Company Cars, Drivers & Section 172 Offences
In the majority of circumstances points are not given for company cars & section 172 – fail to name the driver offences, however it is not uncommon for the prosecution to attempt to attached the blame for the offence to either a company director or the company secretary. In these instances it is possible for those people to receive penalty points.
Company car rules are different from those for private motorists. The two main defences are that the company either didn’t receive the driver information request, or that they conducted reasonable diligence to try to establish who was driving at the time but were not able to do so.
The challenge for the company however is that with company vehicles you are expected to keep a log of each vehicles drivers. To be able to use a reasonable diligence argument you would need to be able to demonstrate that you keep records but in this instance it was not reasonable to keep a record of the vehicle drivers.
Penalties for S172 – Company Cars
It is more common for companies found guilty to receive hefty fines in lieu of penalty points.
Where you have vehicles that are insured for many drivers and those vehicles commonly make many short trips, to suppliers for instance, it may not be deemed practical to maintain accurate records of who is driving when.
The key according to Patterson Law is to be able to demonstrate that even though the company maintains records, the system broke down through no fault of the company management.