reading of 37 could argue that thay have been treated unfairly under the law than someone not charged for 38 just because the arresting officer took it upon themselves to make a decision to charge based upon his number of arrests. This sounds like a bit of an urban myth to be honest. Either there is a defined limit or a there is limit and a threshold below which you would not be prosecuted (it could be argued that they are one and the same)

The current threshold in England is to allow for machine innaccuracy. I believe that this may change in future in the same way that the allowing of a blood test up to a breath reading of 50 was removed in April 2015 as Home Office approved machines were deemed accurate within the 14% tolerance now allowed in breath.

Far from being 'ignorant', arrest numbers are a good way of determining the effectiveness of a change in drink drive limit. If the number has come down since December 2014 in Scotland, then the lowering of the limit could be deemed to have been effective. If it has not, then other approaches should be considered such as improved education. As I stated, the true measure of effectiveness is wherether the number of drink related accidents falls. After all, this is the purpose of prescribing limits in the first place. I am yet to see such statistics.
 
In all honesty, the unwritten rule is in essence a 0 limit on alcohol when driving.

It's only those of us that flaunt the law who are caught that then have the opportunity of redemption when faced with the 35 limit.
 
My only issue with such a criminal record is that even after it is spent, 20 years down the line it will/could haunt you.

Again, I understand the seriousness of drink driving but take a look at this example:

Steven Woolfe’s hopes of becoming UkIP leader suffered yet another blow after it emerged he forgot to declare a spent drink-driving conviction when he stood as a police and crime commissioner for the party.


Why should he need to declare a spent conviction?! Surely an enhanced CRB check would bring that up.
 
The enhanced check that Steven Wolfe completed make it clear that ALL convictions, spent or unspent, must be declared.
He didn’t declare it. There is a matter of integrity at stake. Enhanced check are only carried out when there is a child protection, financial or public interest (as in his case, wanting to be the Crime commissioner) which means that the usual rules for ordinary jobs about convictions being spent can be ignored.
When you hear on here about the awful experience that a Drink Drive conviction involves, it is hard to believe that he would have simply forgotten about it. I suspect he hoped it wouldn’t show up. Therefore his problem was not the conviction, but the failure to declare it. If he had declared it then I would think that he would not have been having problems.
 
Ah, sorry to rehash an oldish thread but I can't help but still feel down about this.

Still so difficult to accept the realisation that I'm now classified for life as a criminal. Again, I understand the seriousness, but Lord it's such a painful pill to swallow.

Also, I've noticed people don't seem to be concerned about the fact that they are classified as such and are more worried about the length of ban, why is that? I'd rather take a longer ban and/or larger fine than to be considered a criminal particularly for a 'low' reading, no aggrevating factors and no custodial sentence handed down.
 
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It's hard to accept but it's the law, I knew before getting into my car that driving it was a criminal offence. For the rest of our lives we have to declare this to work, immigration for visas for our holidays, to unis and colleges. Canada is a no go for 10 years which was a huge dissapointment for me as it is where I was considering emigrating before I was convicted, I at least wanted to get out to visit friends this year but can't with my conviction. It's a bitter pill to swallow, but we broke the law and that's reality for us now.

I'm sorry you're having a hard time coming to terms with it, it can be a very frightening thing for people who apart from the drink driving have kept their noses clean in all other aspects of their lives. Drink driving is a very serious crime and it has to be treated as such, it kills countless people every year and the fact that we are sitting on the forum talking about it on our Friday night instead of sitting in a prison cell after killing someone goes to show that we got off very lightly. I think personally I was more worried about the ban than the conviction because I know a few people who have criminal convictions and they live completely normal lives.

I'm saying this as someone who attends councelling services, if its getting you down to the point where you are thinking of it often and it's upsetting you then you should talk to someone. You're better getting it out and having someone help you rationalise your new situation rather than stewing on it.
 
Thanks Grice, I hear where you're coming from, and I thought about some form of counselling this afternoon, as I seem to keep repeating the scenario in my head - being arrested was such an out of body experience... I know it will definitely get better, but presently it feels s**t I've not even been convicted yet.

I read a page from someone's blog recently and it was so sad: http://www.the-record.org.uk/unlock-people-with-convictions/criminal-records-ruin-lives/

The key quote from it was:

“You’ve been caught in a net never intended for you.”

That's exactly how I feel, as I should never have found myself in the position I'm currently in, in the first place. But I only have myself to blame.

And although the ROA is suitable for most of us now - we never know how the goalposts can just shift. It's a huge unfortunate life lesson.
 
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For an ordinary job, your drink drive conviction will be spent after 5 years. If you have to have an enhanced DBS check (working with children etc) and if it is your only conviction the. It is spent after 11 years, it will not show up on your DBS and you do not have to declare it.
As you pointed out, it is a bar to going to Canada for 10 years but if you did not cause massive damage or seriously injure someone then you can still go to the USA on the ESTA form.
 
For an ordinary job, your drink drive conviction will be spent after 5 years. If you have to have an enhanced DBS check (working with children etc) and if it is your only conviction the. It is spent after 11 years, it will not show up on your DBS and you do not have to declare it.
As you pointed out, it is a bar to going to Canada for 10 years but if you did not cause massive damage or seriously injure someone then you can still go to the USA on the ESTA form.

I was under the impression that it still showed on an enhanced DBS check for life.

After 11 years DVLA remove DR10 from your record...
 
I had to have a full (National ) Security Clearance check to work in a classified company. Declared my DD and the check took quite a while but it came through. As above, it's the non-declaring that goes against you. For non DBS jobs and for car insurance purposes, spent after five years. You can rent a car easily then. Although the conviction does stay on your licence for eleven years.
 
I was under the impression that it still showed on an enhanced DBS check for life.

After 11 years DVLA remove DR10 from your record...
That was the case for DBS until about 5 years ago, then the rules altered to what I indicated.
 
I think we should provide clarity for those that look at this in the future (I noticed this from one of Sean's posts):

If an offence falls within any of the exceptions, then there is a requirement for the conviction (whether spent or unspent) to be disclosed. However, a conviction of drink driving does not fall within these exceptions.

In relation to filtering, filtering allows the DBS to identify and remove convictions and cautions that are protected.

Any conviction that has resulted in a custodial sentence (whether this is a suspended sentence or not) will remain subject to disclosure on a DBS check.

In relation to the 2013 Regulation, the changes impacted what an employer can ask an individual in relation to cautions and convictions. It also impacted what can be released on both a standard and enhanced DBS check. It may be that you will be required to disclose the conviction depending on the type of role you seek to apply for, for which the DBS check is required.

Please bear in mind that there are some defined positions where filtering of offences does not apply, for example, firearms applications or police vetting.


So:
  • Basic - 5 years spent
  • Standard & Enhanced - 11 years
Note: The 11 years filtering process only applies if you have ONE conviction. So if you do get caught please adhere to providing a specimen it really is not worth it.
 
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