are you allowed to break the law in an emergency?

[joko]

this is hypothetical, but say i drove a car that i was not insured on because the driver or anyone really had collapsed or was in labour and needed to get to hospital, and i was the only one there - would the law accept this as mitigating circumstances and let you off?

would they also allow you to slightly speed (obviously not 70 in a 30 zone, but say 40 in a 30 or somehting??)

also would they accept perhaps a learner driver to drive without a conscious passenger?

or would all this be down to the grace of the officer?

[Ethel]

I hope it isn't down to the grace of the officer - after all, he would have no sway in persuading the insurance to pay up if you had an accident.

The answer in every case is - taxi!

[joko]

yes ethel i realise that, but say you couldn't get to a phone or were in the middle of nowhere?


and assuming the person didn't hav a crash, just got pulled over

[Law Man1856]

joko

If someone was taking an injured party to hospital then I would hope the emergency would take priorty and the officers would assist in dealing with the emergency.

However if when speeding you hit another vehicle and caused injury then this would be another matter.

Common sense is a good standard

Officers with grace a good idea can you tell CPS that.

[Grunty]

As Ethel says, hopefully the officer would take the correct action. You would also be given the address to write to if you thought that he was wrong.

The police sometimes use a law of emergencies which has the status of common law; i.e. it is acceptable unless it is decided otherwise. For example, an officer might decide to overrule a one-way system when necessary in emergency. But allowing you to drive without insurance would be like holding dynamite. And millions of drivers would have different ideas of what was acceptable.

Much better to call an ambulance even if the telephone is some distance away. Then the injured person would be moved correctly and properly cared for from the beginning. My elderly mother broke her hip and some well-meaning person bundled her into a car and took her home. Not recommended.

[joko]

yes, an ambulance would always be first choice, but if its a toss up between someone dying and driving wihtout insurance, well, sod the insurance!
although its wrong, its hardly the crime of the century is it?
I mean generally people don't crash, and manage to get from a to b without an accident, so i would take the risk.

[Amber1571]

Driving without insurance is an absolute offence - the mitigating circumstances, ie; had to get the passanger to hospital, etc., would merely seek to minimise the severity of any sentence passed.

Generally speaking, you would have to show that you tried every single other option, ie; taxi, friend, trains, etc. before you knowingly broke the law.....

[dzug]

You would be guilty of the offence.

You MIGHT be able to get the penalty mitigated in whole or in part if you took it to court but I wouldn't rely on that. And again a police officer MIGHT turn a blind eye and not report you in the first palce.

[Solarjunkie]

Saga insurance has a clause where if the driver is incapacitated, ANY driver is insured on that car for the purposes of taking him to hospital.
I wish all insurances had the same sensible clause.

[Peter Pedant]

Hard cases make bad law

IN terms of are you allowed to break the law in an emergency, the answer is yes but...it dpeends on the circumstances...

In 1606 a fella called Coke (=Cook) discussed this in his Institutes - I am writing this off the top of my head - and it is in the bit about whether it is lawful for a fella to break outof prison if the prison is on fire. Coke decided it was.

In terms of Road Traffic Law, I think there is a section somewhere in the zillions of acts thatsays it is lawful for apolice officer to instruct a driver to....park on a double yellow line, go oup a one way street etc. I have neever lost sleep over that.

In terms of helping at road traffic accidents, a police officer has driven my car, because I was helping. They bythe way are insured to drive any car.

as for a police officer telling a two headed Martian, to drive dammit, drive to the Hospital, without checking if he is insured either here or on Mars, well i am not sure
.

Oh how about this for a funny story.....

when the bombs went off in Manchester ten years ago or so, we were all told to get the hell out of the centre and I asked if I parked my car on double yellow lines, would I get ticketed ? And Officer X said no.
But I didnt believe him and reparked on a legal space
and when I came back all the other cars had been ticketed ! Har har har - like the Police didnt need well intentioned witnesses to assist them!

I didnt bother to inquire but I think the answer would have been Police Officer X didnt do it, Police Officer Y did a little later..........

PP.....Pip Pip - Tickets all round.

[jake-the-peg]

There is also a principal where it is permissible to break the law in order to stop a greater crime from being committed. It's called "lawful excuse"

Typical example breaking a window to catch a thief.

This was the defence relied on in 1996 by the "swords into ploughshares" group who broke into British Aerospace and damaged a hawk jet destined for Indonesia for presumed use against East Timor (now independant).

The judge deemed this "tenuous and nebulous" but the jury acquitted on what some described as a "perverse verdict"

http://www.flyingfish.org.uk/articles/excuse/l awful.htm

Other notable perverse verdicts were Clive Ponting who released information about the Belgrano affair and the case of the two men who aided the escape of the spy George Blake

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/libertywatch/st ory/0,,573669,00.html

I know this is a slight digression but I thought you might find it interesting

[chrisdefunk]

yes