Penalty Points Query: Summons sent out

SpaceTime

A friend of a friend was driving in an urban area and was accused by a Garda of passing a yield sign and failing to yield.

The person involved obviously sees this from a different perspective and claims that they did yield. The whole incident took place at less than 15km/h in a 50km/h area and no collision occurred, nobody was injured etc and the person in question has a flawless driving record for decades.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, they didn't get any information from the Garda on the scene, no paper work etc and did not quite understand what happened as whatever was said was shouted from a distance and with a very strong accent.

They assumed all was fine and that it must have been some kind of caution, and heard no more of it until about 3 months later a summons arrived in the post (registered) saying that they'd been charged with inconsiderate driving.

The question is would that normally have been dealt with by a penalty point notice? They had no issue taking a few points and paying a fine as they'd a completely clean driving license and it would have made very little difference to their insurance and certainly not risked anything like disqualification.

Nothing arrived by post in the interim.

Anyway, the person in question now has to go to court and is, naturally enough, pretty upset about it.

Obviously, not looking for legal advice, but just to know if this is normally just a penalty point issue?

It just seems very strange that there was no communication whatsoever until a sort of generic looking print out summons arrived (seemingly from Ennis) months after the event.

slimjimmc

Yeah, normally it's just a fixed penalty notice but there are plenty of people who claim not to have received it. FPNs are sent by standard post so there's no proof of posting or delivery.

Spook_ie

More detail ( just because I like a good read ) is required

BUT

http://rsa.ie/Documents/Licensed%20Drivers/Penalty%20Points%20Chart1.pdf

Would appear that your friend of a friend was charged with the lessor offence.

Failiure to Yield 3 PP €80 Fine
Driving without reasonable consideration 2 PP €80 Fine

As to the summons instead of an FPN, that's likely the same as so many speeding ones lost in the post.

SpaceTime

They're pretty annoyed that it didn't turn up in the post as they'd have just paid the fine and moved on.

They really should register the letters. Ireland's postal system is reliable but the addressing system is totally inaccurate in a lot of cases.

Kevin McCloud

Never ceases to amaze how fines disappear in the post.

SpaceTime

It doesn't amaze me as about 30% of Irish addresses are non-unique and you're basically just hoping that items arrive based on local knowledge.

Then, you've got the use of house names in urban areas instead of numbers. This isn't always down to people being ridiculous either, there are plenty of urban areas without numbering of houses.

I know in my own house, items regularly do not arrive : bills, birthday cards, bank statements, bank cards, etc that just never show up. Always ends up that they've been delivered to a neighbour of a similar name but they haven't bothered to put them back into the post or redeliver them.

It's not An Post's fault, but rather the city and county councils who never bothered coming up with house numbering systems. Hopefully these new unique postal codes might help a bit, but it'd still be handy to have actual workable, unique addresses too.

ProudDUB

We have a crazy address system alright. At last count, there were 5 other roads in north country Dublin, with the exact same name as mine, and presumably houses with the exact same number as mine. God only knows how many there are, if you take the county in its entirety. :rolleyes:

robert muldoon

Could someone please me how insurance companies are able to know what penalty points any motorist has incurred since according to the RSA no one except the licence holder will be given info about anyone's points??

Dial Hard

robert muldoon wrote: »

Could someone please me how insurance companies are able to know what penalty points any motorist has incurred since according to the RSA no one except the licence holder will be given info about anyone's points??

They don't get them from the RSA, they get them from the National Vehicle Driver File which is maintained by the Department of Transport.