Free Traffic Legal Advice

Hi all,

I have a question about who is liable for a parking charge notice issued during a driving lesson.

I am a licence holder and a new driver. I have not driven for several years from when I first obtained my licence. I took up some refresher lessons a couple months ago with a large motoring school. As part of these lessons the instructor directed me to a car park of his choice where we practised bay parking for the better part of an hour on multiple occasions. I did not see any parking notices, although I would expect to have missed it because I was following my instructor's direction and because I am inexperienced. My instructor made no comment about any signs or limits to period of stay and repeatedly brought me to this car park.

It is now a few months after my last lesson with my instructor and as of the last few days out of the blue I have received aggressive communication from him telling me for the first time that his car has been issued several PCNs back in April and since I was the driver of his car at the time that I am liable to pay them. He has provided evidence that these PCNs were issued during our lessons and I don't doubt that. Up until just now, I had received no communication about this matter, not from the instructor, or from the ticket issuer or from the motoring school.

I have read the contract for the private ticket issuer. It states that the driver is liable and that payment of the fee is admission of liability. There is no explicit definition of who the driver here is, it's not clear that it must be the person behind the wheel in a car with dual controls. I don't consider myself the driver when I am being told where to go and what to do and where I am not disobeying any instruction given, the instructor is in control of the vehicle. Secondly, the instructor tells me that his lease company has paid the private ticket issuer and that he has paid the lease company.

My view of this is that the instructor has admitted liability by choosing to pay the invoice his lease company has issued him with and that he should take this up with them. My view is also that he should have appealed this in the appropriate time window and notified me months ago if he believed he was not at fault or that I was at fault. So I think the instructor is imagining that there is a personal debt here and trying to come after me for it.

I have asked some people I know including another instructor and the advice is that he's a chancer and in the worst case he can try and fail to take me to small claims court on this. I think this advice is solid. To an extent I don't know why I'm writing this, I suppose the communication from my instructor simply reads as too shameless for a driving instructor unless he honestly believes he is in the right. He hasn't said anything on that topic yet, just threatened me with talk of debt collectors.

Thank you for any replies.

You hold a full driving licence.

You were undertaking refresher training at your own choice in another person's car.

They are not the registered keeper, instead the vehicle is leased.

You are the driver and wholly responsible for your actions.

Having dispensed with this, where do you stand contractually as in you and the instructor?

It seems that they selected private controlled land to conduct their lessons.

Tango sierra for them.

This has nothing to do with private parking contracts and all the other paraphernalia which comes in its wake. To continue the seafaring analogy, that ship sailed when the lease company paid the parking charge. If the instructor wants to sue you under their contract with you, then that's up to them. IMO, they would stand no chance. They owe a professional duty of care to you bearing in mind your respective status: them instruct(as in know their crankshaft from their big end), you follow instructions.

Thank you DWMB2 and H C Andersen, very clear and concise and helpful.

I am surprised that I am liable legally, though not morally. I know this seems like pedantry, how can we know if 'driver' isn't defined legally. I think the driver is the operator or person in charge of the vehicle and it's arguable that it isn't me in this context.

Also, yes, he has sent me the notices and they align with the timings of some of my lessons. I looked up the place on a map and it does look like somewhere we went to do parking.

A useful clarification. If the lease company has paid it, that's a dispute between him and his lease company, and nothing to do with you.

Ok, thank you both. I think my communication with him is along the right lines then, notwithstanding that I may be liable legally if he has or had not paid, or if the lease company has not paid the issuer on the lessee's behalf.

If I try to put myself in his shoes, setting aside feelings I would have about whether I should know better as in my capacity as a teacher, I do think I would be more mad at the lease company for paying the PCNs immediately and not giving me the opportunity to appeal, instead of going after a student. It sounds a bit like that's what has happened. I didn't have any bad relationship with him mind you, the lessons were uneventful. Why he messages me months later is also confusing since the PCN letters are from April, what happened in that time.

But anyway, I have learned something new and am happy to be educated. I will be extra careful going onto any private land in future in my capacity as a licence holder. Thank you both, and for the many analogies H C Andersen!

Whether the "student" is a provisional or full licence holder, it is always the "driver" that is liable for a speculative invoice from an unregulated private parking company (PPC). The PPC have no idea who the driver is.

The PPC send an NtK to the lease company. The lease company should (but some are really ignorant) transfer liability for the PCN to the lessee. This is where it would have been simple to get this cancelled. The PPC, once they receive the notice of transfer of liability from the keeper to the lease (Hirer), they are supposed to issue a new Notice to Hirer (NtH) together with copies of some documents from the lease company. In 99.999% (I've never seen a single one in over 3 years of dealing with these issues) of cases, they fail to include the copiers of the required documents as stipulated in PoFA thus rendering the NtH non compliant and therefore unable to transfer liability for the charge from the unknown driver to the known Hirer.

The burden of prof lies with the PPC to prove that the known keeper was also the unknown driver. They are not allowed to assume or infer that it was. The only way they would know who was driving is if the known Hirer told the PPC, inadvertently or otherwise. So, if they can't hold the known keeper liable and the keeper has not identified the driver, the PPC is in a Catch 22 situation with no options.

As already explained earlier, the lease company decided, wrongly,  to pay the invoice thereby admitting liability for it, irrespective of who was driving, known or unknown. As far as the PPC is concerned, that is the end of the matter and they are laughing all the way to the bank.

If the lease company then decide to charge the lease (Hirer) and the Hirer pays the lease company, then that is a dispute between them. You, the driver have no say or liability in the matter.

Unless the Hirer had an agreement that you, as a client "student" of their are liable for any invoices from unregulated private parking companies that are received by the Hirer with whom you have the agreement, there's little they can do about it. They can huff and puff and threaten to sue you in the small claims track of the county court but they would have almost zero chance of being successful.

The Hirer, your instructor, should have known better than to teach you on private land, at least not before seeking out any terms and conditions for using the land beforehand. You should simply get on with your life and tough luck to the instructor. A useful lesson for you in your future driving experience and forearmed now with the knowledge to check the Ts & Cs of any private land you use, whether to park on or learn on.

I would argue that we were both the drivers in this context then!

It's an argument that is unlikely to gain much traction. You are the one behind the wheel, the instructor is providing guidance, but you are the one operating the vehicle. You cannot simply say that because the instructor was telling you what to do, that he was the one driving.

You are, after all, a human being possessing free will, and might reasonably be expected to refuse to follow an unreasonable instruction - if, for example, you were driving at the speed limit, and your instructor told you to floor it, it wouldn't be your instructor who was guilty of speeding.

Quote from: gdric1 on June 27, 2024, 11:41:36 pm

I would argue that we were both the drivers in this context then!

It's an argument that is unlikely to gain much traction. You are the one behind the wheel, the instructor is providing guidance, but you are the one operating the vehicle. You cannot simply say that because the instructor was telling you what to do, that he was the one driving.

You are, after all, a human being possessing free will, and might reasonably be expected to refuse to follow an unreasonable instruction - if, for example, you were driving at the speed limit, and your instructor told you to floor it, it wouldn't be your instructor who was guilty of speeding.

To that I would he has his pedals beneath his feet, he can put his foot on the brake!

I am not saying that he is the one driving anymore, I have learned, but it seems not all the way! In the context of this particular scenario it feels to me like both are driving and either one can put a stop to this. How it seems or feels to me and how it is legally may be different, maybe it's getting back to the morality of it. I don't know, but I think it's instructive for me to point this out.

I wouldn't follow an instruction I knew to be incorrect or illegal, but if I was labouring under such a defect of reason that I couldn't tell, then I would follow it because he's supposed to be the one who knows more than me, that's why I'm paying him to teach me and set a good example.

Having said all of that, I appreciate the angle you are coming at it from.