Work Driving Licences and Daytime Driving Licences
There has
never been any such thing as a "work licence" or
"day time licence" in Victoria. They have never existed under any
circumstances or for any reason whatsoever. So you can never get one.
Everyone
who tells you they had one in Victoria is lying. They were actually
driving while
disqualified but were too shy to tell you the truth.
Conditional
licence
There is no such thing as a conditional
driver's licence in Victoria. You can never apply for one. You either
have a drivers licence or you don't. If you have a driver's licence
there is no point in asking a court to place restrictions on it. You
should be asking the court not to interfere with it at all.
Bail conditions affecting your right to drive
In some rare cases the court can ask a person
who is applying for bail to agree not to
drive a motor vehicle at night or on weekends or outside
work hours or at all. You might agree to those conditions if you want
to be released on bail. An example of this is where someone is
taken into custody after using his/her car in a road rage incident
where they have driven very dangerously and
attacked someone and perhaps have priors for similar offences. The
court has no power to suspend the
person's drivers licence prior to the hearing of these types of
charges, but the
court can restrict the accused's use of a vehicle as a condition of
granting bail. If you breach those conditions you are not breaching a
licence condition and you are not committing a driving offence. But you
will be in
breach of your bail and you risk being arrested and taken back
into custody. Asking the court to impose this type of condition on you
presumes you have a licence to start with. If the court is obliged to
cancel or suspend your drivers licence then it is a waste of time
asking the court to impose a condition on you that you be restricted in
how and when you use your licence – seeing you won't have a
drivers
licence anyway. Similarly, a person might agree not drive their
vehicle in certain circumstances as a condition of a bond or
undertaking to be of good behaviour.
Discretionary licence loss
A court always has power to suspend or cancel your drivers licence for
as long as it likes if you are found guilty of any offence in
connection with the driving of a motor vehicle, even if there is no
mandatory minimum period of
suspension or
cancellation applicable to your offence. For offences which carry no
mandatory
licence loss (e.g. careless driving, red light, mobile phone, seatbelts
etc), the court has power to suspend
or cancel one category of licence only – such as your heavy
vehicle
drivers licence or your motor cycle licence – and
still allow you to retain a drivers licence for cars, or vice versa. It
does not need to suspend all of your licences. See s.28(1)(b) Road
Safety Act.
