Girl convicted for not insuring birthday gift car before receiving it
The teenager, from Poole in Dorset, said her family bought the Fiat for her, but mistakenly did not insure it immediately.
The DVLA charged her with keeping an uninsured vehicle and brought a criminal prosecution over the unpaid bill.
The teenager was convicted under the Single Justice Procedure (SJP), in which a volunteer magistrate sits alone behind closed doors with an on-call legal adviser to pass judgment on as many as 100 cases a day.
In a letter to Ipswich magistrates' court, the teenager said that she had never driven the vehicle as she does not yet have a licence.
Car was declared off road
According to The Standard, the letter read: 'My family got the car for me as my 18th birthday present. I was still 17 at the time of the offence and had not actually been given the keys to the car, and was not aware that it would be mine.'
The teenager, who said both she and her father had reading difficulties, added that she only realised the car needed to be insured even if it was not being driven when a friend read an official letter for them.
They had received a rebate on car tax after declaring the 17-year-old Fiat 'off road' with a Statutory Off Road Notification (SORN), she said. And she did not realise she could have paid a fine to avoid a criminal case.
In the letter, she explained: 'I have never used the car as I have still not passed my driving test. My dad is willing to pay the fine for me as he thinks this is his fault.
'He receives Universal Credit and PIP for his mental health, and I have just finished college and currently have a part-time job as a waitress on the minimum wage for an 18-year-old.'
She pleaded guilty to committing the offence in January, around four weeks before her 18th birthday.
She added: 'I was a good student in school and college studying art and have never been in any trouble in my life. We just misunderstood the letter. I am very sorry.'
Out of 1.5 million convictions handed down last year in England and Wales, some 772,580 were issued by magistrates behind closed doors under SJP, a system designed to speed up justice and clear the backlog of cases left by the pandemic.
At least 110 different crimes can be prosecuted under SJP, from speeding and out-of-date MOTs to failing to ensure that your child attends school, and littering.
The teenager was given a 12-month conditional discharge instead of a fine. She must also pay a £20 court fee.
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