If you don't feel intimidated by courtrooms or legal procedures, and you are prepared to allocate time to research your case, you might decide to represent yourself in court because you believe that you can speak convincingly to a magistrate or jury.
References - what should be included
Written references are a valuable way of giving the judge or magistrate presiding over your case another view of your character and, hopefully, a mechanism for lessening the severity of any penalties you might be given. About a page long, a reference should be typed or neatly written and should be addressed to ‘the presiding judge’ or ‘presiding magistrate’ in the case.
Drink Driving, Licence Disqualification and Habitual Driver Declarations
Going to court because you have been charged with a drink driving offence, or any other traffic offences, means that you can be penalised in a wide variety of ways. You can be punished with a fine or a term of imprisonment, or both. But, unlike other non-traffic related offences, the Court can also disqualify you from driving. And, it’s important to remember, you can be sentenced to prison for traffic offences.
Random Breath Test – the procedure
At any time of the day and on any road in the country, police can pull you over for whatever reason – a broken headlight, failing to give way correctly – and ask you to take a breath test. At this point, the police ask you if you have been drinking and when it was that you stopped.
Drink Driving and the ‘Mellanby Effect’
With every drink of alcohol you consume the blood alcohol level in your bloodstream increases. You may not notice it, but there is a significant difference in the way the alcohol effects your behaviour and, how you feel, depending on whether you are still drinking and your blood alcohol level is increasing or whether you have stopped drinking and, particularly if it’s the next morning after a big night, your blood alcohol level is decreasing.