Driving a Private Hire Vehicle
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/002201839906300607 |
| Published date | 01 December 1999 |
| Date | 01 December 1999 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
TheJournal of
Criminal
Law
[1988]
RTR
107 that adefendant's failure to understand the police's
warning might negative an argument that there had been a refusal,
but, again, there could be no claim in this case that there had been a
misunderstanding.
Whether the facts may
amount
to a reasonable excuse is a question of
law
(Law
v
Stephens
[1973]
RTR
252). At first,
the
courts confined the
defence to cases in which the defendant was shown to be physically or
mentally incapable of acceding to the request: R v Lennard [1973]
RTR
252. And although this particularly narrow interpretation has since
been expanded, it is still, as Otton Uremarked,
'narrow'.
And, although
the court accepted that the categories of reasonable excuses are
not
closed, Otton Ufurther remarked that
'the
scope for innovation
...
is
very limited'. Thus, it is
not
areasonable excuse for failure
if
one
shows
that a solicitor did
not
appear (DPP v
Billingham
[1988]
RTR
231) or to
prove a genuine belief that one may decline to cooperate with
the
police
before the arrival of a solicitor (Grennan v
Westcott
[1988]
RTR
253).
Here, the police had warned the defendant of the consequences of a
refusal and had clearly stated that they were
not
prepared to await the
arrival of a solicitor before repeating their request for a specimen. The
facts, therefore, could not, as a
matter
of law, found a reasonable excuse.
As the requirement was lawful
and
the
refusal unlawful
and
unexcused,
the justices were
not
entitled to acquit.
Driving a Private Hire Vehicle
Reading Borough Council v
Ahmad
(1999) 163 JP 451
The respondent to this prosecutor's appeal was driving a private hire
vehicle which belonged to a friend
who
held a private hire vehicle
licence for the car.' He drove the car in a controlled area, with the
owner's permission, in order to pick up two
other
friends
and
their
companions, in order to bring
them
from
the
controlled district to their
homes which were outside
the
district.
It
was
the
practice of these
passengers to be brought home in this way. The driver of the car,
although the holder of a hackney carriage driver's licence, had no
driving licence for a private hire vehicle, as he well knew. He was
charged with driving a private hire vehicle without adriver's licence to
drive such a vehicle. Although he
knew
that he was driving aprivate
hire vehicle in a controlled district
without
the
relevant licence, his
defence was that, at the time in question, the car was not being driven
asaprivate hire car, because
the
arrangement was one made between
friends and there was no question of
any
payment being demanded or
expected or received by him or by the
owner
or
any
of the passengers.
He asserted his genuine belief that
when
the car was being driven
'in
his
private capacity' and on an 'understanding between friends', with no fee
involved, it could
not
be said that
the
car was being driven in its capacity
of private hire vehicle. In the absence of
any
agreement for hire, the
520
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