Jenna Pavis, a 27-year old trainee hairdresser from Acomb, has been banned for 2 years for drink-driving in an uninsured car fast at 1am in the morning. She was 2½ times the legal limit.
The usual sob stories came out in court. Apparently, it’s totally out of character. She had 8 years’ no claims bonus (yep. Everyone does until they get caught). She’d had an argument with her boyfriend. And the insurance problem was due to a standing order issue between bank and insurance company which she’d been meaning to get sorted, but which had resulted in the policy being cancelled (after running that through the linguistics computer, it translates as “probably couldn’t afford the payments”).
Apparently, she’d planned to become a mobile hairdresser. So much for that idea.
When you listen to the defence in all these cases, you are forced to conclude that everyone who ever breaks the law is a decent person who never does this sort of thing. The reality is almost certainly that many of the people involved are likely to be doing this sort of thing regularly but just haven’t been caught before.