Car crashes, emergency hospital visits and the Sisters of Speed

24/07/2009

A bad experience with a hospital birth meant that when my wife was pregnant with our second child she opted for a home birth. Unfortunately, complications meant that the birthing pool never got more than half full and that I had to rush her to hospital. On the way there, perhaps alerted by my car crash hazardous driving, or perhaps by the distressing siren-like noises emanating from the backseat, we were pulled over by a police car and, mercifully, offered an escort into the local maternity ward.

Truth be told, I may have been speeding – the anxiety of the situation means that I just didn't know. I guess I'm just lucky that the police didn't give me a ticket. Apparently it's a myth that they don't; the midwife who delivered the antenatal classes before the birth of our third child told us of the immense chagrin felt by some local parents-to-be who had the misfortune to debunk the myth the hard way.

And the same goes for most non-emergency hospital trips: if you get flashed by a speed camera or stopped by traffic police, you're going to have a watertight and verifiable excuse in order to be able to dodge penalty points.

Whoever you are, the same laws apply pretty much everywhere in the world, whether you are in England or Italy, a no win no fee writer or a nun on tea-drinking terms with the Pope.

For example, just last week a 56-year-old nun was pulled over by Italian police after she was caught driving her Ford Fiesta at speeds in excess of 120 mph.

I imagine that she and her two fellow nun passengers thought they had a pretty good excuse when they told police, "We've just heard that Pope Benedict has had a bad fall. We are on our way to see him and must get there as quickly as possible to make sure he is okay."

Of course, there were problems with the explanation: the nuns were not emergency service workers on the way to deliver help to a critically injured pontiff - they were merely friends and he'd suffered only a relatively minor holiday injury. They were speeding only to quickly allay their own concerns; hardly sufficient justification for risking a serious car crash.

The driver received a fine and a one-month driving ban for her offence. Police said, "Hopefully Sister Tavoletta will be making sure she confesses her bad driving the next she goes to confession. But in the meantime, she will have to pay the Euros 375 fine (£325)."

However, it seems that the Sister is unrepentant and clearly doesn't think she was ever likely to cause a car crash; she has hired Italy's top road traffic lawyer to try and overturn the fine and ban.

Can I claim?