Driving license disqualifications.

Agencies concerned with road safety question the wisdom of license disqualification. Drivers in New South Wales have a kitty of twelve points allocated to them when they obtain a full driving license. Various traffic offences incur fines - and points loss. When all twelve points are gone - so is the license for a period of time.
Loss of the ability to drive a motor vehicle can be catastrophic for most people. It can be as extreme as loss of employment, inability to get the children to and from school and the general mobility necessary to shop and live a normal life. In many cases, the disqualified driver has an overwhelming temptation to ignore the ban - and drive illegally. Those that do are not covered by compulsory third party insurance. Not only do they place their own financial future in jeopardy - but they leave any victims of their driving in financial limbo.
Unfortunately laws have been tightened to the point that magistrates now have little discretion in awarding penalties. As a result, a " one size fits all " penalty applies to driving offences.
Another example of officialdom surpassing magistrates is the ability of the RTA to declare a driver " a habitual offender ". This is a person who commits a large number of ongoing traffic violations - and is the subject of a five year license ban - in addition to whatever the magistrate has imposed.
In a recent case, a sixty-three year old man was given six months gaol and a license suspension, but had this increased by a further five years by the RTA - thus cancelling his license until 2075 - well beyond his reasonable life expectancy.
License suspensions are undeniably necessary for some sort of drivers, but it seems that the criteria for imposing them has got out of hand. There is little point in imposing them if the end result is an avalanche of unlicensed drivers on the road who are there because of necessity.
There is no perfect answer to this problem, but now is certainly the time for wise minds to ponder - and hopefully fine tune a system that is simply not working !