Introduction

The importance of road traffic law in our legal system is often overlooked.  The volume of work is large and increasing, as all who have attended their court on traffic day will know.  A knowledge of the basic types of defences and the methods used to obtain a particular result will usually allow the practitioner to provide accurate and timely advice at all the various stages of the procession from initial notification to the conclusion of the matter in court.

A serious traffic accident, with injured or dead victims can produce traumatic and dramatic court proceedings.  Certain specific skills can greatly enhance the prospects of success for defence counsel, and greatly ease the psychological burden borne by a defendant in such a case.  It is the authors’ intention to analyse the components of a successful defence in a case, with the intention of identifying and elucidating the skills and techniques involved.

While the major offences and more common lesser matters are dealt with, some material is not covered in this booklet.  This includes alcohol related offences (the subject of an excellent but now somewhat dated 1995 New Zealand Law Society seminar by Andrew Becroft and Stephen O’Driscoll, Advising and Representing Clients in the Police Station), and a large number of relatively minor offences against regulations which are also excluded.  The law covering the matters dealt with in this seminar is far more fully and explicitly set out in excellent publications by Brooker’s and Butterworths.