If you appear in a Queensland court charged with a traffic offence such as drink driving, drug driving or dangerous driving and plead guilty or are found guilty then the court will likely disqualify your drivers licence (many offences such as drink driving and drug driving carry mandatory minimum periods of disqualification). The purpose of this article is to give people some guidance as to what occurs after you leave the court if your licence has been disqualified. Do I Get to keep my Physical Licence? No, you are required to surrender your licence to Queensland Transport by the day…

Recent changes to the legislation covering special hardship orders (SHO) will increase the amount of people who can apply in Queensland. Currently people who elect to go on a good driving behaviour period after accruing too many demerit points and then exceed the demerit points on that driving behaviour period or those who commit a high speed offence (over 40 km/h) may be able to apply for a special hardship order to allow them to drive for certain specified reasons, generally work related. All the details on special hardship licences and the eligibility requirements can be found on our special…

In Queensland, it is an offence to fail to provide a specimen of breath, or saliva for the purposes of determining a person’s blood alcohol concentration. Strictly speaking, there are two types of offences for failing to provide a specimen of breath or saliva. The first offence occurs when a person fails to provide a sample other than at a police station or in a booze bus. It is common for this kind of offence to occur at a roadside RBT, although it could happen somewhere else, such as a person’s home. The other offence occurs when a person fails…

There seems to be some amount of confusion as to whether or not you can commit a drink driving charge in Queensland within a private area such as your driveway, or in a, say a private place such as a car park. We are often contacted by people who believe they should not have been charged with a drink driving charge as they were not on a road at the time of the offence or worse have refused a breath test as they were in their driveway.    The law In Queensland the legislation is fairly clear when it comes…

In Queensland, the drink driving legislation distinguishes between three levels of offences: Low Range: Blood alcohol readings between .05 and .099 Mid Range: Blood alcohol readings between .1 and .149 High Range: Blood alcohol readings above .15 The different levels of drink driving also have different levels of immediate licence suspension by the police. How long will my licence be suspended for? The law Queensland provides that any person who is charged with a drink driving offence that is a mid-range or high-range drink charge will immediately lose the ability to drive. This lasts until a disqualification is imposed by…

We recently appeared in the Sandgate Court for a client facing the real prospects of a prison sentence. The client had been charged with unlicensed driving due to a previous court ordered disqualification and high range drink driving or driving UIL (also sometimes referred to as a DUI). Making the situation much worse for the client is that he had, in the words of the Magistrate, a terrible history that included eight previous disqualified driving charges and seven previous drink driving (UIL) charges. In the previous five years there were two high range drink driving charges alone. As a result…

Disqualified driving is an extremely serious traffic charge in Queensland. The Courts are particularly hard on these types of offences as to be charged with disqualified driving you must have already been disqualified by a court. Disqualified driving is the most common traffic offence that causes people to be sentenced to jail. The charge is different to a simple unlicensed driving charge as there must be a previous disqualification by the courts still in place at the time the offence was committed. The court will impose a further minimum disqualification of 2 years however there may be circumstances where there…