Police stop the same car four times in three days — drivers keep losing their licence

In the Lovosice area, police stopped the same car four times in three days. On three occasions the driver was a man with an active driving ban, and when someone else took the wheel the fourth time, it turned out he too was banned from driving. Police suspect both men of failing to comply with a court decision.

A similar case in Chrudim

A seemingly similar story was handled by police in the Chrudim area in late August. A 63-year-old man was caught behind the wheel three times in a short period, and each time the breath test showed more than two per mille of alcohol. Even after his driving licence was confiscated and he was banned from driving any further, he got behind the wheel again. However, he is not suspected of failing to comply with a court decision.

What's the difference

The difference lies between having your licence confiscated and an effective ban on driving that has already taken legal force. "In the Lovosice area, there was already a legally effective decision banning the drivers from driving. If they still got behind the wheel, they acted against that decision and could have committed the offence of failing to comply with it," explained attorney Jan Skotnica.

For the drunk driver from Chrudim, at the moment he got behind the wheel again, no such legally effective decision existed yet — police had only confiscated his licence and banned him from continuing to drive. "That's the whole difference," Skotnica summed up.

What the driver from Chrudim faces

Simply driving after his licence was confiscated was not in itself a crime. But driving while intoxicated was a crime — police notified him that he is suspected of endangerment under the influence of alcohol.

During the checks, the man was found to have 2.11, 2.5 and 2.33 per mille of alcohol. After one of the checks, police saw in their rear-view mirror that he had got back into the car and driven off again — he ended up in a police cell.

The district prosecutor's office in Chrudim confirmed that a motion for punishment has been filed against the man, and the district court has already issued a decision — a penal order dated 27 August. What punishment exactly was imposed is not yet known: the order has not yet been delivered to the man, so the court has not disclosed the details.

Read also: Exchanging a driving licence for a Czech one

Source: novinky.cz