When you have been charged with a traffic offence such as drink driving in Australia you should consider completing a Drink Drive Education Program to assist you in reducing the penalty you receive.
Completing a program such as the Road and Traffic Education (RATE) Program will help you to demonstrate to the court that you have learnt from your mistakes and are now aware of the possible consequences to your actions for yourself and other road users. This program is run online and takes around 5 hours to complete.
What do you do and learn in a Drink Drive Education Program?
In a Drink Drive Education program, you will receive further education on traffic offences which is aimed to change the attitude and behaviour of drivers who have committed traffic offences. This can be through in person lectures or online lectures which participants watch to gain the insight to complete the course. The people who present these lectures will be qualified in a variety of areas such as psychology, traffic law and road crash investigations. They will give you valuable insight by providing confronting information which will assist in educating you more about traffic offences.
You will watch a series of confronting traffic awareness videos which will further demonstrate to you the possible consequences of an offender’s actions for not only themselves but also other road users. These videos are produced by professional experts who witness the consequences of traffic offences where the outcome of the offending did not result in the participant just needed to attend court to answer for their actions.
At the end of your drink drive education program, you are given an opportunity to write self-reflections which will be tendered to the court. These reflections provide participants of these programs an opportunity to show their engagement in the program and demonstrate to the Magistrate that they have learnt from their mistakes. Participants should ensure they complete detailed reflections which demonstrate what they have learnt but also their remorse for their actions.
At the completion of the drink drive education program, you will receive a certificate of completion and your reflections. These documents can be provided to the court at your sentence and will allow you to demonstrate to the Magistrate what you have learnt in the program. Completing a drink drive education program will allow a participant to understand that having a licence is a privilege not a right and they should ensure they are obeying traffic laws to prevent them reoffending.
