Court / Teenage driver has licence revoked after driving without insurance

A TEENAGE driver has lost her licence after failing to convince a court that she drove without realising her insurance had lapsed.

Abbie McCormack, 19, admitted to driving without insurance at Lerwick’s North Lochside on 2 June last year.

At a special reasons hearing at Lerwick Sheriff Court on Thursday, McCormack argued that she had done so without any knowledge that her insurance was up.

But the police constable who stopped McCormack in June claimed the young driver had told her that she knew her insurance had ended.

And there were questions about McCormack contacting her father – who had organised the insurance – hours before she was stopped to ask if her insurance was still in place.

The court heard that McCormack’s father had believed it was, but that he had also told her to come straight home after college to check the details.

The hearing, which is not a trial, heard evidence from the police constable, McCormack, her father and a friend who was in the car at the time.

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Giving evidence, the police constable claimed McCormack had told her “she was she aware she had no insurance” and that she had “found out that morning”.

However, the woman said McCormack then claimed that she did not know she had no insurance when a second police officer arrived at the scene.

Defence agent Tommy Allan asked if she had “misheard” what was said, but the woman said McCormack had “changed her story when the other officer arrived”.

McCormack, from Bixter, was next to give evidence and said she had contacted her father at around 10.30am on the day in question to ask about her insurance.

She said this was because she’d had the car for around a year, so thought the insurance would be coming up for renewal.

Her father told her that it should still have a few days to run, but to come straight home after college so they could have a look.

None of them had received any notification that the insurance was coming up for renewal, she said, with emails from the insurance company going straight to her father.

McCormack was stopped by police at around 2pm, and asked to call her father – which police allowed.

When she did her father told her that a letter had arrived that morning from her insurance company, which revealed that the insurance had ended a couple of days prior.

She said she had no knowledge of the letter until then.

Procurator fiscal Duncan Mackenzie however said it was a “bit of a coincidence” that she had messaged about the insurance hours earlier, and then “lo and behold” a letter arrives that day to say it had lapsed.

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McCormack repeated that she had not told the police constable that she knew her insurance was up.

Her father was next to give evidence, and explained that he had sorted out his daughter’s tax and insurance a year previously.

He said that some emails from her insurance company had gone to his junk box, while he had deleted others because his own insurance was not with the company and he had forgotten that his daughter’s was.

There was no reason for them to think the insurance was up at the time, he said, and he added he had told his daughter that day she would still be insured for a few more days.

Only when McCormack called her after being stopped by the police did he find the letter from her insurance company, he said.

“It seems co-incidental, but it’s true,” he told the court.

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He said if they had suspected her insurance was up he would have organised 24 hour cover – which is what McCormack did when police stopped her.

Finally, a teenage friend of McCormack’s – who was in the car at the time that she was stopped by police – gave evidence to the court.

She said she believed McCormack did not know the insurance had ended, and that she was “shocked” when told by police.

Summing up, Mackenzie said the decision effectively came down to whether or not the court believed the evidence of the police constable.

He said it was clear McCormack had a concern about her insurance on the day in question, leading her to contact her father.

Allan, however, said that just because the police constable had heard something different to what McCormack claimed to have said it “doesn’t make what she heard true”.

McCormack had gone to the effort of trying to ensure her insurance was still in place, he said, and she would have arranged 24-hour cover if there was any indication she did not have insurance.

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Sheriff Philip Mann said though that it was McCormack’s duty to ensure she had insurance before taking to the road.

“You didn’t do that. You had doubts as to whether or not you were covered, and the plain fact of the matter is you just took a risk,” he told her.

Sheriff Mann said that he had a “lot of sympathy for her” and urged her to put a “robust system” for reminding herself about when the insurance needed renewed.

He endorsed her licence with six penalty points, which means her licence will be revoked as she is within two years of passing her test.

McCormack will have to apply and pay for a new provisional licence, and will have to sit both the practical and theory tests again.

She was also fined £200.