Drive While Disqualified

If you are convicted of driving while disqualified, you will receive a criminal conviction and criminal record.

There are two ways to avoid this:

• Be found not guilty.
• Be found guilty, but without a conviction recorded (section 10).

Often there is not much time between now and your first court date. There is no need to be concerned about this, as the Court will normally allow you more time to prepare.

On the first court date, the magistrate will ask what you are planning to do with your case. You can do one of three things:

• Enter a plea of ‘guilty’ and either ask that the magistrate give you a penalty that day or ask for more time to prepare.
• Enter a plea of ‘not guilty’ and your matter will be adjourned to a later date for hearing.
• Ask for an adjournment to get some legal advice.

The Court will decide what (if any) penalty to impose.

Driving while disqualified is taken very seriously by magistrates because it involves doing something that a Court has told you not to do.

So it is important to prepare well for your sentence hearing, so that the magistrate understands what happened, why it happened and why it won’t happen again.

With the right preparation you can reduce the penalties that the magistrate would otherwise impose.

Read on for more about what to expect at your sentence hearing.