Careless Driving Without Due Care & Attention With Collision

I recently flew from Brisbane to Rockhampton to represent a client charged with Careless Driving otherwise known as Driving Without Due Care & Attention, with a collision. 

The client faced a potential lifetime lience disqualification, but I acheived a fine only with no loss of licence.

We service the entire state of Queensland, despite being based in Brisbane.

When I attend regional courts I like to film episodes of our YouTube series 'Wiseman Lawyers Ride Alongs'.

I do this partly to show potential clients such as yourself what it is exactly that we do, and partly to prove that we do and will literally go anywhere in Queensland.

I can get a 6am flight out of Brisbane and be standing on the steps of court at Mackay for example at 8:30am waiting for the doors to open, and then be back in Brisbane in time for lunch.

Please find the YouTube episode below, along with a transcript for your convenience.

Regards

Andrew Wiseman

Ph: 1300947352 Email:  andrew.wiseman@wisemanlawyers.com.au

RIDE ALONG:

Join Wiseman Lawyers Principal Solicitor Andrew Wiseman as he drives to Rockhampton Magistrates Court. On the way to court, Andrew discusses his court matter for the day. On the way back to the airport, he explains the outcome and how it was achieved

Why not also check out the following epsiodes:

• Special Hardship Order | Roma Magistrates Court
• Unlicensed Driving | Normanton Magistrates Court
• Drink Driving | Blackwater Magistrates Court

ROCKHAMPTON MAGISTRATES COURT:

Andrew Wiseman represents a client at Rockhampton Magistrates Court.

 Don't lose your licence, Save Your Licence. Do the wise thing. Call Wiseman Lawyers today 1300 947 352 or go to wisemanlawyers.com.au .

I'm Andrew Wiseman and welcome back to Wiseman Lawyers Court Ride Alongs, Rockhampton edition.

Does your licence need saving? Do the wise thing. Call Wiseman Lawyers. Does your licence need saving? Do the wise thing. Call the Wiseman Team at Wiseman Lawyers.

Once again I'm Andrew Wiseman, owner and Principal Solicitor of Wiseman Lawyers, Queensland's only truly dedicated traffic offence law farm. As I say at the start of every episode, when I say truly dedicated traffic offence law firm, all we do is Queensland traffic law. So if it happened in a car or a motor vehicle and you're either going to lose your licence or go to jail or anything in between, that's all we do and we only service Queensland. That said we will literally appear at every single court in Queensland. As I have already said I'm at Rockhampton today, I was at Moranbuh yesterday, Toowoomba earlier in the week, Cairns and Gladstone last week, and as you'll see from the images displaying on the screen now we will and do literally go anywhere in Queensland.

Okay, so the gentleman that's engaged me today, he's in his late 40's he's a fitter and turner slash machinist with one of the mines that operates about two hours outside of Rockhampton. So like any miner a driver's licence is pivotal in the role. If you can't get to your job sites and varying breakdowns or locations where you have to machine your various components you can't do your job once you're there, if you can't get there you can't do it and obviously given that he's in a regional location two hours outside of Rockhampton he needs to drive considerable distances to get to his place of work and home again. So, again, if he loses his licence today it's almost certain he will lose his job.

He's being charged with careless driving, so what that means is, well in a nutshell there's two types of charges that someone can receive when they are alleged to have driven in a careless or dangerous manner. The first one being careless driving or otherwise know as driving without due care and attention, and the more aggravated version is dangerous driving. Dangerous driving is actually a criminal offence, so besides the fact that it's practically more serious as far as a person's history goes, they're going outside of traffic offending and going into criminal offending.

So, if someone has some kind of charge resulting from a careless or dangerous driving kind of incident, obviously the better charge of the two is careless driving and if it's dangerous driving besides that the fact penalty is far greater, if a conviction is recorded that person will end up with a criminal conviction and a criminal history. And a lot of the times people who've found themselves in that situation otherwise have no history and recorded criminal histories can cause all kind of problems to a person as far as their employment, travel, insurance, their whole life. So I just want to distinguish between criminal and traffic offence.

Literally every offence that occurs in a car is deemed a traffic offence to be said in the same sentence as a speeding ticket except for dangerous driving or otherwise known as dangerous operation of a motor vehicle. So, the fact that he has been charged with driving without due care as opposed dangerous driving in itself is a good thing cause it's the less serious of the two. A, because the penalties are different or less and more importantly because it's a traffic offence not a criminal offence.

So in a nutshell, he was driving along, it was about a one hour journey driving from Rockhampton west bound. He was about 50 minutes into the journey, he came to quite a busy intersection, there was a school bus to the left at a bus stop dropping children off. There was a lot of children mulling around the rear of the bus as well as other children getting off, they were all sort of primary school aged children susceptible to make spur of the moment decisions such as running onto the road, etc. So my client was mindful of this and as he was overtaking this bus not much quicker than a walking pace he was visualising the school children and as a consequence he probably wasn't giving the road ahead of him as much attention as he should have, and basically when he got around the school bus a black car stationary indicating turned right appeared effectively out of know where and my client rear ended him.

There was no injuries but obviously there was vehicular damage. Now as far as penalties go, there's no maximum. If the magistrate chooses to, they can give a life time loss of licence, an absolute lose of licence, but on the flip side there is no mandatory minimum disqualification. So the magistrate, unlike with drink driving and various other offenses, the magistrate is not compelled to disqualify my clients licence but at the same time they're very much within their rights to do so and obviously if he was to lose his licence I've already hit on the hardships that he would suffer. In a nutshell he'd lose his employment. So needless to say my objective today is to try persuade the magistrate not to disqualify my client's licence and to simply give him a fine only for a number of reasons. A, the hardship that he will suffer if he loses his licence. B, the fact that this was, yes it was careless but it wasn't willful disregard for the road rules or willful disregard for the law and I suppose he was caught between a rock and hard place.

You know you've got two different visual aspects that require equal amount of attention, he's trying to make sure that he maintains the safety of these school children but he's got to balance that with maintaining the safety of other road users and obviously he's fallen short of that by focusing too much to the left and not enough to straight ahead. So, yeah, hardship, the fact that it wasn't a willful act of careless driving on the road, not withstanding the fact that at law it still was careless. He's got very little traffic history, there's most certainly nothing of this type, there is no previous drink drivings or, I can probably count on one hand the amount of offences he's got and they're all sort of speeding ticket and nothing of note.

So he's got minimal history and as I like to to do on occasions, particularly with careless driving, I've brought case law and I've prepared a written submission of that case law which I've already forwarded to the Court and police prosecutions. Effectively outlining similar offending where the persons haven't lost their licence. In a nutshell, one of the cases that I'm going to be referring is a driver with a passenger, that driver fell asleep at the wheel, drifted, basically mounted the road island in the center and collided with trees that were situated within that road island. There was no injuries as such but obviously the vehicle was written off and there was a passenger who had their life scared out of them.

As I said, that person received a fine only and the other case I'm going to be referring to similarly there was no passenger but he collided with a turning vehicle so obviously the driver of the vehicle was involved. Again, no injuries but vehicle was effectively written off and again that person didn't lose their licence. So they're similar and perhaps slightly more serious because both of the cases that I'm referring to were not high speed, they were within the speed limit but higher speeds. Whereas my client today's collision or fender bender if you will occurred, as I said, not much faster than walking pace. So, in a nutshell, worst case scenario today absolute loss of licence best case fine only.

Look, to be frank I will be disappointed if there's any kind of disqualification even if it's only a month or two months. I'm really going to be pushing hard for fine only for the reasons I have already outlined and yeah, as I said, I'll be as disappointed as the client if I'm not able to achieve that. But coming up to the court house now just find a park and, yeah, I will head on in, meet the client, get this job done, and I will see you back in the car after I have finished and let you know what the outcome was.

Joel of Sunshine Coast writes, "Dear Andrew, I would like to thank you for the outstanding result in court on my behalf. I am extremely happy with your firm. Greg, as always, has been very professional, kind, patient, and reassuring. You have made me feel very comfortable from the start with your no nonsense attitude and very clear and positive approach. I was very impressed by the overall professionalism and straight forward performance that delivered the most outstanding result, especially considering my situation. I would recommend your fantastic and honest services to anyone in the future."

Righty-o. All right, job done. Now you remember when I went in there I told you that the worst case scenario was an absolute loss of driver's licence. Obviously the next worse scenario was any kind of loss of licence and best case scenario was a fine only. Bottom line, the magistrate agreed that a fine only was appropriate and the magistrate even made a point of emphasising the fact that he'd pre-read all of my written submissions in the case law and all the other documents which I'd tended several days prior by email. So yeah, no loss of licence, fine only, client's ecstatic because obviously he's not going to lose his job and as I've made a point of earlier on he would have without a doubt lost his job if he can't get to work in a remote mine site, no one's going to keep paying you and if you can't drive around from task to task no one is going to keep paying you for that either.

So, it goes without saying client's really happy and yeah, job done. Now I'm driving to Rockhampton airport to fly back to Brisbane to start getting ready for a big week of work next week. Thanks once again for watching and, yeah, take care.