Which Offences Have Demerit Points?

Which Offences Have Demerit Points?

Nothing ruins your day like getting a traffic ticket.

If you’re like most people, the first thought is probably, “Oh no! Are there demerit points attached to this one?”

Whether or not you’re going to get demerit points depends on whether your offence is on the list that has demerit points attached to it.

Most of your normal traffic tickets do have points, so those are the ones that you can deal with just by paying the fine rather than having to go to court.

The cases that don’t have points tend to be the more serious offences – drink driving, driving in a dangerous manner, or driving whilst disqualified. They’re ones where you have to go to court, and you can’t deal with them by just paying a ticket.

Instead of demerit points, those offences tend to have an automatic disqualification or suspension of your license as attached to them.

The other category that often doesn’t have demerit points are parking offences. Your run-of-the-mill, you’ve just stayed too long in one spot. You won’t usually get points for those. If, however, there’s something extra about your parking fines – let’s say, for example, you’re in a school zone or you’ve parked too close to an intersection – those might sometimes have points attached because there’s an extra safety element.

If you’re in doubt, there’s a couple of ways that you can find out whether or not you’re going to get demerit points.

The first way is that most penalty notices will have a notation, and they’ll tell you what the base level demerit points are for your offence.

The second way is that the RMS actually publishes a list of offences that have demerit points. If you Google, “RMS demerit points search”, it’ll take you to their website where you can plug in what your ticket is for and it will let you know:

a) If you’re getting points

b) How many you’re going to if you are

Finally, if you’re still not sure, feel free to give us a call at Ainsley Law. We can find out very simply for you whether yours is one that’s going to give you some demerit points.