Uninsured driver warned

A PENZANCE man about to start a new career as a taxi driver was told by chairman Marc Redgrove he was a very lucky man when Truro magistrates gave him an absolute discharge on a charge of driving without insurance.

Thomas Lewis, 33, of Penwith Street, Penzance, pleaded guilty to having no insurance on a Skoda when he was stopped by a police officer in Penzance on September 5.

In a plea for special reasons not to receive points, he told magistrates he and his partner had bought a new Honda car and he had left it to her to arrange for their existing insurance on the Skoda to continue and to take out a new policy for the other car. When he checked with her she told him it had been sorted and he drove it.

Sophia Halling, his partner, told the magistrates that she was thinking of other things when she contacted the insurance company to tell them they had a new car. "I believed they were both insured. I had asked for insurance on both. I realised I did not think about it enough when I spoke to them, and told my partner I had sorted it. I made a mistake. He had asked me to make sure the old car was still covered until we sold it."

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Mr Redgrove told Lewis the magistrates accepted that he had been misled into thinking he was insured. "You have to be very careful in future because at the end of the day you are the one behind the wheel."

Lewis also pleaded guilty to using a hand-held mobile phone while driving. For this he was fined £80 and £75 costs and insurance and given three points on his licence.