AIBU to wonder whether I should report an accidental offence?

[AccidentalCriminal]

So I recently found out that I unknowingly and unwittingly broke the law last year.

No victim involved and I honestly and truly didn't know I'd done it.

Would you report yourself or just accept you got away with it?

A criminal conviction would destroy my career. But I also feel terrible that I've done something illegal.

WWYD?

duplicate post…

Duplicate post….

What some people don’t seem to realise is that 2 minor speeding offences would normally lead to a driving awareness course for the first and 3 points for the second. Someone with 3 points isn’t considered a terrible driver by most people.

The OP had not updated her details with the DVLA. Her fault, as she accepts, but the result is that she wouldn’t have received 2 NIPs, or subsequent summons, and therefore had 12 points and a totting ban for the same offences.

Alrhough she was unaware, she was still committing the offence of driving whilst disqualified. Her insurance would either have been void or voidable, depending on the policy, but we can’t tell that from here, and it doesn’t matter now.

It seems the OP is not an unusually bad driver, or she would have been stopped during the 6 months of the ban for some violation.

OP priorities now should be:

• making 100% sure her insurance company knows the details (as otherwise is fraud and insurance could be voided)
• contacting the convicting court to find out the fine details as otherwise it could be sent out to bailiffs or lead to a warrant for unpaid fines. That is the priority over paying to alleviate guilty feelings.

Similar happened to us a few years back. My car was registered in my husband’s name (I was main driver on insurance). We forgot to change the address on the registration and I got a driving fine I didn’t know about. By the time we had found out I can’t remember if it was a summons to court or if they took it to court in his absence. He spoke to DVLA and he was faced with 6 extra points (so 9 in total) or 6 points in total and a bigger fine. He didn’t go to court in person and took the 6 points and bigger fine. Him getting insurance was a ball ache for a while (he has to take the points/ fine as it had gone beyond officially nominating me- we did tell them it was me driving!)