There have always been myths about loopholes in the law and its quite rare that any of them are true. Recently, a few have popped up regarding driving laws, and as usual, there are very few that have any truth to them.

Probably the most common way out people think that they have is when a police officer makes a mistake on a traffic offence ticket, e.g. speeding, red traffic light offences etc. and most of the time, you simply wont have an argument.

The ticket that police officer issues you is not part of any official evidence, it is merely a summary of the incident and if you contest the validity of it if, for example, the officer had put the wrong date of offence or the wrong vehicle registration number, he will have to draft an official statement which they will be unlikely to make a mistake on and a court summons will have to be sent to you.

The only way that a mistake on the ticket might help you is if you take issue with the actual offence, i.e. you dont believe you went over the speed limit or ran a red light or whatever theyre accusing you of. If the officer has made a mistake on the ticket then you could bring this to light to discredit the rest of his evidence by implying that his approach to this offence is sloppy.

However if you did actually commit the offence and a police officer catches you, you dont really have a leg to stand on.

Another theory that has come up is that when the police ask you who was driving the vehicle at the time of the offence, you dont have to tell them because that would violate human rights. People think that if you are the registered keeper then you dont have to answer the question who was driving it as your human rights allow you to withhold this information.

This is simply not true, there has been an amendment to international human rights in this regard meaning that this information has to be provided at the request of the police or you will be liable for a hefty fine and six points on your licence as they claim that the compromise in human rights is proportionate to the need for road safety.

Something else that is fairly common is that when people have insurance policies whereby they can drive other peoples cars with their permission, they will buy a new car and before they are changed to the registered keeper of the vehicle, they drive it around believing that they are insured to do so having kept their insurance on their old car, because officially the new one belongs to someone else.

This is of course, untrue. If you have paid money for the vehicle, then it is yours in the eyes of a court, which means you would not be covered on the insurance that allows you to drive other peoples cars, so you would have to transfer the insurance over to be able to drive the new car legally.