Hi and welcome to this instalment of the Conditsis Expert Video series. My name is Michal Mantaj. I’m one of the directors here at Conditsis and today I will be talking about how to beat a drink-driving charge, or as we lawyers prefer to call it, what’s called a PCA charge.
Now, there’s a common misconception out there in the community that if you are charged with a drink-driving offence, there is only one option and that is to plead guilty and cop the penalty on the chin as it were.
In actual fact there are many different ways that a drink-driving charge can be defended against in the right circumstances. And just very briefly, the three that I’m going to go through are firstly actually challenging the reading that you get from the police. Secondly a defence based on something called the two hour rule. And thirdly the defence of what’s called honest and reasonable mistake of fact.
The first one is challenging the reading. So the actual reading that the police produce and give you after your breath has been analysed is not necessarily written in stone. It’s something that you can actually in the right circumstances challenge.
The way that we challenge that kind of a reading is through expert evidence from scientists called pharmacologists and what these people can do is that with given the right information, they can actually calculate scientifically the alcohol concentration that you would have had at the time of the driving and if they come back with a lower reading than the reading from the police, that can form the basis of a defence to say well now I challenge the reading. I was in fact under the limit at the time of driving, not over the limit as the police allege.
If you need legal advice with regard to drink driving or any other matter, please click here to contact Conditsis today.
