Published
July 22, 2026Driving cases are decided on procedure and consequence, and most public commentary addresses neither accurately. Three points, current for Victoria.
The limits. Drink and drug driving in Victoria is governed by the Road Safety Act 1986. The general limit is a blood alcohol concentration below 0.05. A zero limit applies to learner and probationary drivers, to drivers of heavy vehicles, taxis and other commercial passenger vehicles, and to anyone relicensed after a drink-driving offence, who carries a zero-BAC condition for at least three years. For drugs, the offence is committed on the presence of a prescribed illicit substance in oral fluid or blood — impairment need not be shown.
The consequences are largely fixed. Licence loss follows conviction in mandatory minimum terms scaled to the reading, and every drink-driving offender — including a first offender at the lowest range — faces a minimum disqualification and a mandatory alcohol interlock condition on relicensing, together with a behaviour-change program. Police also hold powers of immediate licence suspension and vehicle impoundment for certain offences. The room for discretion is narrower than most people assume, which makes the remaining discretion — where the minimum applies, what the court is told, how the disqualification interacts with employment — worth engaging properly.
What is actually contestable. Where these cases are defended successfully, it is almost always on procedure: the lawfulness of the intercept, compliance of the preliminary and evidentiary testing with the statutory scheme, the timing requirements attaching to the analysis, and the integrity of the instrument evidence. These are technical points, they are real, and they cannot be assessed without the brief. Refusing a test, it should be said plainly, is not a strategy — refusal is itself an offence, generally treated more severely than the reading it avoids.
At the serious end — dangerous driving causing death or serious injury, and culpable driving — these are major indictable prosecutions conducted in the County Court, and the firm prepares them as such: collision reconstruction, toxicology, telematics, and committal strategy.
For most clients the licence is the livelihood. Realistic advice, early, is worth more than optimism at the plea.
